NEW BOOKS

 

[These books can not be purchased from the CPAS. Please send your enquiries directly to the publishers.]

 

[Not all the books in this section are strictly new, but those that are not, were not before listed in the Oceania Newsletter.]

 

GENERAL

 

Asian Development Bank. 2004. Responding to the Priorities of the Poor: A Pacific Strategy for the Asian Development Bank 2005-2009. Manila: Asian Development Bank. 107 pages. Retrieved January 2, 2008, from the World Wide Web: http://www.adb.org/Documents/CSPs/PAC/2004/Pacific-Strategy-2005-09.pdf.

 

"This is an important juncture for the Pacific. The development performance of the Pacific developing member countries (PDMCs) of the ADB over the past decade has been mixed. All PDMCs face significant challenges in generating broad-based and sustained economic growth from small, high cost and narrowly focused economies.

 

The Pacific Strategy 2005 - 2009 provides a framework for ADB operations in its 14 PDMCs and for ADB support to Pacific regional cooperation. Detailed strategies and programs will be developed at the country level, in support of the PDMCs national development programs. The Pacific Strategy highlights differences among PDMCs, but also addresses common challenges.

 

Contents: Executive Summary; Introduction; Current Development Trends and Issues; Pacific Developing Member Countries Development Strategy; Asian Development Bank's Development Experience; Asian Development Bank's Strategy; Delivering the Pacific Strategy; Risks and Performance Monitoring and Evaluation; Appendices."

 

Barclay, Kate with Ian Cartwright. 2007. Capturing Wealth from Tuna: Case Studies from the Pacific. Canberra: Asia Pacific Press. ISBN 978-0-7315-3816-4.

 

"The Western and Central Pacific Ocean is home to the largest tuna fishery in the world - around half of the world's tuna supply - and is a vital economic resource for Pacific island countries.

 

The potential of the Pacific tuna fishery to contribute to economic development in the Pacific island countries is enormous, but will require a cooperative regional strategy to maximise access fees from distant water fishing nations, as well as targeted domestic policy and legislation to encourage local fishing industries. Together with the importance of acting strategically with regard to such a variable resource, the lesson of fisheries management globally is that it is most effective when it takes into consideration social, cultural and political contexts.

 

Based on an extensive study of six Pacific island states, Capturing Wealth from Tuna maps out the aspirations and limitations of six Pacific island countries and proposes strategies for capturing more wealth from this resource in a sustainable and socially equitable manner."

 

Ellis, Jupiter. 2008. Tattooing the World: Pacific Designs in Print and Skin. Irvington, NY: Columbia University Press. 304 pages; 24 illustrations. ISBN: 978-0-231-14369-1 (paper) and 978-0-231-14368-4 (cloth).

 

"In the 1830s an Irishman named James F. O'Connell acquired a full-body tattoo while living as a castaway in the Pacific. The tattoo featured traditional patterns that, to native Pohnpeians, defined O'Connell's life; they made him wholly human. Yet upon traveling to New York, these markings singled him out as a freak. His tattoos frightened women and children, and ministers warned their congregations that viewing O'Connell's markings would cause the ink to transfer to the skin of their unborn children. In many ways, O'Connell's story exemplifies the unique history of the modern tattoo, which began in the Pacific and then spread throughout the world. No matter what form it has taken, the tattoo has always embodied social standing, aesthetics, ethics, culture, gender, and sexuality. Tattoos are personal and corporate, private and public. They mark the profane and the sacred, the extravagant and the essential, the playful and the political. From the Pacific islands to the world at large, tattoos are a symbolic and often provocative form of expression and communication.

 

Tattooing the World is the first book on tattoo literature and culture. Juniper Ellis traces the origins and significance of modern tattoo in the works of nineteenth- and twentieth-century artists, travelers, missionaries, scientists, and such writers as Herman Melville, Margaret Mead, Albert Wendt, and Sia Figiel. Traditional Pacific tattoo patterns are formed using an array of well-defined motifs. They place the individual in a particular community and often convey genealogy and ideas of the sacred. However, outside of the Pacific, those who wear and view tattoos determine their meaning and interpret their design differently. Reading indigenous historiography alongside Western travelogue and other writings, Ellis paints a surprising portrait of how culture has been etched both on the human form and on a body of literature.

 

Juniper Ellis is an associate professor of English at Loyola College in Maryland, teaching Maori, Pacific Islands, and US literature. Her research for this book was made possible by the National Endowmen for the Humanities, the Fulbright Foundation, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation."

 

Geary, Christraud M. (ed.). 2006. From the South Seas: Oceanic Art from the Teel Collection. Boston: Museum of Fine Art. 192 pages; 120 color illustrations; 43 black and white illustrations. ISBN: 9780878466979 (hc).

 

"Essays by Michael Gunn and Christraud M. Geary. From New Guinea to New Zealand, Easter Island to Hawaii, the Pacific region known as Oceania has long excited the Western imagination, but its traditional sculptures, pots and paintings have only recently been studied and appreciated as fine art. While much about these works and the cultures that produced them remains mysterious, we do know that most items were created for use in daily life rather than as products for the art market. Nonetheless, their beauty and craftsmanship elevate the best of them to objects of contemplation and wonder. This catalogue presents some 80 Oceanic works of art, each illustrated with its form and function described. Michael Gunn's introduction places the works in context; Christraud Geary discusses provenance; and contextual photographs throughout show many of the objects in situ, aiding in a growing understanding of these intriguing but still elusive works, and adding to the scholarship on, and interest in, Oceania."

 

Hendry, Joy. 2005. Reclaiming Culture: Indigenous People and Self-Representation. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 256 pages. ISBN: 1-4039-7071-8 (pb) and 1-4039-7018-1 (hc).

 

"This book focuses on the renewal (or rekindling) of cultural identity, especially in populations previously considered 'extinct'. At the same time, Hendry sets out to explain the importance of ensuring the survival of these cultures. By drawing a fine and textured picture of these cultures, Hendry illuminates extraordinary diversity that was, at one point, seriously endangered, and explains why it should matter in today's world.

'Hendry departed from the usual pattern of sustained participant-observation in a few places over several months and instead traveled all over the planet, visiting scores of places - such as Minnesota, Oxaca, Fiji, Vanuatu, New Zealand, Selangor (Malaysia), Tanzania, Kenya, Ontario (Six Nations Reserve), Upper New York State, British Columbia, Yukon, Nunavut, Alberta, Hokkaido, southern Australia, Samoa. Some of these places were visited for only a few days or even hours, and others, most notably the Six Nations Reserve in Ontario, were the subject of sustained visits of several weeks' (Alexander D. King in Ethnos).

 

Contents: Prologue; Introduction; 1. Museums are Transformed; 2. Aboriginal Tourism and that Elusive Authenticity; 3. Indigenous or Alter-Native Forms of Cultural Display; 4. Language and Formal Cultural Education; 5. Arts, Architecture, and Native Creativity; 6. Land Claims, Archaeology, and New Communities; 7. International Links, Cultural Exchange, and Personal Identity; 8. Conclusion: What We Can Learn."

 

Henley, Gerald. 2006. Final Approaches: A Memoir. Auckland: Auckland University Press. 320 pages. ISBN: 978-1-86940-378-2 (pb).

 

"'Hensley's interest and involvement in Pacific affairs continued throughout his career. While major international events, such as the war in Nigeria, the South African apartheid issue and the last years of the cold war, are all covered in this book, so too are Pacific issues. For instance, Hensley details his work at the UN which helped achieve self-government status for Cook Islands and Niue. He also writes about the many meetings of the Pacific Island Forum which he attended' ( John Henderson in The Journal of Pacific History)."

 

Le Clézio, Jean-Marie Gustave. 2006. Raga: Approche du continent invisible. Paris: Éditions du Seuil. 140 pages. ISBN: 978-2020899093.

 

"On dit de l'Océanie qu'elle est le continent invisible. Invisible parce que les voyageurs qui s'y sont aventurés la première fois ne l'ont pas aperçue et, parce qu'aujourd'hui elle reste un lieu sans reconnaissance internationale, un passage, un territoire qui a fait rêver bien des explorateurs qui risquèrent leur vie pour l'atteindre et essayer d'en cartographier les contours. J.M.G. Le Clézio n'avait pas imaginé que le mythe rejoignait la réalité: il découvre l'immensité de l'océan, les myriades d'îles, d'îlots, d'atolls. De ce continent fait de mer plus que de terre, il s'approche, découvrant archipels, valeurs émergées des profondeurs, récifs coralliens. Dans ce récit où le réel et l'imaginaire s'entrelacent, où le poème affleure, J.M.G. Le Clézio nous invite à la découverte de la culture océanienne, au repérage au moyen des étoiles, à la méditation sur l'immensité de la mer, à l'amour des mères qui protègent leurs enfants dans la tempête. Voyage initiatique, approche de la beauté vers l'humanité, ce texte ouvre une réflexion et une critique de la mondialisation qui vient mettre en péril l'harmonie d'une civilisation précieuse mais fragile."

 

Molloy, Maureen A. 2008 (March). On Creating a Usable Culture: Margaret Mead and the Emergence of American Cosmopolitanism. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press. 224 pages. ISBN: 978-0-8248-3116-5 (cloth).

 

"Margaret Mead's career took off in 1928 with the publication of Coming of Age in Samoa. Within ten years, she was the best-known academic in the United States, a role she enjoyed all of her life. In On Creating a Usable Culture, Maureen Molloy explores how Mead was influenced by, and influenced, the meanings of American culture and secured for herself a unique and enduring place in the American popular imagination. She considers this in relation to Mead's four popular ethnographies written between the wars (Coming of Age in Samoa, Growing Up in New Guinea, The Changing Culture of an Indian Tribe and Sex  and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies) and the academic, middle-brow, and popular responses to them.

 

Molloy argues that Mead was heavily influenced by the debates concerning the forging of a distinctive American culture that began around 1911 with the publication of George Santayana's 'The Genteel Tradition'. The creation of a national culture would solve the problems of alienation and provincialism and establish a place for both native-born and immigrant communities. Mead drew on this vision of an 'integrated culture' and used her 'primitive societies' as exemplars of how cultures attained or failed to attain this ideal. Her ethnographies are really about 'America', the peoples she studied the personifications of what were widely understood to be the dilemmas of American selfhood in a materialistic, individualistic society.

 

Two themes subtend Molloy's analysis. The first is Mead's articulation of the individual's relation to his or her culture via the trope of sex. Each of her early ethnographies focuses on a 'character' and his or her problems as expressed through sexuality. This thematic ties her work closely to the popularization of psychoanalysis at the time with its understanding of sex as the key to the self. The second theme involves the change in Mead's attitude toward and definition of 'culture' - from the cultural determinism in Coming of Age to culture as the enemy of the individual in Sex and Temperament. This trend parallels the consolidation and objectification of popular and professional notions about culture in the 1920s and 1930s.

 

On Creating a Usable Culture will be eagerly welcomed by those with an interest in American studies and history, cultural studies, and the social sciences, and most especially by readers of American intellectual history, the history of anthropology, gender studies, and studies of modernism.

 

Maureen A. Molloy is professor of women's studies at the University of Auckland."

 

Nicol, John. 2006. La vie de John Nicol, matelot. Translated by André Fayot. Paris: José Corti. 256 pages. ISBN: 2-7143-0920-8. Also published as The Life and Adventures of John Nicol, Mariner by Grove Press in 2000.

 

"In his many voyages the Scottish-born sailor John Nicol twice circumnavigated the globe, visiting every inhabited continent while witnessing and participating in many of the greatest events of exploration and adventure in the eighteenth century. He traded with Native Americans on the St. Lawrence River and hunted whales in the Arctic Ocean. He fought for the British navy against American privateers in the Atlantic Ocean and Napoléon's navy in the Mediterranean Sea. In Grenada he witnessed the horrors of the slave system and befriended slaves who invited him to join in their dance celebrations. In the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) he was entertained by the king's court mere days after the murder of Captain James Cook. En route to Australia he would meet the love of his life, Sarah Whitlam, a convict bound for the Botany Bay prison colony, who would bear his son before duty forced them apart forever.

At the end of his journeys, John Nicol returned to his homeland and a life of obscurity and poverty, until the publisher John Howell met him one day while he was wandering the streets of Edinburgh, searching for dregs of coal to fuel his hearth. After hearing the fascinating stories of Nicol's seafaring experiences, Howell convinced him to write his memoirs - the publication of which eventually earned Nicol enough money to live comfortably for the rest of his days."

 

Puaman, Priscilla and Frances Pene (eds). 2007. The Basics of Learning: Literacy and Numeracy in the Pacific. Pacific Education Series No. 4. Suva: Institute of Education, University of the South Pacific. 205 Pages. ISBN: 978-982-01-0814-1. Retrieved January 22, 2008, from the World Wide Web: http://www.usp.ac.fj/index.php?id=6063.

 

"This is the fourth volume in the Institute of Education's - specifically the PRIDE  (Pacific Regional Initiatives for the Delivery of basic Education) Project - Pacific Education Series. This volume is an outcome of the Fifth PRIDE Regional Workshop held at the Sia'atoutai Theological College in Nuku'alofa, Tonga in May 2006. It was attended by senior curriculum and teacher professional development officers responsible for curriculum development and delivery in the fields of literacy (both English and vernacular) and mathematics at the primary level from fifteen Pacific countries. The aim of the workshop was to engage participants in the process of reconceptualising the way literacy (both English and vernacular) and numeracy is thought about and practised in their own country, and in the region. Part of the process required reflecting on global developments in these areas and examining the implications for the Pacific.

 

There are three parts to the book: the first contains chapters on literacy (chapters 1-6), the second has chapters on numeracy (chapters 7-11) with the third part integrating both aspects (chapters 12-13). The notion of syncretising the best of the contemporary global with the best of the local is a central theme in the book. The global theoretical and conceptual perspectives to literacy and numeracy are provided in chapters 1 and 7, while chapters 2, 8 and 13 provide regional/local conceptual insights with a specific emphasis on indigenous ways of thinking about literacy and numeracy. Two case studies are also provided, one on applying indigenous mathematics concepts in the elementary syllabus in Papua New Guinea and the second on integrating literacy and numeracy. Attention is also given to the importance of information literacy to learning. The book is intended primarily for teachers, teacher educators, policy writers and researchers in the areas of literacy and numeracy, and more generally for anyone interested in Pacific education.

 

Contents: Portraits of the contributors; Abbreviations; A literate and numerate society: introducing the book, by Priscilla Puamau; Part 1: 1. Living (in) literacies in new times, by  Marylin Low; 2. Between two worlds: taking control of our destiny through relevant literacy, by Lice Taufaga; 3. Access to language: a question of equity for all children, by Upokoina Herrman; 4. Quality of learning (in) languages and literacies: creating effective conditions for learning, by Maggie Hodges; 5. Boundary crossing: a question of contextualised management systems in literacy(ies) and language, by Lucy Nakin; 6. Information literacy: a component of all learning activities, by Libby Cass; Part 2: 7. Liberating developments in numeracy, by Lesley Lee; 8. Building bridges: 'At home I add, at school I multiply', by Salanieta Bakalevu; 9. Application of indigenous mathematics concepts in the elementary syllabus, by Steven Hupigo Tandale; 10. Local/indigenous numeracy and its place in Pacific Island classrooms, by Teburantaake T. Kaei; 11. A united front for professional development and training in numeracy, by John Beuka; Part 3: 12. Integrating numeracy and literacy, by Lesley Lee and Marylin Low; 13. Eutia moa mai nanoa: navigating currents of literacy and numeracy in the Pacific, by Teweiariki Teaero; Appendix A: List of participants; Appendix B: Photo of participants."

 

Reilly, Ben. 2006 (hb) and 2007 (pb). Democracy and Diversity: Political Engineering in the Asia-Pacific. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 242 pages. ISBN: 978-0-19-928687-4 (hb) and 978-0-19-923870-5 (pb).

 

"'Benjamin Reilly's book provides an unusually comprehensive picture of institutional change across the Asia Pacific (including rarely studied Pacific nations like Fiji and Papua New Guinea). He demonstrates, persuasively, a pattern of 'institutional engineering' in the region's ethnically diverse democracies. It is essential reading for anyone interested in the design of democratic institutions' (Ben Thirkell-White, School of International Relations, University of St Andrews) .

 

Is there an Asia-Pacific model of democracy? Over the past two decades, more than a dozen Asian and Pacific states have made the transition to democratic rule. But many of these states are also ethnically, linguistically, and regionally diverse, creating real challenges for effective government.

 

This book explains how the Asia-Pacific's political reformers responded to the twin challenges of democracy and diversity through ambitious and often innovative political engineering. Far-reaching reforms to electoral, parliamentary, and party systems have seen the emergence of a distinctive regional model of democracy.

 

Benjamin Reilly analyses this new approach to the design of political institutions, and its consequences for democratic governance in the Asia-Pacific and other world regions.

 

Contents: 1. Introduction; 2. Democratization and Internal Conflict in the Asia-Pacific; 3. Diversity, Democracy and Development in the Asia-Pacific; 4. Political Engineering: Consociationalism, Centripetalism and Communalism; 5. Representative Institutions: Elections and Electoral Systems; 6. Mediating Institutions: Political Parties and Party Systems; 7. Powersharing Institutions: Executive Formation and Federalism; 8. Conclusion.

 

Benjamin Reilly, Director, Centre for Democratic Institutions, Australian National University."

 

Schindlbeck, Markus (ed.). 2006. Expeditionen in die Südsee. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer. 160 pages. ISBN: 978-3-496-02780-5 (pb).

 

"Expeditionen waren der Beginn der Berliner Südsee-Sammlung - einer der bedeutendsten Sammlungen weltweit. Das Buch schildert die Erlebnisse der Sammler und wie die Stücke nach Berlin kamen. Es bietet als hervorragend bebildertes Sachbuch einen umfassenden Einblick in die Geschichte der Südsee-Sammlung.

 

Die Südsee-Sammlung des Ethnologischen Museums Berlin ist in einem Zeitraum von über 200 Jahren entstanden. Zu den Höhepunkten der Sammlung gehören neben dem Federmantel von König Kamehameha I. und dem Trauergewand aus Tahiti auch mehrere Uli-Figuren aus Neuirland sowie das große Boot von Luf. Zahlreiche Fotografien eröffnen zudem Einblicke in die Alltagswelt der Südsee-Region.

 

Zweimal war der Begründer des ethnologischen Museums, A. Bastian, in Australien. Sein Nachfolger in der Betreuung der Südsee-Sammlung, F. von Luschan, förderte die Studien Australiens durch Kontakte mit deutschen Missionaren.

 

Aber auch Handelshauser richteten Expeditionen aus. J. S. Kubary reiste zunachst für Godeffroy in Hamburg, spater gezielt für Berlin in Mikronesien.

 

Einen ganz besonderen Zugang zur polynesischen Kultur fand der Arzt E. Arning, der für die Erforschung der Lepra-Krankheit nach Hawaii geschickt wurde. Dank seiner Suche besitzt das Ethnologische Museum Berlin heute eine der umfangreichsten und besten Hawaii-Sammlungen.

 

So wird in diesem Katalogbuch erstmals seit dem Ausstellungsführer von vor fast vierzig Jahren ein Überblick zur größten Südsee-Sammlung Deutschlands und Europas gegeben."

 

Sodhi, G. 2008. Five Out of Ten: A Performance Report of the Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands (RAMSI).St Leonards: Centre for Independent Studies. Issue Analysis No. 92. 20 pages. Retrieved February 4, 2008, from the World Wide Web: http://www.cis.org.au/issue_analysis/IA92/ia92.pdf.

 

"The people of the Solomon Islands are no better off today than they were at independence thirty years ago. Because of the civic violence that has resulted from stagnation, many are in fact worse off. Villagers work hard in their gardens to feed their families while services such as power, water, education, and healthcare are largely absent from their lives. Children in the Solomon Islands are no more likely to go to school today than they were thirty years ago. The underdevelopment of the Solomon Islands is damning of its governments since independence, and also of the many aid organisations that have little improvement to show for their hundreds of millions of dollars of largesse. If words were a substitute for action, the Solomon Islands would be rich. Countless multilateral bodies and NGOs have made the same recommendations and the same promises. Yet the land tenure reforms that are essential to agricultural and private sector development have been ignored.

 

RAMSI has undoubtedly made a critical contribution in pacifying the Solomon Islands. It has laid the foundations for growth and development. The Solomon Islands is better off with the involvement of RAMSI than without, but RAMSI risks becoming just the latest agency promising to deliver development with little improvement to show for its pledges.

 

The security gains made in the Solomons are fragile. They must be matched by efforts to reform the real bottlenecks in the economy. The bored and frustrated men who continue to sit around villages and towns feel sidelined and alienated in their own country as they observe busy expatriates scurrying about their business. They are a harbinger of future instability. RAMSI's mission is only half complete. Any assessment of its efforts can only offer a mark of five out of ten. Without addressing the real constraints to development, it has no exit strategy."

 

Sparrow, Bartholomew H. 2006. The Insular Cases and the Emergence of American Empire. Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press. 256 pages. ISBN:  978-0-7006-1481-3 (cloth) and 978-0-7006-1482-0 (paper).

 

"When the United States took control of Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and Guam following the Spanish-American War, it was unclear to what degree these islands were actually part of the U.S. and, in particular, whether the Constitution applied fully, or even in part, to their citizens. By looking closely at what became known as the Insular Cases, Bartholomew Sparrow reveals how America resolved to govern these territories.

 

Sparrow follows the Insular Cases from the controversial Downes v. Bidwell in 1901, which concerned tariffs on oranges shipped to New York from Puerto Rico and which introduced the distinction between incorporated and unincorporated territories, to Balzac v. Puerto Rico in 1922, in which the Court decided that Puerto Ricans, although officially U.S. citizens, could be denied trial by jury because Puerto Rico was "unincorporated." There were 35 Insular Cases in all, cases stretching across two decades, cases in which the Court ruled on matters as diverse as tariffs, double jeopardy, and the very meaning of U.S. citizenship as it applied to the inhabitants of the offshore territories.

 

Providing a new look at the history and politics of U.S. expansion at the turn of the twentieth century, Sparrow’s book also examines the effect the Court’s decisions had on the creation of an American empire. It highlights crucial features surrounding the cases - the influence of racism on the justices, the need for naval stations to protect new international trade, and dramatic changes in tariff policy. It also tells how the Court sanctioned the emergence of two kinds of American empire: formal territories whose inhabitants could be U.S. citizens but still be denied full political rights, and an informal empire based on trade, cooperative foreign governments, and U.S. military bases rather than on territorial acquisitions.

 

The Insular Cases and the Emergence of American Empire reveals how the United States handled its first major episode of globalization and how the Supreme Court, in these cases, crucially redirected the course of American history."

 

Van Tilburg, Hans Konrad. 2007. Chinese Junks on the Pacific: Views from a Different Deck. Gainesville: University Press of Florida. 288 pages. ISBN: 978-0-8130-3053-1 (cl).

 

"Beginning in 1905, a handful of traditional Chinese sailing vessels, known as junks, sailed from China to North America across the Pacific. These were some of the last commercial sailing junks of China, most of which had little trouble crossing thousands of miles of ocean on their way to American ports. Crowds welcomed them in Victoria, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Portland, and San Diego, yet often regarded them with a mixture of surprise and contempt as quaint, unwieldy constructions in the fashion of sea monsters and even bizarre objects of fancy. As traveling cultural objects, displaying a variety of gruesome weaponry and other artifacts, some of them served as public floating museums. The arrival of these vessels allowed Western observers to catch a rare glimpse of a little-known yet sophisticated maritime technology and seafaring culture.

 

Van Tilburg's study of this history - the maritime heritage of Chinese junks and their transpacific voyages - examines ten junks, how they were made, why and how they traveled, and how the West received them. Combining historical narrative with ethnology, anthropology, maritime archaeology, and nautical technology, he draws on a wide range of newspaper sources, secondary texts, nautical treatise, archaeological site work, rare historical photos and sketches, and the personal testimony of the sailors themselves to examine these vessels not only as transport vehicles but as complex cultural artifacts that 'speak' of a distant seafaring past and intimate cultural ties to the sea.

 

While attention to maritime China has focused primarily on periods versus centuries, Chinese Junks on the Pacific is the story behind the traditional Chinese vessels of the 19th century and how the West misunderstood them. Accessible reading, this book will appeal to scholars of Asian seafaring and archaeology, sailing aficionados drawn to the junk's form and sailing qualities, and those interested in Chinese-American interactions and encounters.

 

Hans Konrad Van Tilburg, maritime heritage coordinator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Marine Sanctuary Program in the Pacific Islands Region, has also served as an instructor in maritime archaeology and history at the University of Hawai'i, Manoa."

 

Waterfield, Hermione and J.C.H. King. 2006. Provenance: Twelve Collectors of Ethnographic Art in England 1760-1990. Paris: Somogy Éditions d'Art. 176 pages. ISBN: 9782757200186 (pb).

 

"The seeds for this publication were sown when Swiss tycoon and prominent Tribal art collector, Jean Paul Barbier, asked author Hermione Waterfield for the background to some names that kept appearing in the sale catalogues of Christie's and Sotheby's - names such as Harry Beasley, General Pitt Rivers and John Hewett. Slowly, what was meant to be no more than an informal collection of notes turned into a in-depth and ambitious essay aiming to introduce a dozen influential dealers and collectors of ethnography active between 1770 and 1990 in Britain. The accounts here concern those collectors who left documentary records and created and developed a taste for ethnographica in others. These men were rarely field collectors, and only occasional travellers. While they worked from home they were not armchair collectors: instead they were very vigorous hunters, devoted to the constant, even obsessive, search for ethnographic objects."

 

Wesley-Smith, Terence. 2007. China in Oceania: New Forces in Pacific Politics. Pacific Islands Policy No. 2. Honolulu: East-West Center. 48 pages. ISBN: 978-0-86638-210-6 (print) and 978-0-86638-311-3 (electronic). Retrieved December 11, 2007, from the World Wide Web: http://www.eastwestcenter.org/fileadmin/stored/pdfs/pip002_1.pdf.

 

"Contents: Executive Summary; A New Page of Regional History; China Goes Global; China in Oceania; Threat Discourse; Dragon Talk; Washington Consensus versus Beijing Consensus; Caribbean Perspectives; China's Pacific Century; References; The Author."

 

Ralph M. Wiltgen. 2008 (January). The Founding of the Roman Catholic Church in Melanesia and Micronesia, 1850-1875. Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, Wipf and Stock Publishers. 596 pages. ISBN: 978-1-55635-209-6 (pb).

 

"This book is the result of Father Ralph Wiltgen's years of archival work in Rome and at the headquarters of religious orders who worked in Micronesia and Melanesia. It follows his first historical book on the subject, The Founding of the Roman Catholic Church in Oceania: 1825 to 1850, but narrows the focus. The first book dealt with the whole of Oceania and emphasized developments in Polynesia. This book concentrates on Melanesia and Micronesia from 1850 to 1875, the period immediately before the work of large numbers of Missionaries of the Sacred Heart, Marists, and Divine Word Missionaries assumed great momentum in the period between 1875 and 1914.

 

Micronesia is a huge area of the world, made up of numerous culturally and politically distinct groups of atolls ranging over about 1,400 miles from the northwest to the southeast. Its peoples speak scores of mutually unintelligible though related languages on such island groups as the Marshalls, the Gilberts, Nauru, and Kiribati.

 

Far more heavily populated is Melanesia, another huge area of the Pacific where as many as one thousand distinct languages are spoken in an arc of islands extending from just below the equator in a boomerang shape from today's Indonesian controlled Papua and independent Papua New Guinea on the island of New Guinea in the northwest all the way along the Solomon Island chain to 25° south latitude to the southeast.

 

In this book, Wiltgen shows himself the undisputed master of the archives of the Propaganda Fide, the Vatican's chief mission agency and the religious orders that provided missionaries, all of which is supplemented by his attention to the lives of key people of the period. He shows the Propaganda now prodding missionary orders to take on the difficult work of evangelizing these areas and on other occasions struggling to keep up with and understand fast-moving events and the colorful characters - both ecclesiastical and among colonial administrators, rogue sea captains, and indigenous leaders. Wiltgen lets the contemporary records speak for themselves, though one can imagine his arched brow and mischievous grin as he selects exactly the right quote to describe now an act of missionary heroism and now an act of self-promotion.

 

It is a masterful book, making available the early history of one of Catholicism's greatest missionary successes, helping the reader understand both the idealism of the vision and the way in which concrete events and people affected the outcome."

 

AUSTRALIA

 

Bardon, Geoffrey and James Bardon. 2007. Papunya: A Place Made after the Story: The Beginning of the Western Desert Painting Movement. Carlton: Melbourne University Publishing. 552 pages. ISBN: 0-522-85434-6 (pb). First published by Miegunyah Press in 2004.

 

"In 1971, a hopeful, young art teacher drove the long, lonely road from Alice Springs to the Aboriginal outpost settlement at Papunya. His name was Geoffrey Bardon. Eighteen months later, he left Papunya, defeated by a hostile white authority. But his legacy was the beginnings of the Western Desert Painting Movement.

 

What started as an exercise to encourage the Aboriginal schoolchildren to record their sand patterns and games grew to involve, at the peak of creativity, as many as 30 tribal men and elders. With Bardon's encouragement, these men worked to preserve their traditional Dreamings and stories in paint. The artistic movement unleashed at Papunya spread over Central Australia and has since achieved international acclaim. The Western Desert Painting Movement has provided the rest of the world with new ways of seeing.

 

Papunya: A Place Made after the Story is a first-hand account of the artists and the works emanating from Papunya. Bardon's exquisitely recorded notes and drawings are here reproduced showing his extensive documentation of the early stages of the painting movement. This book features more than 500 paintings, drawings and photographs from Bardon's personal archive. Many of the images have never been seen before and many of the paintings are now lost. The publication of this material is an unprecedented achievement, and Bardon can now be seen as the catalyst he was for a powerfully modern expression of an ancient indigenous way of seeing the world.

 

Contents: I. Personal Beginnings: 1. The Beginnings of the Western Desert Painting Movement; 2. The Structure and Meaning of the Paintings; 3. Subject Matter and Meaning and the Importance of the Idea of Story; 4. The Lives of the Painters; 5. Afterword: At Papunya, 1990-1991; II. A Selected Catalogue: 1. Archetypes and Hieroglyphs; 2. The School and the School Murals; 3. Water Dreamings; 4. Travelling Dreamings; 5. Fire, Spirit, Myth and Medicine Dreamings; 6. Bush Tucker Stories; 7. Women's Dreamings; 8. Ritual Dance Dreamings; 9. My Country (Homeland) Dreamings; 10. The Children's Stories."

 

Breen, Gavan and Barry J. Blake. 2007. The Grammar of Yalarnnga: A Language of Western Queensland. Pacific Linguistics No. 584. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. 120 pages. ISBN: 9780858835672.

 

"Yalarnnga is a language from Dajarra and country to its east, in far western Queensland. This grammar presents all that could be learnt by the authors from their work with the last three aged speakers, two of whom spoke it only as a second language. Typologically Yalarnnga language is a fairly typical language of the Pama-Nyungan type, at least of the type that lacks bound pronouns. Yalarnnga shares a lot of lexical items with its northern neighbour, Kalkutungu, and diffusion is likely to be responsible. The two languages also share a number of affixes, some widespread and some distinctive, but there is not enough evidence to claim the two languages form a subgroup. The two languages may constitute a relic area."

 

Clark, Anna. 2008 (February). History's Children: History Wars in the Classroom. Sydney: University of New South Wales Press. ISBN: 9780868408637 (pb).

 

"What is it about Australian history? Students dismiss the subject for being boring while politicians and concerned parents fret over their lack of historical knowledge. The classroom has become the battleground of the 'history wars', yet no-one ever asks the children what they think about Australian history and what they like - or don't about learning it. Through interviews with around 250 Australian students from a wide variety of schools, Anna Clark asks how teachers and students teach and learn Australian history. This book is a lively and often surprising read that throws all kinds of challenges to students, teachers and indeed, politicians."

 

Deger, Jennifer. 2006. Shimmering Screens: Making Media in an Aboriginal Community. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 256 pages. ISBN: 978-0-8166-4922-8 (paper) and 978-0-8166-4921-1 (cloth). Reviews: Australian Humanities Review, (42/August-September), 2007: http://www.lib.latrobe.edu.au/AHR/archive/Issue-August-2007/Watson.html (by V. Watson: Ways of Thinking and Ways of Being: Communicating Culture in an Aboriginal Community)

 

"Reconsiders the interplay between Aboriginal communities and media.

 

How does the introduction of modern media influence a community? How does technology coexist with tradition? How do reality and imagination converge in the creation of documentary? Jennifer Deger addresses these questions in her compelling study of one Aboriginal community's relationship with media.

 

Deger spent several years working with the Yolngu community in Gapuwiyak, a remote Aboriginal community in Australia, both as an ethnographic researcher and as a collaborator in the production of media. Shimmering Screens explores the place of technology in Gapuwiyak through discussions about the influence of mainstream television, the changing role of photography in mortuary ceremonies, and the making of local radio and video. A rich ethnographic study, this book examines the productive, and sometimes problematic, conjunctions of technology, culture, and imagination in contemporary Yolngu life.

 

Deger offers a new perspective to ongoing debates regarding 'media imperialism'. Reconsidering established assumptions about the links between representation, power, and 'the gaze', she proposes the possibility of a more culturally specific and, ultimately, a more mutual relationship between subject, image, and viewer.

 

Contents: Acknowledgments; Prologue; Introduction; 1. Culture and Complicities: An Indigenous Media Research Project; 2. (In)Visible Difference: Framing Questions of Culture, Media, and Technology; 3. Tuning In: Mediated Imaginaries and Problems of Deafness and Forgetting; 4. On the 'Mimetic Faculty' and the Refractions of Culture; 5. Taking Pictures: Media Technologies and a Yolngu Politics of Presencing; 6. Flowers and Photographs: Death, Memory, and Techno Mimetics; 7. Technology, Techne, and Yolngu Videomaking; 8. Shimmering Verisimilitudes: Making Video, Managing Images, Manifesting Truths; 9. Worlding a Yolngu World: Radiant Visions and the Flash of Recognition; Conclusion; Notes; Glossary; Bibliography; Index.

 

Jennifer Deger is a research fellow in anthropology, Macquarie University, Australia."

 

Dixon, R.M.W. 2007 (December). Australian Languages: Their Nature and Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 776 pages. ISBN: 9780521046046.

 

"Aboriginal people have been in Australia for at least 40,000 years, speaking about 250 languages. Through examination of published and unpublished materials on each of the individual languages, Professor Dixon surveys the ways in which the languages vary typologically and presents a profile of this long-established linguistic area. The areal distribution of most features is illustrated with more than 30 maps, showing that the languages tend to move in cyclic fashion with respect to many of the parameters. There is also an index of languages and language groups. Professor Dixon, a pioneering scholar in the field, brings an interesting perspective to this diverse and complex material.

 

A comprehensive study of the indigenous languages of Australia. Study of a large-scale and long-established 'linguistic area' by a pioneering scholar in the field. Illustrated with over 30 maps and includes an index of languages and language groups.

 

Contents: List of maps; List of abbreviations and conventions; Preface; Acknowledgements; Conventions followed; List of languages and language groups; 1. The language situation in Australia; 2. Modelling the language situation; 3. Overview; 4. Vocabulary; 5. Case and other nominal suffixes; 6. Verbs; 7. Pronouns; 8. Bound pronouns; 9. Prefixing and fusion; 10. Generic nouns, classifiers, genders and noun classes; 11. Ergative/accusative morphological and syntactic profiles; 12. Phonology; 13. Genetic subgroups and small linguistic areas; 14. Summary and conclusion; References; Index of languages, dialects and language groups; Subject index."

 

Flood, Josephine. 2006. The Original Australians: Story of the Aboriginal People. Sydney: Allen and Unwin. 344 pages. ISBN: 9781741148725 (pb).

 

"The Original Australians tells the story of Australian Aboriginal history and society from its distant beginnings to the present day. From the wisdom and paintings of the Dreamtime, to the first contacts between Europeans and indigenous Australians, right through to modern times, it offers an insight into the life and experiences of the world's oldest culture. The resilience and adaptability of Aboriginal people over millennia is one of the great human stories of all time.

 

Josephine Flood answers the questions about Aboriginal Australia that Australians and visitors often ask: Where did the Aborigines come from and when? How did they survive in such a harsh environment? What was the traditional role of Aboriginal women? Why didn't colonists sign treaties with Aboriginal people? Were Aboriginal children 'stolen'? Why are there so many problems in Aboriginal communities today? And many more.

 

This rich account aims to understand both black and white perspectives and is fascinating reading for anyone who wants to discover Aboriginal Australia.

 

Contents: Preface; Notes on terminology; 1. Exploration: European discovery of Australia; 2. Colonisation: Early Sydney; 3. Confrontation: Early Tasmania and Victoria; 4. Depopulation: A century of struggle (1820s-1920s); 5. Tradition: Indigenous life at first contact; 6. Origins: The last 50 000 years; 7. Assimilation: A time of trouble (1930s-1970s); 8. Resilience: The story continues; Abbreviations to the notes; Notes; Further reading; Photo acknowledgments; Index."

 

Haebich, Anna. 2008 (March). Spinning the Dream: Assimilation in Australia 1950-1970. Fremantle, WA: Fremantle Press (formerly Fremantle Arts Centre Press). 468 pages. ISBN: 978-1-921361-07-4 (pb).

 

"With Spinning the Dream, multi-award-winning historian Anna Haebich re-evaluates the experience of assimilation in Australia, providing a meticulously researched and masterfully written assessment of its implications for Australia's Indigenous and ethnic minorities and for immigration and refugee policy."

 

Hughes, Helen. 2007. Lands of Shame: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander 'Homelands' in Transition. Sydney: The Centre for Independent Studies. 237 pages. ISBN: 978-1-864321-35-7.

 

"Some 90,000 of Australia's 500,000 Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders live appallingly deprived lives in 'homelands' throughout remote Australia. Their health and housing are so abysmal that their life expectation is 20 years shorter than that of other Australians. Deprived of education, they cannot access jobs even in settlements near mines and tourist resorts, leading to welfare dependency and consequent family and social dysfunction.

 

The 'homelands' were created with the best of intentions. However, they not only have failed to provide a living for Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, but they have stultified the development of traditional culture so that alcoholism and violence demean and destroy many lives.

 

Lands of Shame analyses why the 'homelands' experiment has led to Third World living conditions in the midst of Australia's prosperity. It reviews the evidence on demographic trends, law and order, land rights, joblessness and welfare, education, health, housing and governance, and assesses Commonwealth, State and Territory policies. With an eye to a better future, Lands of Shame also discusses policies that would give Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders in remote Australia the same opportunities and choices that other Australians expect."

 

Lindqvist, Sven. 2007. Terra Nullius: A Journey through No One's Land. Translated from the Swedish by Sarah Death. London: Granta. 248 pages. ISBN: 9781862078956 (pb).

 

"A provocative journey through the dark history of the creation of white Australia, exposing the hidden genocide of the Aboriginal people. 'Terra nullius' - no man's land - was the legal fiction employed to justify the white invasion of Australia. Aboriginal lands were declared 'terra nullius' because, it was claimed, they were inhabited by people who would soon die out - and who could be helped on the way to extinction if they lingered. Author of the acclaimed Exterminate All the Brutes and A History of Bombing, Sven Lindqvist is one of the most innovative writers and historians at work today. He brings his original sensibility to bear as he travels 12,000 kilometers through so-called no man's land in search of places where belief in the rights of the white man and the inevitable extinction of the 'lower races' were put into practice. The world the Aborigines had known for centuries ended as young boys were kidnapped to dive for pearls, then whipped and abandoned when the bends ruined them for work; 'half-caste' children were taken from their mothers; and natives were put in neck irons and sent to internment camps under false diagnoses of STDs. Mining history, popular fiction, anthropology, and his own travels, Lindqvist brilliantly weaves together an illuminating and disturbing history of how 'no man's land' became the province of the white man."

 

Macfarlane, Ingereth and Mark Hannah (eds). 2007. Transgressions: Critical Australian Indigenous Histories. Aboriginal History Monograph No. 16. Canberra: ANU E Press and Aboriginal History. 264 pages. ISBN: 9781921313448 (pb) 9781921313431 (online). Retrieved December 20, 2007, from the World Wide Web: http://epress.anu.edu.au/transgressions_citation.html.

 

"This volume brings together an innovative set of readings of complex interactions between Australian Aboriginal people and colonisers. The underlying theme is that of 'transgression', and Michel Foucault's account of the necessary dynamic that exists between transgression and limit. We know what constitutes the limit, not by tracing or re-stating the boundaries, but by crossing over them. By exploring the mechanisms by which limits are set and maintained, unexamined cultural assumptions and dominant ideas are illuminated. We see the expectations and the structures that inform and support them revealed, often as they unravel. Such illuminations and revelations are at the core of the Australian Indigenous histories presented in this collection."

 

Contents: Contributors; Preface; 1. François Péron and the Tasmanians: An unrequited romance, by Shino Konishi; 2. Moving Blackwards: Black Power and the Aboriginal Embassy, by Kathy Lothian; 3. Criminal justice and transgression on northern Australian cattle stations, by Thalia Anthony; 4. Dreaming the circle: Indigeneity and the longing for belonging in White Australia, by Jane Mulcock; 5. Resisting the captured image: How Gwoja Tjungurrayi, 'One Pound Jimmy', escaped the 'Stone Age', by Jillian E. Barnes; 6. On the romances of marriage, love and solitude: Freedom and transgression in Cape York Peninsula in the early to mid twentieth century, by Jinki Trevillian; 7. 'Hanging no good for blackfellow': Looking into the life of Musquito, by Naomi Parry; 8. Leadership: The quandary of Aboriginal societies in crises, 1788 - 1830, and 1966, by Dennis Foley; 9. Sedentary topography: The impact of the Christian Mission Society's 'civilising' agenda on the spatial structure of life in the Roper Region of northern Australia, by Angelique Edmonds; 10. Sinful enough for Jesus: Guilt and Christianisation at Mapoon, Queensland, by Devin Bowles; 11. Corrupt desires and the wages of sin: Indigenous people, missionaries and male sexuality, 1830-1850, by Jessie Mitchell.

 

Morphy, Howard. 2008 (February). Becoming Art: Exploring Cross-Cultural Categories. Sydney: University of New South Wales Press. 288 pages. ISBN: 9781921410123 (pb).

 

"Becoming Art provides a new analysis of the shifting cultural and social contexts that surround the production of Aboriginal art. Transcending the boundaries between anthropology and art history, the book draws on arguments from both disciplines to provide a unique interdisciplinary perspective that places the artists themselves at the centre of the argument."

 

Mulvaney, John. 2007. 'The Axe Had Never Sounded': Place, People and Heritage of Recherche Bay, Tasmania. Aboriginal History Monograph No. 14. Canberra: ANU E Press and Aboriginal History. 164 pages. ISBN:  9781921313202 (pb) and 9781921313219 (online). Retrieved December 20, 2007, from the World Wide Web: http://epress.anu.edu.au/axe_citation.html.

 

"This book meets well the triple promise of the title - the inter-connections of place, people and heritage. John Mulvaney brings to this work a deep knowledge of the history, ethnography and archaeology of Tasmania. He has also been directly involved with Tasmanian cultural heritage issues over many years.

 

The book is written in a clear, lively style, effectively presenting a comprehensive account of the area's history over the 200 years since French naval expeditions first charted its coastlines. The important records the French officers and scientists left of encounters with Aboriginal groups are discussed in detail, set in the wider ethnographic context and compared with those of later expeditions.

 

The topical issues of understanding the importance of Recherche Bay as a cultural landscape and its protection and future management inform the book. Readers will be challenged to consider the connections between people and place, and how these may constitute significant national heritage (Isabel McBryde)."

 

Contents: Foreword; Introduction; Acknowledgements; 1. Setting Out (The Officers; The Savants; Ships and Stores); 2. Recherche Bay (Recherche Bay, revisited summer 1793); 3. Naturalists Ashore; 4. Botanising (The Garden); 5. Measuring and Charting; 6. Seeking the Tasmanians; 7. Meeting the Tasmanians; 8. An Archaeological Heritage; 9. Labillardière's Luck; 10. Retrospect: Recherche Bay, History and Anthropology; 11. The Chaotic Years (Whaling; Piracy on the Brig Cyprus); 12. Lady Jane at Recherche Bay; 13. Good and Bad Times (Coal Mining; James Craig); 14. The Concept of Heritage; 15. National Heritage Nomination (The Dénouement); References.

 

Nannup, Laurel. 2006. A Story To Tell. Crawley: University of Western Australia Press. 69 pages. ISBN: 978-1920694708 (hb).

 

"In A Story to Tell, Laurel Nannup evokes with great warmth and humour memories of her childhood spent as part of a large Aboriginal family. Illustrated throughout with Laurel's striking woodcuts and etchings, A Story To Tell glows with affectionate tales of family picnics, roaming through the bush, sharing campfire stories and special events such as buying a new dress and First Communion. Shortlisted NSW Premier's Literary Awards 2007."

 

Povinelli, Elizabeth A. 2006. The Empire of Love: Toward a Theory of Intimacy, Genealogy, and Carnality. Durham: Duke University Press. 328 pages. ISBN: 978-0-8223-3836-9 (cloth) and 978-0-8223-3889-5 (paper).

 

"In The Empire of Love anthropologist Elizabeth A. Povinelli reflects on a set of ethical and normative claims about the governance of love, sociality, and the body that circulates in liberal settler colonies such as the United States and Australia. She boldly theorizes intimate relations as pivotal sites where liberal logics and aspirations absorbed through settler imperialism are manifest, where discourses of self-sovereignty, social constraint, and value converge.

 

For more than twenty years, Povinelli has traveled to the social worlds of indigenous men and women living at Belyuen, a small community in the Northern Territory of Australia. More recently she has moved across communities of alternative progressive queer movements in the United States, particularly those who identify as radical faeries. In this book she traces how liberal binary concepts of individual freedom and social constraint influence understandings of intimacy in these two worlds. At the same time, she describes alternative models of social relations within each group in order to highlight modes of intimacy that transcend a reductive choice between freedom and constraint.

 

Shifting focus away from identities toward the social matrices out of which identities and divisions emerge, Povinelli offers a framework for thinking through such issues as what counts as sexuality and which forms of intimate social relations result in the distribution of rights, recognition, and resources, and which do not. In The Empire of Love Povinelli calls for, and begins to formulate, a politics of  'thick life', a way of representing social life nuanced enough to meet the density and variation of actual social worlds.

 

Contents: Acknowledgments; Empires of Love: An Introduction; 1 Rotten Worlds; 2 Spiritual Freedom, Cultural Copyright; 3 The Intimate Event and Genealogical Society; Notes; Bibliography."

 

Reece, Bob. 2007. Daisy Bates: Grand Dame of the Desert. Canberra: National Library of Australia. 180 pages. ISBN: 978-0-642-27654-4 (pb).

 

"The complex and enigmatic Daisy Bates is the subject of the third work in the Library's 'An Australian Life' series, drawing on material contained in the 99 folios donated to the Library by Bates in 1941. Bates became an iconic figure during the years she spent on the border between Western Australia and South Australia. 'The Great White Queen of the Never-Never Lands' reigned supreme over the groups of Aboriginal people who, attracted by the Transcontinental Railway, arrived from the desert country to the north. Bates craved to be seen as a 'woman of science' through her earlier ethnographic work in Western Australia, but her exaggerated claims of wholesale cannibalism amongst the Aborigines, her belief in their inevitable extinction and her dismissive attitude to 'castes' discredited her within the academic community. Only in recent times has the use of her ethnographic data in Native Title claims begun to rehabilitate her scientific reputation. In Daisy Bates: Grand Dame of the Desert, Western Australian historian Bob Reece tells her extraordinary story through her letters and published writings so that readers can gain some idea of her motivation and beliefs, and picture what kind of person she really was."

 

Rowse, Tim and Murray Goot. 2007. Divided Nation? Indigenous Australians in Australian Political Culture. Carlton: Melbourne University Publishing. 240 pages. ISBN: 0-522-85342-0 (pb).

 

"Divided Nation is the first book-length account of Australian public opinion about Aborigines, and the political uses of public opinion research.

 

Rowse and Goot portray the changes and continuities in Australians' public opinions about indigenous Australians, including their claims for recognition and for social justice.

 

The book examines four episodes in which the Australian public debated indigenous issues: the 1967 Referendum, the Hawke government's national land rights proposal in 1984-86, the Native Title debate, and the 2000 Reconciliation debate. Each episode was defined, in part, by intensified research on public opinion.

 

Divided Nation is not only about the attitudes discovered by such research, but also about how public opinion research affects the political process.

 

Contents: Tables and Figures; Acknowledgements; Introduction; 1. The 1967 Referendum and the Politics of Inclusion; 2. Land Rights, the 'Backlash' and 'Middle Australia'; 3. Native Title and Reconciliation; 4. Reconciliation and Responsibility; Conclusion; Notes; Bibliography; Index.

 

Murray Goot is Professor of Politics and International Relations at Macquarie University. He specialises in public opinion in Australian politics, especially political parties, voting behaviour and electoral systems, and the mass media.

 

Tim Rowse is a Senior Research Fellow in History at the Research School of Social Sciences at ANU. He has published widely on twentieth-century Australian history, including government policies towards Aboriginal people, and is the author of, among others, After Mabo."

 

Sveiby, Karl-Erik and Tex Skuthorpe. 2006. Treading Lightly: The Hidden Wisdom of the World's Oldest People. Sydney: Allen and Unwin. 304 pages. ISBN: 9781741148749 (pb).

 

"We are consuming more than our earth can provide. In Australia, cities and towns struggle to maintain a reliable water supply, climate change triggers droughts which devastate farmland, and fish stocks are running low. It is increasingly clear that we are heading towards collapse if we don't change direction.

 

Aboriginal people taught themselves thousands of years ago how to live sustainably in Australia's fragile landscape. A Scandinavian knowledge management professor meets an Aboriginal cultural custodian and dares to ask the simple but vital question: what can we learn from the traditional Aboriginal lifestyle to create a sustainable society in modern Australia?

 

Karl-Erik Sveiby and Tex Skuthorpe show how traditional Aboriginal stories and paintings were used to convey knowledge from one generation to the next, about the environment, law and relationships. They reveal the hidden art of four-level storytelling, and discuss how the stories, and the way they were used, formed the basis for a sustainable society. They also explain ecological farming methods, and how the Aboriginal style of leadership created resilient societies.

 

Treading Lightly takes us on a unique journey into traditional Aboriginal life and culture, and offers a powerful and original model for building sustainable organisations, communities and ecologies. It is a compelling message for today's world."

 

Thomas, Martin (ed.). 2007. Culture in Translation: The Anthropological Legacy of R. H. Mathews. Translations from the French by Mathilde de Hauteclocque and from the German by Christine Winter. Aboriginal History Monograph No. 15. Canberra: ANU E Press and Aboriginal History. 290 pages. ISBN: 9781921313240 (pb) and 9781921313257 (online). Retrieved December 20, 2007, from the World Wide Web: http://epress.anu.edu.au/cit_citation.html.

 

"R.H. Mathews (1841-1918) was an Australian-born surveyor and self-taught anthropologist. From 1893 until his death in 1918, he made it his mission to record all 'new and interesting facts' about Aboriginal Australia. Despite falling foul with some of the most powerful figures in British and Australian anthropology, Mathews published some 2200 pages of anthropological reportage in English, French and German. His legacy is an outstanding record of Aboriginal culture in the Federation period.

 

This first edited collection of Mathews' writings represents the many facets of his research, ranging from kinship study to documentation of myth. It include eleven articles translated from French or German that until now have been unavailable in English. Introduced and edited by Martin Thomas, who compellingly analyses the anthropologist, his milieu, and the intrigues that were so costly to his reputation, Culture in Translation is essential reading on the history of cross-cultural research."

 

Contents: Acknowledgements; Preface; Note on Text; Names of Aboriginal Groups and Languages; Abbreviations; Introducing, by  R.H. Mathews; 'Birrarak is the Name Given to Me by the Natives', by Martin Thomas; Part 1: Rock Art and Daily Life: Introduction, by Martin Thomas; Contributions to the Ethnography of the Australians, R.H. Mathews; Rock Carvings and Paintings by the Australian Aborigines R.H. Mathews; Plan of Some Drawings Carved or Painted on Rock by the Natives of New South Wales, Australia, by  R.H. Mathews; Part 2: Kinship and Marriage: Introduction, by Martin Thomas; Social Organisation of Some Australian Tribes, R.H. Mathews; Remarks on the Natives of Australia, by R.H. Mathews; The Natives of Australia, by  R.H. Mathews; Part 3: Mythology: Introduction, by Martin Thomas; Some Mythology of the Gundungurra Tribe, New South Wales, by R.H. Mathews; A Giant in a Cave - An Australian Legend, by R.H. Mathews; Australian Folk-Tales, by R.H. Mathews; The Wareengarry and Karambal, by R.H. Mathews; The Hereafter, by R.H. Mathews; Part 4: Language: Introduction, by Martin Thomas; The Wailwan Language, by R.H. Mathews; Language of the Kurnu Tribe, New South Wales, by R.H. Mathews; Part 5: Ceremony: Introduction, by Martin Thomas; The Mŭltyerra Initiation Ceremony, by R.H. Mathews; Initiation Ceremony of the Birdhawal Tribe, by R.H. Mathews; The Bundandaba Ceremony of Initiation in Queensland, by R.H. Mathews; Part 6: Correspondence: Introduction, by Martin Thomas; Letters to E. S. Hartland, by R.H. Mathews; Letters to R.H. Mathews, by Moritz von Leonhardi; Letter to Moritz von Leonhardi, by R.H. Mathews; RHM Bibliography.

 

MELANESIA

 

Angleviel, Frédéric. 2006. Brève histoire politique de la Nouvelle-Calédonie (1945-2005). Nouméa: Éditions Groupe de Recherche en Histoire Océanienne Contemporaine (GRHOC). 314 pages. ISBN 2-9515580-3-1.

 

"Ce livre contribue à l'étude de l'histoire politique contemporaine de la Nouvelle-Calédonie. Il propose aux étudiants, et à toutes les personnes s'intéressant à l'histoire du 'Caillou', des informations factuelles et une grille de lecture du present à travers les évènements passés. Cet outil cognitif et didactique a vocation de fournir des clés de compréhension, avec une recherche d'objectivité et d'impartialité toujours en éveil."

Barbash, Ilisa and Lucien Taylor (eds). 2007. The Cinema of Robert Gardner. Oxford and New York: Berg Publishers. 264 pages. ISBN: 978-1845207748 (pb).

 

"The most artistic of ethnographic filmmakers, and the most ethnographic of artistic filmmakers, Robert Gardner is one of the most original, as well as controversial, filmmakers of the last half century. This is the first volume of essays dedicated to his work - a corpus of aesthetically arresting films which includes the classic Dead Birds (1963), a lyric depiction of ritual warfare among the Dugum Dani, in the Highlands of New Guinea; Rivers of Sand (1974), a provocative portrayal of relations between the sexes among the Hamar, in southwestern Ethiopia; and Forest of Bliss (1986), a sublime city symphony about death and life in Benares, India.

 

Contents: Introduction: Resounding Images, by Ilisa Barbash and Lucien Taylor; Part I. Overviews: 1. The Music of Robert Gardner, by Charles Warren; 2. Beyond the Burden of the Real: Anthropological Reflections on the Technique of a Master Cutter, by Paul Henley; 3. The Burden of Symbols: Film and Representation in India, by Marcus Banks; 4. Gardner's First Shots: Vectored Landscapes, by Karl G. Heider; 5. Out of Words: A Conversation with Robert Gardner, by Ilisa Barbash; Part II. The Films and Photographs: 6. The Camera in the Studio: Robert Gardner's Passenger, by Anna Grimshaw; 7. Dancing with Gardner, by William Rothman; 8. Gardner's Bliss, by David MacDougall; 10. Gardens of War: Materiality and the Photographic Narrative, by Elizabeth Edwards; 9. Interactive Media and the Construction(s) of Memory in Nonfiction Film: The Case of Dead Birds, by Roderick Coover; Part III. Reminiscences: 11. Anecdote of a Season, by Stanley Cavell; 12. The Ethnographer's (Visual) Knowledge: Fieldwork with Camera and Notebook in Vishnupur, 1982 and 1983, by Ákos Östör; 13. The Rock of Gibraltar, by Dusan Makavejev; 14. Bob Gardner and Me, by Sean Scully; 15. 58 Highland Street, by Susan Howe."

 

Barker, John (ed.). 2008 (January). The Anthropology of Morality in Melanesia and Beyond. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing. 224 pages. ISBN: 978-0-7546-7185-5  (hb).

 

"The Anthropology of Morality in Melanesia and Beyond examines how Melanesians experience and deal with moral dilemmas and challenges. Taking Kenelm Burridge's seminal work as their starting point, the contributors focus upon public situations and types of people that exemplify key ethical contradictions for members of moral communities. While returning to some classical concerns, such as the roles of big men and sorcerers, the book opens new territory with richly textured ethnographic studies and theoretical reviews that explore the interface between the values associated with indigenous village life and the ethical orientations associated with Christianity, the state, the marketplace, and other facets of 'modernity.'

 

Contents: Series Editors' Preface: Morality and cosmology: What do exemplars exemplify? by Andrew Strathern and Pamela J. Stewart; Introduction: the anthropological study of morality in Melanesia, by John Barker; Part 1: Moral Exemplars in Village Society: Not managing in Melanesia: On moral lessons of the failed big man, by Joel Robbins; When is it moral to be a sorcerer? Morality and modernity in a Melanesian global context, by Doug Dalton; Part 2: The Moral Conundrums of Modernity: From moral exchange to exchanging morals: A comparison of Gebusi and Tangu in Papua New Guinea, by Bruce Knauft; The (post) colonial triangle revisited: Moral domains in Maisin society, by John Barker; Building a 'new earth' at Ramu Sugar Ltd, by Frederick Errington and Deborah Gewertz; Part 3: The Emergence of 'New Men and 'New Women': Changing minds: History and hysteria in Telefol spirit possession, by Dan Jorgensen; The origins of missionary morality: Diyos among the Asabano, by Roger Lohmann; Modernity and the missionary calling in Melanesia: The 'new woman' as Catholic nun, by Nancy Lutkehaus; Part 4: Beyond Melanesia: the Morality of the Anthropological Gaze: Burridge's homo anthropologicus: Rational objectivity, participatory values and the underpinnings of an ethical and moral stance, by Robert Tonkinson; Reaching for the absolute, by F.G. Bailey; Epilogue, by Kenelm Burridge; Bibliography; Index."

 

Bowden, Ross. 2006. Creative Spirits: Bark Painting in the Washkuk Hills of North New Guinea. Melbourne: Oceanic Art. 202 pages. ISBN: 1-20892-86-9.

 

"The art of painting on bark is found in many parts of the Pacific, including Papua New Guinea, the home of the Kwoma people who are the subject of this study. Following European contact at the end of the nineteenth century and the rapid social change this entailed many New Guinea peoples gave up producing their distinctive designs on bark, but in some of the more remote parts of the island the art form still flourishes. This richly illustrated book documents the bark paintings of the Kwoma of the Sepik River region.

 

The book describes: the architectural setting in which Kwoma barks are displayed; the technology of painting; the subjects of designs; how the art form is taught; how Kwoma understand the concepts of 'style' and 'art'; the criteria used to judge quality in painting; and changes that are beginning to take place in the art form. The final chapter profiles six artists and documents their paintings in detail.          

 

Contents: 1. Sepik painting; 2. Images of identity; 3. The technology of painting; 4. The elements of design; 5. The Kwoma style; 6. Shared images. Shared meanings? 7. Aesthetic values and artistic creativity; 8. Learning to paint; 9. Recent developments; 10. Six painters and their paintings; Map; Notes; References; Index.

 

Ross Bowden is an Australian cultural anthropologist. He did his first degree, in philosophy, at Monash University, Melbourne, and trained in anthropology at Oxford Univerity from which he holds masters and doctoral degrees. His primary research interests are in art and aesthetics, both in the Pacific and cross-culturally. He taught anthropology for a number of years at La Trobe University, Melbourne, and now has a visiting research position in the Art History Program at the same university."

 

Cannell, Fenella (ed.). 2006. The Anthropology of Christianity. Durham: Duke University Press. 384 pages. ISBN: 978-0-8223-3608-2 (cl) and 978-0-8223-3646-4 (pb).

 

"This collection provides vivid ethnographic explorations of particular, local Christianities as they are experienced by different groups around the world. At the same time, the contributors, all anthropologists, rethink the vexed relationship between anthropology and Christianity. As Fenella Cannell contends in her powerful introduction, Christianity is the critical 'repressed' of anthropology. To a great extent, anthropology first defined itself as a rational, empirically based enterprise quite different from theology. The theology it repudiated was, for the most part, Christian. Cannell asserts that anthropological theory carries within it ideas profoundly shaped by this rejection. Because of this, anthropology has been less successful in considering Christianity as an ethnographic object than it has in considering other religions. This collection is designed to advance a more subtle and less self-limiting anthropological study of Christianity.

 

The contributors examine the contours of Christianity among diverse groups: Catholics in India, the Philippines, and Bolivia, and Seventh-Day Adventists in Madagascar; the Swedish branch of Word of Life, a charismatic church based in the United States; and Protestants in Amazonia, Melanesia, and Indonesia. Highlighting the wide variation in what it means to be Christian, the contributors reveal vastly different understandings and valuations of conversion, orthodoxy, Scripture, the inspired word, ritual, gifts, and the concept of heaven. In the process they bring to light how local Christian practices and beliefs are affected by encounters with colonialism and modernity, by the opposition between Catholicism and Protestantism, and by the proximity of other religions and belief systems. Together the contributors show that it not sufficient for anthropologists to assume that they know in advance what the Christian experience is; each local variation must be encountered on its own terms.

 

Contributors. Cecilia Busby, Fenella Cannell, Simon Coleman, Peter Gow, Olivia Harris, Webb Keane, Eva Keller, David Mosse, Danilyn Rutherford, Christina Toren, Harvey Whitehouse

 

Contents: Acknowledgments; Introduction: The Anthropology of Christianity, by Fenella Cannell; 1. The Eternal Return of Conversion: Christianity as Contested Domain in Highland Bolivia, by Olivia Harris; 2. Renewable Icons: Concepts of Religious Power in a Fishing Village in South India, by Cecilia Busby; 3. Possession and Confession: Affliction and Sacred Power in Colonial and Contemporary Catholic South India, by David Mosse; 4. Reading as Gift and Writing as Theft, by Fenella Cannell; 5. Materializing the Self: Words and Gifts in the Construction of Charismatic Protestant Identity, by Simon Coleman; 6. The Effectiveness of Ritual, by Christina Toren; 7. Forgetting Conversion: The Summer Institute of Linguistics Mission in the Piro Lived World, by Peter Gow; 8. The Bible Meets the Idol: Writing and Conversion in Biak, Irian Jaya, Indonesia, by Danilyn Rutherford; 9. Scripture Study as Normal Science: Seventh-Day Adventist Practice on the East Coast of Madagascar, by Eva Keller; 10. Appropriated and Monolithic Christianity in Melanesia, by Harvey Whitehouse; Epilogue: Anxious Transcendence, by Webb Keane; References; Contributors; Index.

 

Fenella Cannell is Lecturer in Anthropology at the London School of Economics. She is the author of Power and Intimacy in the Christian Philippines."

 

Dol, Philomena. 2007. A Grammar of Maybrat: A Language of the Bird's Head Peninsula, Papua Province, Indonesia. Pacific Linguistics No. 586. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. 328 pages. ISBN 7980858835733.

 

"Maybrat is a Papuan language which is spoken in the central area of the Bird's Head Peninsula, Papua Province, Indonesia. Despite the fact that it is one of the larger local languages in Papua Province in terms of numbers of speakers, a comprehensive grammar on this language has hitherto not been published.

 

This book aims to give an overview of the phonology, morphology and syntax of the Maybrat language as it is spoken by the people of Ayawasi. Ideally, this work can be used as a reference grammar: it gives information about the most important structural and typological aspects of Maybrat. With this in mind, the grammar is full of illustrative examples centred around contrasts in form and meaning, which are discussed in the text."

 

Eckermann, William. 2007. A Descriptive Grammar of the Bukawa Language of the Morobe Province of Papua New Guinea. Pacific Linguistics No. 585. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. 225 pages. ISBN: 9780858835740.

 

"The Bukawa language is an Austronesian language which is spoken by coastal inhabitants of the Huon Peninsula in the Morobe Province of Papua New Guinea. The Bukawa villages are all situated on the coastal plain of the Huon Peninsula. This book represents an analysis of the grammar of the Bukawa language of Papua New Guinea, based upon data accumulated over a thirteen year period during which the author lived and worked with members of the language group doing Bible translation and literary work."

 

Farhadian, Charles E. (ed.).2007. The Testimony Project: Papua. Jayapura: Deiyai Press. 179 pages. ISBN: 978-9799607768 (pb). There is also a web-version of this project available online at http://www.thetestimonyproject.com/tppages/tpp.html.

 

"A compelling set of twelve organic narratives of West Papuans, replete with professional photographs of life in Papua. Researchers at the Yale University Law School and University of Sydney suggest that genocide is happening in Papua. According to Archbishop Desmond Tutu, 'The people of West Papua have been denied their basic human rights, including their right to self-determination. Their cry for justice and freedom has fallen largely on deaf ears.' Editor Charles Farhadian and photojournalist Stephan Babuljak give outsiders direct access to Papuan life stories unobstructed by the interpretive schemes of researchers, policy makers, and eco-tourist enthusiasts, letting Papuans speak for themselves. Available via amazon.com, or  contact Charlie Farhadian at farhadian@aya.yale.edu."

 

Fischer, Hans. 2005. Geist frisst Kind: 26 Versionen einer Erzahlung. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer. 176 pages. ISBN: 978-3-496-02789-8 (pb).

 

"Mythen sind tradierte Erzahlungen, die das Werden der Welt erklaren und Verhalten begründen. Mit den Veranderungen der neuen Zeit werden sie vergessen, verandert oder verlieren ihre Bedeutung. Am Beispiel einer Erzahlung der Wampar in Papua-Neuguinea, von der zwischen etwa 1915 und 2004 insgesamt 26 Fassungen aufgenommen wurden, werden die Veranderungen des Inhalts, der Bezüge und Zusammenhange aufgezeigt."

 

Jebens, Holger. 2007. Kago und Kastom: Zum Verhaltnis von kultureller Fremd- und Selbstwahrnehmung in West New Britain (Papua-Neuguinea). Religionsethnologische Studien des Frobenius-Instituts No. 3. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer. 256 pages. ISBN: 978-3-17-019946-0 (hc).

 

"Bis heute erscheint das Verhaltnis der in West New Britain (Papua-Neuguinea) aufeinandertreffenden Kulturen als eines der wechselseitigen Beeinflussung. In diesem Spannungsfeld fassen Ethnographen und Ethnographierte das für sie Fremde jeweils nach dem Muster des Bekannten auf und sie sprechen jeweils über dieselben Themen: materielle Güter, Geheimhaltung und die geschichtspragende Wirkung einzelner Personen. Gleichwohl ist es gerade die Differenz zwischen indigenen und westlichen Begriffen, Bildern und Konzepten, die ernst genommen, zur Sprache gebracht und für eine Kritik vor allem der westlichen Kultur fruchtbar gemacht werden sollte.

 

Contents: Danksagung; 1. Einleitung; 2. Valentines Kivung; 3. Heutige Erinnerungen; 4. Indigene Interpretation; 5. Indigene Fremd- und Selbstwahrnehmung; 6. Ethnologische Fremd- und Selbstwahrnehmung; 7. Ethnographen und Ethnographierte; Glossare; Karten; Liste der Hauser von Koimumu; Abbildungen; Tok Pisin-Texte; Liste der Interviews und Gesprache; Literaturverzeichnis; Index.

 

Dr. Holger Jebens ist wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter des Frobenius-Instituts und Privatdozent an der Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universitat Frankfurt am Main."

 

Gony, Yves-Béalo. 2006. Thewe men jila: La monnaie kanak en Nouvelle-Calédonie. Preface by d'Hamid Mokaddem; illustrations by Paula Boi. Nouméa: Éditions Expressions. 207 pages. ISBN: 2-9519371-5-6.

 

"Au sens strict, le thewe ou monnaie traditionnelle kanak est un assemblage de perles (coquillages, os de roussette, …) sur un fil; cet assemblage, tel qu'il est représenté sur la couverture du livre, compte trois segments principaux: ven wan, la bouche ou l'ouverture, ven kanyen ma, le corps et ven hulen, le bout ou le pied; l'ensemble est complété par un étui en fibres végétales tressées, ven ngen thewe, 'la maison de la monnaie'.

 

Mais, au-delà de sa réalité matérielle, la monnaie kanak est un objet 'symbolique, social et économique': 'pour comprendre son fonctionnement et le rôle qu'elle joue dans la société kanak, on doit la considérer comme un objet au cœur même de la "coutume". Elle est l'expression et le support des échanges sociaux. Elle est le conservatoire de la coutume d'hier, d'aujourd'hui et de demain" (p. 53).

 

Yves-Béalo Gony observe de l'intérieur le fonctionnement des échanges sociaux ritualisés au sein du monde kanak; il pose un éclairage sans complaisance sur les changements qu'ils subissent depuis la colonisation et l'essor concomitant du mercantilisme; il ouvre enfin une 'réflexion sur la coexistence des impératifs de l'économie marchande moderne et des enjeux sociaux et culturels enracinés dans les savoirs - et savoir faire - de l'économie politique et sociale traditionnelle' (p. 160).

 

Kramer-Bannow, Elisabeth. 2007. Living among Artistic Cannibals of the South Seas. English translation of the 1916 German edition. Translated by Waltraud Schmidt. Belair, SA: Crawford House Publishing Australia. 336 pages. ISBN: 1-86333-299-5 (hc).

 

"A wonderful early ethnography. Elisabeth Kramer-Bannow was one of the first white women to explore islands of the South Pacific. In 1908, she accompanied her husband Augustin Kramer, a doctor and South Pacific explorer, to New Ireland, at that time a German protectorate called Neu Mecklenburg. She was the only female member of the expedition. Her job was to research the lives of the native women, as this task had proven to be too difficult for male anthropologists.

 

As an artist, she was also in charge of painting the natives, the culture, their houses and the local flora and fauna. She developed her own method of research: observe and experience, do not ask questions. She encountered two obstacles: at the beginning she was unfamiliar with the local language and the native women were very shy and not as talkative and approachable as the men. Sitting quietly in a village among the native population while painting and drawing them and their surroundings proved to be a useful means to gain the women's trust. Thus she learned about agricultural, craft techniques, traditions and the arts.

 

However, only through her female interpreter and informant, Bariu, was she able to gain insight into the intimate areas of pregnancy, birth and abortion, also local concepts of beauty.

 

She spent 6 months on the island. During that time she and her husband covered about 1000km on foot. Although her accounts of those treks and some rather spectacular, breathtaking adventures, they were the first white people to visit many regions of New Ireland. Most of their journeys were in fact dangerous since large sections of the native population were hostile to colonisation efforts by Europeans. But as Augustin Kramer said: 'Life in such a beautiful country would be agony if one suffered from cannibal phobia'.

 

In her book, Elizabeth takes a critical view of mistakes made by the colonial administration, the missions, exploiting plantation companies, greedy collectors and recruiters of workers for the plantations. Instead of spoiling the native cultures with European materialization, she wanted to preserve the local architecture, crafts, trades and body adornment.

 

Contents: Preface by Waltraud Schmidt; Foreword by A. Kramer; Introduction; The South; Journey to Central New Mecklenburg; The Central Region; Journey to the West Coast via New Pomerania; The West Coast; The Final Days in Lamasong; Lelet; The North of the Island; Annotations by A.Kramer.

 

Crawford House Publishing Australia; ABN31102847656; 14 Dryandra Dr, Belair SA5052 Australia; Postal Address: PO Box 50, Belair SA5052 Australia; Tel: +618 8370 3555; Fax: +618 8370 3566; E-mail: tonycraw@bigpond.net.au; Internet: http://www.crawfordhouse.com.au."

 

Lal, Brij V. (ed.). 2006. British Documents on the End of Empire, Series B, Vol. 10: Fiji. London: Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London. 547 pages. ISBN 978-011-290589-9.

 

"'This publication is one of the dedicated country volumes for the major British Documents on the End of Empire project, undertaken under the auspices of the British Academy, and published by the Institute of Commonwealth Studies. Its primary focus is the decade preceding Fiji's independence in 1970 where, in seven chapters and drawing upon previously unpublished Colonial and Foreign and Commonwealth Office records, an acute portrayal is provided of the personalities, politics and processes that helped midwife this country's troubled birth into statehood. The essentials of that story are fully conveyed in Lal's 50 page introduction, and where he adumbrates persisting tensions between the values of paramountcy, espoused by the indigenous chiefly leadership; those of parity, variously demanded by Indo-Fijian communities; and, not least, expectation of privilege by the much smaller, but still influential European community' - Roderic Alley in The Journal of Pacific History."

 

Martin, Petra, Christine Schlott, Antje Schulz, Simone Lassig and Anette Schade. 2006. Schatze aus Afrika, Indonesien und der Südsee: Die Schenkungen Baessler und Arnhold: Katalog zur Ausstellung im Japanischen Palais 6/12/2006-30/9/2007, Teil 1: Schatze aus Indonesien und der Südsee. Dresden: Museum für Völkerkunde. 130 pages; 108 illustrations.

 

Musgrave, Jill. 2007. A Grammar of Neve'ei, Vanuatu. Pacific Linguistics No. 587. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. 146 pages. ISBN: 9780858835818.

 

"The Neve'ei language is a member of the Oceanic subgroup of the Austronesian language family. It is spoken in the village of Vinmavis on the west coast of the island of Malakula in the Republic of Vanuatu in the southwestern Pacific.  It is estimated that there are approximately 500 primary speakers of Neve'ei and around 750 speakers in total.

 

The aim of this work is to present a description of the phonology, morphology and syntax of the Neve'ei language by providing clear statements with appropriate linguistic examples. A synchronic approach is taken with no attempt being made to focus on earlier stages of the history of related languages. Likewise, no attempt is made to focus on linguistic theory or on comparisons of Neve'ei with related languages. However, references to other Oceanic languages and other studies are made where these seem to be particularly relevant to the description of Neve'ei."

 

Pétrequin, Anne-Marie, Pierre Pétrequin and Olivier Weller. 2006. Objets de pouvoir en Nouvelle-Guinée: Approche ethno-archéologique d'un système de signes sociaux: Catalogue de la donation Anne-Marie et Pierre Pétrequin, Musée du Quai Branly. Paris: Réunion des Musées Nationaux. 552 pages. ISBN: 978-2711845729.

 

"En faisant le jeu des explorateurs occidentaux les médias ont largement diffusé l'image fallacieuse d'une Nouvelle-Guinée inexplorée où subsisteraient les dernières populations papoues encore à l'âge de pierre dans l'isolement d'une forêt tropicale difficile à pénétrer.

 

De 1984 à 2002 deux préhistoriens du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique se sont engagés dans dix-sept missions successives pour confronter leur expérience d'archéologues avec les réalités ethnologiques actuelles en Nouvelle-Guinée et aux Moluques.

 

À cette occasion près de mille huit cents objets ont été rapportés pour illustrer les techniques et les savoir-faire de populations qui exploitent des carrières pour tailler et polir des haches de pierre produisent du sel comme forme de stockage de la richesse ou fabriquent d'extraordinaires poteries massivement échangées le long des côtes.

 

Les auteurs proposent une mise en contexte de ces objets rares pour analyser un système de signes sociaux où un outil peut devenir un marqueur public des inégalités sociales un substitut anthropomorphe des vies humaines ou un objet consacré à des puissances surnaturelles.

 

Pour avoir vécu pendant trois années dans les villages de Nouvelle-Guinée et dans les îles de l'est indonésien Pierre Pétrequin et Anne-Marie Pétrequin livrent leur expérience personnelle d'une Nouvelle-Guinée vivante où les objets sont des signes sociaux puissants d'une étonnante modemité qui circulent sur des centaines de kilomètres. Au travers de la diffusion des techniques et de la manipulation des dons et des échanges c'est une tout autre image de l'univers des Papous qui se fait jour avec des sociétés complexes dynamiques ouvertes sur l'extérieur et influencées depuis deux millénaires par le troc des plumes de l'oiseau de paradis pour la parade des économies-mondes."

 

Stewart, Pamela J. and Andrew Strathern (eds). 2008. Exchange and Sacrifice. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press. 294 pages. ISBN: 978-1-59460-179-8 (pb).

 

"Inspired by the research of the French anthropologist Daniel de Coppet on exchange, death, and compensation in the Solomon Islands within the South-West Pacific region, this edited collection highlights the fundamental connections between exchange and sacrifice as ritual practices within cosmological frameworks. The volume builds on both de Coppet's work and that of Marcel Mauss in The Gift and provides new insights from an engaging set of established scholars. The chapters in Exchange and Sacrifice stress the dynamic performativity of exchanges and their deep connections with ideas of sacrifice. This collection of theoretically and ethnographically focused essays will be valuable to those interested in the classic debates in social/cultural anthropology on ritual and religious systems of material and spiritual interaction, and the politics of 'the gift'.

 

Contents: Series Editors' Preface, by Pamela J. Stewart and Andrew Strathern; Introduction: Aligning Words, Aligning Worlds, by Andrew Strathern and Pamela J. Stewart; Section A: Fundamentals of Comparison: 1. From the Western 'Body' to 'Are'are 'Money': The Monetary Transfiguration of Socio-cosmic Relations in the Solomon Islands, by Daniel de Coppet, translated by Hattie E. Hill; Section B: Exchange and Identity:  2. The Great House and the Marché: Two Kanak Exchange Complexes (New-Caledonia), by Denis Monnerie; 3. Myth and Metamorphic Metaphors: Exchange and Sea-Land Synergy in Malaita, Solomon Islands, by Pierre Maranda; Section C: Rethinking Issues: Rank and Performativity in Exchange Systems: 4. Ranked Exchange: Dimensions and Transformations, by John Liep; 5. The Perfomativity of Ritual Exchange: A Melanesian Example, by Edward LiPuma and Benjamin Lee; Section D: History and Creativity: Emergent Narratives:  Chapter 6. Proto-people and Precedence: Encompassing Euroamericans through Narratives of 'First Contact'  in Solomon Islands, by Michael W. Scott; 7. Forms of Leadership and Violence in Malaita and in the New Georgia Group, Solomon Islands, by Shankar Aswani; 8. Wealth among the Western Dani, West Papua, by Anton Ploeg; Section E: Exchange and Sacrifice: 9. Exchange and Sacrifice: Examples from Papua New Guinea, by Andrew Strathern and Pamela J. Stewart; List of Contributors; Index."

 

Thornton, Ian. 2007. Island Colonization: The Origin and Development of Island Communities. Edited by Tim New. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 302 pages. ISBN: 9780521671064 (pb) and 9780521854849 (hb).

 

New or recently sterilized islands (for example through volcanic activity), provide ecologists with natural experiments in which to study colonization, development and establishment of new biological communities. Studies carried out on islands like this have provided answers to fundamental questions as to what general principles are involved in the ecology of communities and what processes underlie and maintain the basic structure of ecosystems. These studies are vital for conservation biology, especially when evolutionary processes need to be maintained in systems in order to maintain biodiversity. The major themes are how animal and plant communities establish, particularly on 'new land' or following extirpations by volcanic activity. This book comprises a broad review of island colonization, bringing together succession models and general principles, case studies with which Professor Ian Thornton was intimately involved, and a synthesis of ideas, concluding with a look to the future for similar studies.

 

Provides a synthesis of previously scattered practical information, enabling readers to appreciate the more general scenarios rather than become enmeshed in excessive detail. Global coverage allows readers to see the 'big picture'. Extensive references give a valuable summary of relevant literature. A personal account of important ecological themes based on a lifetime of practical experience and interest.

 

Contents: Preface; Part I. Introduction: Theoretical and Experimental Studies: 1. Introduction; 2. Theoretical and experimental colonization; Part II. Natural Recolonization after Devastation: 3. A clean slate? 4. Life returns- Primary colonization of devastated surfaces; Part III. The Recolonization of Devastated Islands: 5. Recovering island biotas: Volcano and Barcena; 6. Thera, Santorini group, Mediterranean; 7. Long and Ritter Islands, Bismarck Sea; 8. Krakatau, Sunda Strait; Part IV. Assembly of Biotas on New Islands: 9. Lake Wisdom- A new island of fresh water; 10. New islands in the sea; 11. Anak Krakatau, Krakatau's child, b. 1933; 12. Surtsey, Island of Surtur, b. 1963; 13. Motmot - A new island in fresh water; Part V. Colonization and Assembly: 14. Dispersal; 15. Stepping stone islands - The case of Sebesi; 16. Learning from nature's lessons; Literature cited; Index."

 

Welsch, Robert L., Virginia-Lee Webb, and Sebastian Haraha. 2006. Coaxing the Spirits to Dance: Art and Society in the Papuan Gulf of New Guinea. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Distributed for Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH. 128 pages; 153 color illustrations. ISBN: 9780944722305 (pb).

 

"This book explores the relationship between social life and artistic expression since the nineteenth century in one of the most important art-producing regions of Papua New Guinea. It includes a stunning presentation of hand-carved and hand-painted ancestor boards, masks, drums, skull racks, and personal items.

 

Each society on the Papuan Gulf had its own elaborate traditions of carved, painted, or decorated masks, boards, and hand drums that filled the men's longhouses for use in dances and performances. Today these art objects offer a glimpse into the varied cosmologies and ritual lives of these surprisingly diverse societies before they were changed significantly through their contact with the West.

 

Contents: Directors' Foreword; Letter, by His Excellency Evan J. Paki, Ambassador of Papua New Guinea to the United States; Preface and Acknowledgments, by Brian Kennedy; Lenders to the Exhibition; Essays: Coaxing the Spirits to Dance, by Robert L. Welsch; The Changing Meaning of Art in the Papuan Gulf: A View from the Papua New Guinea National Museum, by Sebastian Haraha; In Situ: Photographs of Art in the Papuan Gulf, by Virginia-Lee Webb; Ex Situ: A Brief History of Collecting in the Papuan Gulf, by Robert L. Welsch; References Cited; Travel Checklist; Index and Glossary of Indigenous Terms; Lenders' Index."

 

MICRONESIA

 

Gordon, Michael. 2005. Freeing Ali: The Human Face of the Pacific Solution. Sydney: University of New South Wales Press. 128 pages. ISBN: 9780868409788.

 

"In April 2005, Michael Gordon was the first journalist to gain unrestricted access to the refugee detention centre on Nauru. There he interviewed more than half of the 54 asylum seekers then on the island. His articles, based on these interviews, for The Age and SMH drew an enormous response from readers. Freeing Ali expands beyond that article to tell the story of Ali Mullaie, an Afghan asylum seeker who spent three and a half years detained on Nauru. The Author backgrounds his profile of Ali and his fellow detainees with a discussion of the impact of the detention centre and the 'Pacific Solution' on the people of Nauru and their country.

 

Maude, H.E. (comp.). 2006. The Gilbert Islands Observed: A Source Book of European Contacts with, and Observations of, the Gilbert Islands and the Gilbertese, from 1537 to 1873. Foreword by Alaric Maude. Adelaide: Homa Press. 148 pages.

 

"'The selection of documents and extracts in The Gilbert Islands Observed is a small sampling of Maude's research, but its extent is evident from the array of archival collections that he consulted. The assortment reveals what many early visitors 'observed': what they saw, or thought they saw, through their cultural lenses, which is apt to be rather different from what might actually have been going on. Moreover, the observations were usually made on the basis of passing acquaintance rather than long-term residence. Perhaps, then, there is irony in that Maude was aware of the pitfalls of such records, and yet he was so reliant upon them and so assiduous in bringing them to light. Such was Maude's reading of these 'observations' that he largely transcended their limitations, showing how the Europeans in question were channelled and constrained by Islanders' actions, desires and agendas' (Doug Munro in The Journal of Pacific History)."

 

POLYNESIA

 

Archie, Carol. 2007. Pou Korero: A Journalists' Guide to Maori and Current Affairs. Wellington: New Zealand Journalists Training Organisation. 174 pages. ISBN: 0-9582058-7-6.

 

"While written primarily as a guide for journalists, Pou Korero is an excellent resource for anyone with an interest in how Maori are portrayed by the Pakeha media and how this affects the way Maori are perceived by other New Zealanders - and, most importantly, how this can be improved.

 

As well as practical guidance for journalists, such as reporting Maori occasions and including Maori perspectives in news rounds, Pou Korero contains reflections and ideas which are valuable for anyone wanting to move beyond the dominant mono-cultural ways of thinking and behaving, it provides useful insights that are applicable in any profession or area of work.

 

Pou Korero has nine chapters, with the first eight providing information on the Treaty of Waitangi and some relevant history, reporting Maori occasions, local knowledge and making contacts, Maori media, good practice, the media arbiters, news rounds, te reo Maori in New Zealand English (and glossary), and a concluding chapter which looks at the future of journalism in Aotearoa New Zealand and how reporters can shape our sense of identity in an inclusive way. A te reo Maori pronunciation CD is included with the book."

 

Callister, Paul. 2007. Special Measures to Reduce Ethnic Disadvantage in New Zealand: An Examination of Their Role. Wellington: Institute of Policy Studies, Victoria University of Wellington. 132 pages. ISBN: 1877347167 (pb)

 

"During the post-World War Two era, governments in New Zealand and in many other countries have introduced policies designed to achieve greater equality between ethnic groups. These have been variously referred to as 'positive discrimination', 'preferential treatment', 'affirmative action', 'measures to ensure equality' and 'special measures'. This book considers the measurement of ethnicity and the causes of ethnic disadvantage, the nature and history of special measures in New Zealand, and the strengths and weaknesses of such measures. It concludes with reflections on the circumstances under which such measures are likely to be most effective, as well as politically acceptable."

 

Diamond, Heather A. 2008 (July). American Aloha: Cultural Tourism and the Negotiation of Tradition. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press. 288 pages. ISBN:  978-0-8248-3171-4 (cloth)

 

"At the 1989 Smithsonian Folklife Festival, throngs of visitors gathered on the National Mall to celebrate Hawai'i's multicultural heritage through its traditional arts. The 'edu-tainment' spectacle revealed a richly complex Hawai'i few tourists ever see and one never before or since replicated in a national space. The program was restaged a year later in Honolulu for a local audience and subsequently inspired several spin-offs in Hawaii. In both Washington, D.C., and Honolulu, the program instigated a new paradigm for cultural representation.

 

Based on archival research and extensive interviews with festival organizers and participants, this innovative cross-disciplinary study uncovers the behind-the-scenes negotiations and processes that inform the national spectacle of the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. Intersecting the fields of museum studies, folklore studies, Hawaiian studies, performance studies, cultural studies, and American studies, American Aloha supplies a nuanced analysis of how the carefully crafted staging of Hawai'i's cultural diversity was used to serve a national narrative of utopian multiculturalism - one that collapsed social inequities and tensions, masked colonial history, and subordinated indigenous politics - while empowering Hawai'i's traditional artists and providing a model for cultural tourism that has had long-lasting effects. Heather Diamond deftly positions the 1989 program within a history of institutional intervention in the traditional arts of Hawai'i's ethnic groups as well as in relation to local cultural revivals and the tourist industry. By tracing the planning, fieldwork, site design, performance, and aftermath stages of the program, she examines the uneven processes through which local culture is transformed into national culture and raises questions about the stakes involved in cultural tourism for both culture bearers and culture brokers.

 

Heather A. Diamond is lecturer in the departments of English and American studies at the University of Hawai'i."

 

Diamond, Paul. 2007. Makereti: Taking Maori to the World. Auckland: Random House New Zealand. 216 pages. ISBN: 978-1869419004 (pb).

 

"This is a biography of one of New Zealand's first international media celebrities, Makereti (1873 - 1930).

 

The daughter of a Maori mother and a Pakeha father, Makereti was brought up by her Maori extended family until she was sent to boarding school. She became well-known (as Guide Maggie or Maggie Papakura) throughout New Zealand and overseas as a guide at Whakarewarewa, particularly after the visit of the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and York in 1901.

 

She led visits of Maori concert parties (complete with carved villages and waka) to Australia and England, but dropped out of the public view after marrying for a second time in 1912 and moving to Oxfordshire.

 

Following her divorce in 1924, Makereti enrolled as a student at the University of Oxford and died just before her thesis about traditional Maori life was due to be examined.

 

While her remarkable story has intrigued many people, it is not well recorded. This book - a pictorial record of her life together with a series of essays - will help to rectify this situation.

 

Paul Diamond is a broadcaster and writer. He was born in Putaruru to a Maori father and a pakeha mother. His iwi affiliations are Ngati Haua, Te Rarawa and Nga Puhi. His broadcasting career began with Mana Maori Media in 1997; he has also produced radio features on Maori topics for National Radio, and worked as a senior reporter for Maori Television's current affairs show, Te Heteri. His radio programmes have won Qantas Media and Media Peace Awards."

 

Evans, Patrick. 2007. The Long Forgetting: Post-colonial Literary Culture in New Zealand. Christchurch: Canterbury University Press. 276 pages. ISBN: 978-1-877257-69-8 (pb).

 

"The Long Forgetting is the first book-length study of New Zealand's post-colonial literary culture.

 

Beginning with a survey of the wrenching economic, social, and cultural changes that have occurred since 1970 - including Maori protest, the anti-tour protests of 1981, Rogernomics, Ruthanasia, the 'fiscal envelope' and the America's Cup win - it then moves back to the nineteenth century and the formation of Europeans' relationship with Maori.

 

Subsequent chapters survey recent critics' work in breaking up the myth of male-dominated cultural nationalism that occupied much of the mid-twentieth century, and, returning to the years since 1970, show the rise of new writing by women, gays and Maori.

A final chapter treats the 'Generation X' phenomenon, Maori writers' struggle with official biculturalism, and the rise of a distinctive, New Zealand-based Pasifika writing.

 

Along the way, The Long Forgetting ranges from high culture to the popular - from po-faced nineteenth-century poetry and the Te Maori exhibition to sheep-station romance, Whale Rider and bro'Town.

 

Patrick Evans has studied and taught New Zealand literature at the University of Canterbury since 1978. His critical books include Janet Frame (1977) and The Penguin History of New Zealand Literature (1990). He has also published two novels, prize-winning essays and short fiction, and has had plays performed in New Zealand and Australia."

 

Finney, Ben R. 2007. Tahiti: Polynesian Peasants and Proletarians. Piscataway, NJ: Transaction Publishers. 147 pages. ISBN: 978-1-4128-0640-4 (paper). Reissued classic. First published in 1965. Reviewed and expanded in 1973.

 

"The Polynesian island of Tahiti is in the imagination an island paradise, an idyllic world inhabited by noble savages, carefree and uncomplicated. Tahiti separates myth from reality. Finney describes and analyzes the forces of change that have confronted Tahiti and its inhabitants in the modern world. As the author notes in the introduction, 'Neither isolation in the South Pacific, nor the romantic aura invested in them by philosophers and escapists of the West, has saved Tahitians from intense involvement in the twin processes of industrialization and urbanization.'

 

This study of Tahitian life concentrates upon two different communities. One is a peasant community moving from subsistence farming to an increased reliance upon the production of cash crops. The other is a proletarian community whose members were at the time abandoning farming and fishing in favor of wage labor. Finney compares the two contemporaneous communities, enabling him to define different but interrelated variables of the economic and social change. These are responsible for Tahiti's evolution from a subsistence oriented peasant life to a life based increasingly on cash crops and wage labor.

 

What happens to family life, work patterns, land use, and other traditional modes of social organization when a small, underdeveloped society is confronted with economic forces largely beyond its control? In dealing with this question as it applies to Tahiti, Finney makes an important contribution to our understanding of how modernization affects a society once thought to be outside the boundaries of the modern world. A major study in English of the socio-economic forces at work in Tahiti, this book provides the reader with both an understanding of the changing nature of Tahitian life, and the reactions of Tahitians to such changes.

 

Ben R. Finney is professor emeritus in the Department of Anthropology, University of Hawaii at Manoa and has done extensive fieldwork in New Guinea and Hawaii. His current research interests include Polynesian voyaging canoes and methods of navigation, and radio astronomy searches for extraterrestrial intelligent life combined with the impact on mankind of exploring and expanding into space."

 

 

Haun, Beverley. 2008. Inventing 'Easter Island'. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. 320 pages;  41 illustrations. ISBN: 0802093531 (pb, March) and 082098886 (cl, April).

 

"Easter Island, or Rapa Nui as it is known to its inhabitants, is located in the Pacific Ocean, 3600 kilometres west of South America. Annexed by Chile in 1888, the island has been a source of fascination for the world beyond the island since the first visit by Europeans in 1722 due to its intriguing statues and complex history. Inventing 'Easter Island' examines narrative strategies and visual conventions in the discursive construction of 'Easter Island' as distinct from the native conception of 'Rapa Nui.' It looks at the geographic imaginary that pervaded the eighteenth century, a period of overwhelming imperial expansion.

 

Beverley Haun begins with a discussion of forces that shaped the European version of island culture and goes on to consider the representation of that culture in the form of explorer texts and illustrations, as well as more recent texts and images in comic books and kitsch from off the island. Throughout, 'Easter Island' is used as a case study of the impact of imperialism on the view of a culture from outside. The study hinges on three key points - an inquiry into the formation of 'Easter Island' as a subject; an examination of how the constructed space and culture have been shaped, reshaped, and represented in discursive spaces; and a discussion of cultural memory and how the constraints of foreign texts and images have shaped thought and action about 'Easter Island.'

 

Richly illustrated and unique in its findings, Inventing 'Easter Island' will appeal to cultural theorists, anthropologists, educators, and anyone interested in the history of the South Pacific.

 

In Chapter 7, the author addresses and deconstructs the Jared Diamond version of events on Rapa Nui in his book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive as well as a similar narrative of events in Ronald Wright's book, A Short History of Progress.

 

Beverley Haun is a postdoctoral research fellow at McArthur College, Queen's University."

 

Ihimaera, Witi (ed.). Get on the Waka: Best Recent Maori Fiction. Auckland: Raupo (Reed) Publishing. 184 pages. ISBN: 978-07900-1162-2 (pb).

 

"A fresh and energetic collection of fiction writing by Maori since 2000, selected and with an introduction by Witi Ihimaera. It showcases 17 stories and extracts from established writers. All the stories in this collection have already been published elsewhere; here Ihimaera has pulled them together into one very vibrant volume.

 

The authors are: Lisa Cherrington, Lindsay Charman Love, Alan Duff, Cathie Dunsford, James George, Briar Grace-Smith, Pat Grace, Phil Kawana, Kingi McKinnon, Kelly Ana Morey, Paula Morris, Renee, Alice Tawhai, Ngahuia Te Awekotuku and Witi Ihimaera."

 

Ip, Manying. 2008 (April). Being Maori-Chinese: Mixed Identities. Auckland: Auckland University Press. 200 pages. ISBN: 978-1-86940-399-7 (pb).

 

"This book uses extensive interviews with seven different families to explore historical and contemporary relations between Maori and Chinese. A full chapter is given to each family which is explored in depth often in the voices of the protagonists themselves. It provides a unique and fascinating insight into cross-cultural alliances between Asian and indigenous peoples, revealing a resilience which has endured persecution, ridicule and neglect and offering a picture of New Zealand society which challenges the usual Pakeha-dominated perspective. Today's Maori-Chinese, especially younger members, are increasingly reaffirming their multiple roots and, with a growing confidence in the cultural advantages they possess, are playing important roles in New Zealand society."

 

Kahn, Elithe Manuha'aipo. 2007. Ho'onaka - When the Plant Quivers: Tales of the Healing Plants of Hawai'i. Honolulu: Bishop Museum Press. 110 pages. ISBN: 1-58178-056-7 (cloth)

 

"Through the ancient art of storytelling, author Elithe Kahn informs, educates, and entertains the inquisitive reader about the magical healing powers of plants in Ho'onaka. Each plant is identified with a full-color photograph, and overview of how it is used, and a mo'olelo (legend) associated with it. Also included is a section on how to press herbs, leaves, and flowers."

 

Kepelino. 2007. Kepelino's Traditions of Hawai'i. Honolulu: Bishop Museum Press. 216 pages. ISBN: 1-58178-060-5 (cloth).

 

"Kepelino, like native Hawaiian historians Malo, Kamakau, and Papa 'I'i, worked in the mid-nineteenth century to record Hawaiian historical, cultural, and religious knowledge for future generations. Originally published in 1932, this new reprint of Kepelino's Traditions of Hawai'i includes the original Hawaiian and English text edited by Martha Beckwith, along with notes by Mary Kawena Pukui, and a new introduction by contemporary native Hawaiian scholar Noelani Arista. A must-have for any collector of Hawaiian cultural history."

 

Klieger, P. Christiaan, Philip Helfrich and Jo-Ann C. Leong. 2007. Moku o Lo'e: A History of Coconut Island. Honolulu: Bishop Museum Press. 288 pages. ISBN: 1-58178-072-9 (cloth).

 

"From fantasy paradise to world-class facility for marine biology, the little island found in Kane'ohe Bay has a rich, colorful history. Klieger weaves together the interesting story of Moku o Lo'e, or Coconut island as it is better known, from the early days as part of the ahupua'a of He'eia, its passage to various owners including Christain Holmes and Edwin Pauley, and its development as a research institution for the University of Hawai'i."

 

Lee, Jenny Bol Jun. 2007. Jade Taniwha: Maori-Chinese Identity and Schooling in Aotearoa. Auckland: Rautaki. 179 pages. ISBN: 978-0473123178.

 

"This book is an insightful and often deeply personal account of Maori-Chinese identity in Aotearoa New Zealand. At the heart of the work are the accounts of four Maori-Chinese New Zealanders, recollecting experiences of identity through the lens of schooling.

 

Author Jenny Bol Jun Lee (Ngati Mahuta) shows that the identity of this unique cultural group is the result of a fascinating history on the margins of mainstream New Zealand society, one often intersected by racism, exclusion and colonialism. Lee reveals that Maori-Chinese draw strength from their different traditions, taking pride in their unique identity while moving between the different worlds of Chinese, Maori and 'mainstream' New Zealand.

 

Jade Taniwha provides a detailed historical and sociological context for the emergence of Maori-Chinese in New Zealand, concentrating on the role that schooling has played in the formation of Maori-Chinese identity. Jenny Bol Jun Lee shows how racism in New Zealand's schools has impacted members of this community. The book will provide both scholars and readers with an understanding of Maori-Chinese people in New Zealand."

 

McCarthy, Conal. 2007. Exhibiting Maori: A History of Colonial Cultures of Display. Wellington: Te Papa Press. 243 pages. ISBN: 978-1-877385-33-9 (pb).

 

"This richly illustrated book presents a comprehensive assessment of the display of Maori culture from the 19th Century to today. In doing so, Exhibiting Maori: A History of Colonial Cultures of Display traces the long journey from curio to specimen, artefact, art and taonga (treasure).

 

Drawing on extensive and groundbreaking research, Exhibiting Maori reveals for the first time the remarkable story of Maori resistance to, involvement in, and eventual capture of the display of their culture.

 

Ranging across museums, world fairs, fine art, and tourism, Exhibiting Maori: A History of Colonial Cultures of Display fuses museum studies, anthropology, and visual and material culture to uncover a history of active Maori engagement with the colonial culture of display."

 

McCoy, Mary M. and Siotame Drew Havea. 2006. Making Sense Of Tonga: A Visitor's Guide To The Kingdom's Rich Polynesian Culture. Nuku’alofa: Training Group of the Pacific. 44 pages. ISBN: 978-9829800121 (pb).

 

"Provides a quick insight into the Tongan culture, describing it though a perspective that is understandable to visitors from western-based cultures. Includes chapters on rank, behaviour, family, religion and traditional dress.

 

Making Sense of Tonga gives visitors a quick insight into the Tongan culture and explains: why Tongans wear mats, why you can't get a straight answer from a Tongan to a simple question, what it means when a Tongan flicks his eyebrows at you, and many more topics."

 

McLaughlin, Shawn. 2007. The Complete Guide to Easter Island. Los Osos, CA: Easter Island Foundation. 350 pages. ISBN 978-1-880636-25-1 (sc).

 

"A revised edition of The Complete Guide to Easter Island has been released by the Easter Island Foundation. Like its predecessor, which underwent three printings and has sold more copies than any other EIF publication, this expanded version brings together the latest scientific and tourist information in a format designed to appeal to both researchers and lay readers alike: Sections on history, legends, conservation, island theories, antiquities, and culture complement detailed coverage of the village of Hanga Roa, accommodations, shopping, vehicle rental, entertainment, island sights, and more. The Guide also includes a chapter on the Rapanui language, an extensive glossary, a detailed chronology, a comprehensive bibliography, and updated island maps. With 70 additional pages, this revised Guide includes new sections, such as discussions on the role of the sweet potato in Oceania, dating systems used by scientists, and listings of Easter Island artefacts found in museums around the world. Richly illustrated and featuring black and white and color photographs by the author. Whether you've been on the island, are planning your first trip, or returning to this most enigmatic place, The Complete Guide is your indispensable Easter Island resource."

 

McLean, Gavin. 2006. The Governors: New Zealand's Governors and Governors-General. Dunedin: Otago University Press. 424 pages. ISBN: 978-1-877372-25-4 (hb).

 

"Grey, Jervois, Fergusson, Bledisloe - their names adorn buildings, streets, entire towns, even hills and rivers. But little has been written about the occupants of Government House. The Governors tracks the evolution of an office that says much about New Zealand's constitutional journey. In Crown colony days, governors ruled personally; with responsible government came uneasy adjustment and, from the late 1880s, a new breed of aristocratic governors who presided ceremonially. Since 1972, all governors-general have been New Zealand residents, two have been female and more recently the office has acquired a new international dimension.

 

With the job came ceremonial and community roles, which governors performed according to their differing personalities. You will meet the governor who complained about being 'highly paid, well housed and well fed, for performing the functions of a stamp' and another, all monocle, medals and plumed helmet, who spoke Maori.

 

Contents: Part 1. Soldiers and Engineers of Empire (1840-53): 1 Empire's shock-absorbers - Gipps, Hobson, FitzRoy and Grey; 2. 'Take away the key' - Browne and Grey; 3. Humbugs and memorandums - Bowen, Fergusson, Normanby and Robinson; 4. 'Presiding at charity dinners and entertaining large parties of stupid people' - Gordon and Jervois; Part 2. Vice-regal Ceremonial (1860s-1970s): 5. 'He looked at all the men's boots to see that the heels were cleaned' - Governors and ceremonies; Part 3. Holiday Jobs or Outdoor Relief for the Aristocracy? (1889-1920); 6. 'A governor's life is not a bad one except when he has constitutional questions to debate' - Onslow, Glasgow and Ranfurly; 7. Knights of the Round Table - Plunket, Islington and Liverpool; Part 4. A New Imperial System (1917-31): 8. Winds of change or gentle zephyrs? Part 5. Whisky and Soda Warriors (1920-72): 9. 'Soldiers of good fortune' - Jellicoe and Fergusson; 10. Nation within empire - Bledisloe; 11. Whisky and soda warriors - Galway, Newell and Freyberg; 12. The last ten thousand pound Poms - Norrie, Cobham, Fergusson and Porritt; Part 6. Home-Grown (1972-): 13. Kiwis become 'the Queen in drag' - Blundell, Holyoake and Beattie; 14. Nominal heads of state? - Reeves, Tizard, Hardie Boys and Cartwright; 15. Conclusion; Appendices; Notes; Index.

 

'Surprisingly, the Crown's representative has not notably functioned as a bridge between

Pakeha and Maori, nor as a voice for Islander rights at the heart of government. As McLean once again demonstrates, early attempts to reserve 'Native' policy to governors created divided authority that helped precipitate the wars of the 1860s. By 1881, the pro-Maori (or anti-settler) Gordon was powerless to prevent the Parihaka episode. Bledisloe saved the Waitangi Treaty House for a nascent New Zealand 'nation', but paternally urged Maori to become white men inside. Sir Bernard Fergusson, the third generation of a gubernatorial family, looked a monocled Blimp, but he spoke Maori, berated Pakeha civic delegations for tokenism and pressed governments for Maori honours. Not until the appointment of Sir Paul Reeves in 1985 did New Zealand have a de facto head of state with some Maori ancestry. In the Pacific, Gordon was bribed to take the job by adding a personal role in Fiji, while Ranfurly was made an imperial link with the Cook Islands. Interwar governors-general were suspicious of Samoan nationalism, and such attitudes continued after World War II: Freyberg thought Samoans had a mental age of eight. Viceregal visits required Islanders to stage ceremonies of welcome - for which, McLean amusingly explains, they had to be coached - thus projecting traditional imagery at a time when New Zealanders needed to be made aware of urgent agendas of modernity in their Pacific dependencies' (Ged Martin in The Journal of Pacific History).

 

Gavin McLean, Senior Historian at the History Group of the Ministry for Culture and Heritage, has published widely on New Zealand history and in 2005 co-edited the bestseller Frontier of Dreams."

 

McQuarrie, Peter. 2007. Tokelau: People, Atolls and History. Wellington: First Edition Self Publication. 266 pages, 25 Illustrations, 3 Maps, Notes, Bibliography and Index. NZD$35.95. ISBN: 978-1-877449-41-3 (pb). Available from: petermcq@xtra.co.nz  (change of address since Oceania Newsletter 47).

 

"This book is a straightforward history and description of Tokelau, New Zealand's only South Pacific island territory. It covers the colonial history, Peruvian slave trading, New Zealand administration and the RNZAF, the Second World War, Development and Aid Projects, modern Tokelau, as well as Tokelauan culture and the flora and fauna of the islands.

  

It is written for Tokelauans, the general public of New Zealand who know so little about Tokelau and those interested in the history of the Pacific Islands. As the book emphasises the connections between Tuvalu, Kiribati and Tokelau, it is likely to appeal to  those with an interest in Tuvalu, Kiribati and the former British colony: The Gilbert and Ellice Islands, of which Tokelau was once a part.

 

Contents: 1. The Atolls; 2. Who are the Tokelauans? 3. Tokelauan Culture; 4. Early European Contacts; 5. Slavers and Missionaries; 6. British Protection; 7. N.Z. Administration, 8. Tokelauan Labour Overseas; 9. The Second World War; 10. Post War Developments; 11. Copra, Rats and Rhinoceros Beetles; 12. Reef Passages and Water Supplies; 13. Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow."

 

Marchand, Étienne. 2005. Journal de bord d'Étienne Marchand: Le voyage du 'Solide' autour du monde, 1790-1792. Edited by Odile Gannier and Cécile Picquoin. Paris: Éditions du Comité des Travaux Historiques et Scientifiques. 2 vol. 599 and 220 pages. ISBN 2-7355-0595-2.

 

"Le voyage du Solide autour du monde, se déroule un quart de siècle après celui de Bougainville et cinq ans après la malheureuse tentative de Lapérouse; à la différence de ces deux illustres prédécesseurs, il est effectué pour des raisons exclusivement commerciales, mais l'histoire a surtout retenu les découvertes géographiques portées à son crédit, celles du groupe nord des îles Marquises (Ua Pou, Nuku Hiva, Motu Iti, Eiao, Hatutu) - groupe auquel Marchand donna le nom d'îles de la Révolution.

 

On ne connaissait jusqu'à présent cette aventure matitime que par la relation très officielle de Claret de Fleurieu, établie sur la base des journaux du deuxième Second Prosper Chanal et du chirurgien Claude Roblet ou, plus tardivement, par de courts extraits du journal du capitaine Marchand. Odile Gannier et Cécile Picquoin proposent donc ici, pour la première fois, le texte intégral du journal de bord de Marchand document complété et enrichi d'un solide commentaire de présentation et d'annexes qui en précisent la portée."

 

Perkins, R.C.L. 2007. Barefoot on Lava: The Journals and Correspondence of Naturalist R.C.L. Perkins in Hawai'i, 1892-1901. Edited by Neal L. Evenhuis. Honolulu: Bishop Museum Press. 412 pages. ISBN: 1-58178-061-3 (cloth)

 

"British naturalist Robert Cyril Layton Perkins was one of the last to see some of the great Hawaiian forest birds alive. The journals and correspondence of Perkins during his collecting years from 1892-1901 are assembled here together for the first time. His journals and notes present island biologists and historians with detailed information on the species he observed and collected. This work is an essential reference for biologists of all disciplines in helping to understand what Hawai'i was like more than a century ago, when the natural Hawaiian landscape and its occupants were much different than they are today."

 

Skinner, Damian. 2008 (February). The Carver and the Artist: Maori Art in the Twentieth Century. Auckland: Auckland University Press. 232 pages. ISBN 978-1-86940-373-7 (hb).

 

"This exciting book charts the growth and development of the Maori modernist art that emerged from the rapid urbanisation of Maori in the mid twentieth century and the complex transition of Maori cultural and social structures from a rural to an urban setting. It is a story of the conflict between tradition and innovation - two seemingly incompatible but not always opposing positions that were the source of a great upswelling of creativity. Artists like Arnold Wilson, Para Matchitt, and Selwyn Muru constructed a Maori art that reacted against the customary culture and attempted to respond to the modern world in which they lived. The book includes a rich selection of reproductions of Maori modernist art many of which are of brilliant works not widely known and often from the artists' own collections."

 

Souhami, Diana. 2007 (April). Coconut Chaos: Pitcairn, Mutiny and a Seduction at Sea. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. 272 pages. ISBN-13: 9780753823675 (pb).

 

"A personal voyage to obscure Pitcairn Island, with profound modern echoes of the Bounty mutineers who settled there.

           

This singular tale by Whitbread Prize-winning writer Diana Souhami (Selkirk's Island) connects the famous mutiny on the Bounty in the Pacific Ocean in 1789 to the plight of the islanders of Pitcairn now.

 

Its conceptual core is chaos theory: how a small chance thing, the taking of a coconut by Fletcher Christian from William Bligh's stores on the ship, had dramatic ramifications that continue today.

 

The vivid narrative includes mutiny, travel, biography, incest, homosexuality, murder and rape, science and technology, fantasy and selective history.

 

Sea voyages, most of them extraordinary, drive the narrative forward, the author's own journey to Pitcairn where Fletcher Christian hid to escape punishment; Bligh's navigation to Timor in violent weather, without maps, in a small boat, with scant supplies and starving men; the voyage to England with mutineers in chains and their shipwreck..."

 

Spitz, Chantal T. 2007. Island of Shattered Dreams. Translated by Jean Anderson. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press. Distributed for Huia Publishers. First published, in Tahitian, in 1991. 172 pages. ISBN: 978-1-86969-299-5 (pb).

 

"Finally in English, Island of Shattered Dreams is the first ever novel by an indigenous Tahitian writer. In a lyrical and immensely moving style, this book combines a family saga and a doomed love story, set against the background of French Polynesia in the period leading up to the first nuclear tests. The text is highly critical of the French government and, as a result, its publication in Tahiti was polarizing.

 

For sale only in the U.S, its dependencies, Canada, and Mexico."

 

Te Awekotuku, Ngahuia and Linda Waimarie Nikora. 2007. Mau Moko: The World of Maori Tattoo. Photos by Becky Nunes. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press. 244 pages. ISBN: 978-0-8248-3253-7 (cloth).

 

"In the traditional Maori world, the moko, the facial or body tattoo, was a sign of great mana and status. Male warriors wore elaborate tattoos on their faces and bodies; women took more delicate chin tattoos. After almost dying out in the twentieth century, Maori tattooing is now experiencing a powerful revival, with many young Maori wearing the moko as a spectacular gesture of racial pride.

 

Mau Moko is a magnificent look at the moko, from pre-European times to the present day. It examines the use of tattooing by traditional and contemporary Maori and links it to other aspects of Maori culture. Gender issues are considered along with tattooing techniques both old and new. The book features case studies of modern Maori who have made a personal decision to be tattooed; the role and status of tattooers; and exploitation of the moko in popular culture around the world by figures such as rock singers and football players.

 

Mau Moko is superbly illustrated with paintings, photographs, and drawings from traditional times and by new color photography by Becky Nunes commissioned for the book.

 

For sale only in the U.S., its dependencies, Canada, and Mexico.

 

Ngahuia Te Awekotuku is professor of research in the School of Maori and Pacific Development at the University of Waikato. Linda Waimarie Nikora is lecturer in Kaupapa Maori in the Department of Psychology at the University of Waikato."

 

WAITANGI TRIBUNAL. (2007). Te tau ihu o te Waka a Maui: Preliminary Report on Customary Rights in the Northern South Island. WAI 785. Wellington: Legislation Direction, Waitangi Tribunal. 288 pages. ISBN: 978-1-86956-289-2. Retrieved January 23, 2008, from the World Wide Web: http://www.waitangitribunal.govt.nz/scripts/reports/reports/785/3701E130-DAA4-4445-AED3-D200A3DA529E.pdf.

 

"Contents: Letter of transmittal; 1. Introduction; 2. Te Tau Ihu Iwi Customary Rights in the Ngai Tahu Statutory Takiwa; 3. The Crown's Treatment of Te Tau Ihu Customary Rights in the Statutory Takiwa during the Mid Nineteenth Century Purchases; 4. The 1990 Maori Appellate Court Decision and the Subsequent Ngai Tahu Legislation; 5. Summary of Findings; Select bibliography."