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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
Aughton, Peter. 2007 (March). The Fatal Voyage: Captain Cook's Last Great Journey. London and New York: I.B. Tauris. 216 pages. ISBN: 9781845114046 (pb).
"Cook was the greatest explorer of his age and his voyages of discovery are the stuff of legend. During two long journeys, he circumnavigated the globe twice, charted the east coast of Australia, the whole of New Zealand and many islands in the Pacific. The Fatal Voyage is the story of Cook's final journey when he led his most dangerous and fabled expedition to search for the elusive Pacific entrance to the North West Passage. He set sail from England in July 1776 and along the way discovered the Hawaiian archipelago before mapping and charting the formidable north west coast of America, from Vancouver Island to the frozen northern coastline of Alaska. He sailed through the Bering Straits and although his ships reached the entrance to the North West Passage they were defeated by a sheer wall of ice blocking their way. Cook returned to Hawaii to rest, but a series of misjudgments between his men and the islanders sparked a violent clash in which Cook was killed at Kealakekua Bay. Peter Aughton has here used letters, log records and the diaries of those involved in the voyage to tell an enthralling account of James Cook's last days at sea and reveal the extraordinary legacy he left behind."
Belliveau, Jeannette. 2006. Romance on the Road: Traveling Women Who Love Foreign Men. Baltimore, MD: Beau Monde Press. 410 pages. ISBN: 096523441X.
"Romance on the Road describes the heretofore-neglected topic of women who travel to find love with foreign men, with significant implications for the study of mating behavior, the dating war, feminism and the globalization and commodification of affection. The author describes her own experiences in Greece, the Bahamas, the Caribbean and Brazil, and resulting book became a high-spirited examination of how adventurous women are redefining sexual geography.
Contents: 1. Female sex tourism and implications for feminism: Feminism and unintended consequences; Mate shortages created by marriage patterns: First World and Third World alike; Sex and the divorced Baby Boomer woman; Mate selection in throes of a revolution; Widespread involuntary celibacy: Female and male; 2. People: Female sexual pioneers - in Southern Europe, Africa, Asia, Polynesia; Gay men: Common motivations with Victorian women; Lesbians: Special destinations and strategies; 3. History: Veiling laws, agricultural development and female sexual freedom; Cleopatra, Babylon's sacred priestesses, Turkish free spirits and Native American single women; History's first sex destinations: Italy and Greece; Victorian female adventureresses: Rome, the Near East, India; Spain, the Caribbean, West Africa and the 1960s explosion in female sex tourism; Erica Jong, Terry McMillan and how novels accelerated trends; Princess Diana, Osama bin Laden and the Middle East; Predictions of the future of female sex tourism and its social impact; 4. Theory: The first sexual geographer: Sir Richard Francis Burton; The female participant: Anne Cumming, Fiona Pitt-Kethley; The novelist as theoretician: Paul Theroux, Michel Houellebecq; The skeptical social scientist: April Gorry; 5. Places: Overarching geographic patterns governing sex tourism destinations for men and women; The world's two leading emporia for sex tourism: Thailand and the Dominican Republic; Men's destinations: Southeast Asia, Latin America; Women's destinations: Mediterranean, Africa, Caribbean; Gay destinations: Sitges, Cape Town, Bangkok, Brazil; Lesbian destinations: Lesbos, Bali; The Zone of Sexual Freedom: Africa; The Zone of Sexual Winter: East Asia; The Zone of Sexual Violence: Melanesia; The Zone of Abandonment: Oceania; Femininity, masculinity, sex warfare and geography; Exclusive immigration data on foreign wives and husbands of Americans; Emotional geography and the commodification of sex."
Brookfield, F.M. 2007. Waitangi and Indigenous Rights: Revolution, Law and Legitimation. Revised edition. Auckland: Auckland University Press. 284 pages. ISBN: 978-1-86940-372-0 (pb)
"This is a revised edition of Jock Brookfield's landmark study of issues surrounding the Treaty of Waitangi first published in 1999. Here he adds an extensive epilogue addressing three recent debates relevant to his central topic: the Fiji revolutions, successful and attempted; Maori customary title to the foreshore and seabed and the Foreshore and Seabed Act of 2004; and the Rekohu Report (2001) of the Waitangi Tribunal on the conflicting claims of Moriori and Ngati Mutungu on the Chatham Islands. He deals with these complex and controversial matters with his usual careful, thorough and principled approach dealing with the broad constitutional issues and responding to comments made by other scholars. This new edition will be an essential tool for all those working in the area and for anyone interested in this vital contemporary debate."
DeLoughrey, Elizabeth M. 2007 (April). Routes and Roots: Navigating Caribbean and Pacific Island Literatures. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press. 352 pages. ISBN 978-0-8248-3122-6 (Cloth).
"Routes and Roots is the first comparative study of Caribbean and Pacific Island literatures and the first work to bring indigenous and diaspora literary studies together in a sustained dialogue. Taking the 'tidalectic' between land and sea as a dynamic starting point, Elizabeth DeLoughrey foregrounds geography and history in her exploration of how island writers inscribe the complex relation between routes and roots.
The first section looks at the sea as history in literatures of the Atlantic middle passage and Pacific Island voyaging, theorizing the transoceanic imaginary. The second section turns to the land to examine indigenous epistemologies in nation-building literatures. Both sections are particularly attentive to the ways in which the metaphors of routes and roots are gendered, exploring how masculine travelers are naturalized through their voyages across feminized lands and seas. This methodology of charting transoceanic migration and landfall helps elucidate how theories and people travel, positioning island cultures in the world historical process. In fact, DeLoughrey demonstrates how these tropical island cultures helped constitute the very metropoles that deemed them peripheral to modernity.
Fresh in its ideas, original in its approach, Routes and Roots engages broadly with history, anthropology, and feminist, postcolonial, Caribbean, and Pacific literary and cultural studies. It productively traverses diaspora and indigenous studies in a way that will facilitate broader discussion between these often segregated disciplines."
Ley, Allison and Brij V. Lal (eds). 2006. The Coombs Book: A House of Memories. Canberra: Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies. 300 pages. ISBN: 1920942882 (pb).
"The Coombs Building at The Australian National University is a Canberra icon. Named after one of Australia's greatest administrators and public intellectuals - 'Nugget' Herbert Cole Coombs - for more than forty years the building has housed two of the University's four foundational Schools: the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies and the Research School of Social Sciences. This volume of recollections is about the former. It looks at life in the building through the prism of personal experience and happenstance. Part memoir, part biography, and part celebration, this book is about the people of Coombs, past and present. Through evocative and lucid reflections, present and former denizens of the building share their passions and predilections, quietly savour their accomplishments and recall the failings and foibles of the past with a kindly tolerance.
Table of Contents: Acknowledgements; Foreword: The Coombs Building, by William C. Clarke; Part I: The Coombs: 1. A Portrait: The Coombs: Journeys and Transformations, by Brij V. Lal; Part II: A Room at the Top: 2. Salad Days, by Oskar Spate; 3. An OHB Beginner, by Anthony Low; 4. People and the Coombs Effect, by Wang Gungwu; 5. In the Room at the Top, by R. Gerard Ward ; 6. Coombs Reflections, by Merle Ricklefs; 7. Turn Right at the Buddha, by James J. Fox; Part III: Coombs Journeys: 8 . Hexagonal Reflections on Pacific History, by Niel Gunson; 9. Seriously but not Solemnly, by Bryant Allen; 10. A Wurm Turned in Coombs, by Darrell Tryon; 11. Northern Exposure: The New Guinea Research Unit, by R.J. May; 12. On the Wrong Side of Coombs? by John Ravenhill; 13. Prehistory: A Late Arrival, by Jack Golson; 14. We, the Ethnographers, by Kathryn Robinson; 15. Real Australians in Economics, by Ross Garnaut ; 16. Reflections of a Defence Intellectual, by Desmond Ball; 17. Political and Social Change: Not the Research School of Politics and Sociology, by R.J. May; Part IV: Running the Coombs: 18. Sue's Story, by Sue Lawrence; 19. PAMBU, the Islands and the Coombs, by Ewan Maidment; 20. EWG and me, by Claire Smith; 21. Editing Reflections, by Maxine McArthur; 22. Finding Nuggets in Coombs, by Allison Ley; 23. A Fly on the Wall of Room 4225, by Jude Shanahan and Julie Gordon; 24. Fieldwork and Fireworks: A Lab Assistant's Tales, by Gillian Atkin; 25. Coombs Administration, by Ann Buller; 26. At the Leading Edge: Computer Technology in Coombs, by Allison Ley; Part V: Across Coombs: 27. Have You Got a Title? Seminar Daze, by Hank Nelson; 28 . Space Wars, by Colin Filer ; 29. Dark Side of the Coombs, by Allison Ley; 30. All Corridors Lead to the Tea Room, by Sophie Vilaythong and Lisa (Alicia) Dal Molin with Maxine McArthur; Part VI: Coombs Memories: 31. Work and Play in the Coombs Building 1967-73, by Peter Corris; 32. Recalling the Coombs - Pacific History 1970-73, by Kerry Howe; 33. 1970s Coombs Dramas, by Grant McCall; 34. The 'Catacoombs,' by Michael R. Godley; 35. The Old Hospital Building, by Anton Ploeg; Part VII: Corridors of Coombs, Tessa Morris-Suzuki; List of Contributors; Index."
Mead, Aroha Te Pareake and Steven Ratuva
(eds). 2007. Pacific Genes and Life Patents: Pacific Experiences and
Analysis of the Commodification and Ownership of Life. Yokohama: Call
of the Earth Llamado de la Tierra (COE) in conjunction with the United Nations
University - Institute of Advanced Studies (UNU-IAS). 273 pages. ISBN:
0-473-11237-X.
Contents: Preface, by A.H. Zakri; Foreword, by Aroha Te Pareake Mead and Steven Ratuva; Biographical Details of Authors; Section One: Aotearoa/New Zealand: Jessica Hutchings, Is Biotechnology an Appropriate Development Path for Maori? Aroha Te Pareake Mead, The Polynesian Excellence Gene and Patent Bottom-Trawling; Paul Reynolds, The Sanctity and Respect for Whakapapa: The Case of Ngati Wairere and AgResearch; Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Getting The Story Right - Telling The Story Well, Indigenous Activism - Indigenous Research; Cook Islands: Te Tika Mataiapo - Dorice Reid, Pig Cell 'Guinea Pigs' - An Experience of Xenotourism: The Proposed Diatranz Experiment in the Cook Islands; Fiji: Steven Ratuva, Na kilaka a vaka-Viti ni veikabula: Indigenous Knowledge and the Fijian Cosmos: Implications on Bio-Prospecting; Joeli Vakabua, A Fijian's Perspective on the Use and Ownership of Intellectual Property; Hawaii: Le'a Malia Kanehe, From Kumulipo: I Know Where I Come From - An Indigenous Pacific Critique of the Genographic Project; Walter Ritte and Le'a Malia Kanehe, Kuleana No Holoa (Responsibility forTaro) Protecting the Sacred Ancestor From Ownership and Genetic Modification; Papua New Guinea: Alphonse Kambu, An Analysis of Legal, Policy & Ethical Issues in Papua New Guinea Post-Hagahai; Eric L Kwa, In the Wake of the Hagahai Patent: Policy and Legal Developments on Gene Ownership and Technology; Tonga: Sister Keiti Ann Kanongata'a, Autogen and Bio-Ethics in Tonga: An Ethical and Theological Reflection; Lopeti Senituli, Ngeia 'o e Tangata - It's About Human Dignity; Samoa: Clark Peteru, The Mamala Plant Patent; Clark Peteru, Comments on The Pacific Regional Model Law on Traditional Biological Knowledge, Innovations and Practices; Vanuatu: Chief Viraleo oborevanua and Motarilavoa Hilda Lini, Vweu I Nagolumun Rahuana - Safeguarding Genetic Inheritance - Turaga Experience; Section Two: Pacific Instruments Relating to Genes and Gene Patents: The Mataatua Declaration on Cultural and Intellectual Property Rights of Indigenous Peoples (1993); Treaty For A Lifeforms Patent-Free Pacific And Related Protocols (1995); United States Patent 5,397,696. Yanagihara, et al. March 14, 1995; Papua New Guinea human T-lymphotropic virus (1995); Traditional Biological Knowledge, Innovations And Practices Act (2000); Statement Of Bioethics Consultation Tonga National Council Of Churches Centre Nukuoalofa, Tonga (2001); Model Law For The Protection Of Traditional Knowledge And Expressions Of Culture (2002); Paoakalani Declaration (2003).
This publication comprises the work of 16 Pacific Indigenous authors who document the experiences and responses of Pacific Indigenous communities to genetic research and products and patents on life forms."
Moore, Henrietta L. 2007. The Subject of Anthropology: Gender, Symbolism and Psychoanalysis. Cambridge: Polity Press. 288 pages. ISBN: 9780745608099 (pb) and 9780745608082 (hb).
"In this ambitious new book, Henrietta Moore draws on anthropology, feminism and psychoanalysis to develop an original and provocative theory of gender and of how we become sexed beings. Arguing that the Oedipus complex is no longer the fulcrum of debate between anthropology and psychoanalysis, she demonstrates how recent theorising on subjectivity, agency and culture has opened up new possibilities for rethinking the relationship between gender, sexuality and symbolism. Using detailed ethnographic material from Africa and Melanesia to explore the strengths and weaknesses of a range of theories in anthropology, feminism and psychoanalysis, Moore advocates an ethics of engagement based on a detailed understanding of the differences and similarities in the ways in which local communities and western scholars have imaginatively deployed the power of sexual difference. She demonstrates the importance of ethnographic listening, of focused attention to peoplers' imaginations, and of how this illuminates different facets of complex theoretical issues and human conundrums. Written not just for professional scholars and for students but for anyone with a serious interest in how gender and sexuality are conceptualised, experienced and imagined, this book is the most powerful and persuasive assessment to date of what anthropology has to contribute to these debates now and in the future."
Siegel, Jeff, John Lynch and Diana Eades (eds). 2007. Language Description, History and Development: Linguistic indulgence in Memory of Terry Crowley. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
"This volume in memory of Terry Crowley covers a wide range of languages: Australian, Oceanic, Pidgins and Creoles, and varieties of English.
Part I, Linguistic Description and Typology, includes chapters on topics such as complex predicates and verb serialization, noun incorporation, possessive classifiers, diphthongs, accent patterns, modals in Australian English and directional terms in atoll-based languages.
Part II, Historical Linguistics and Linguistic History, ranges from the reconstruction of Australian languages, to reflexes of Proto-Oceanic, to the lexicon of early Melanesian Pidgin.
Part III, Language Development and Linguistic Applications, comprises studies of lexicography, language in education, and language endangerment and language revival, spanning the Pacific from South Australia and New Zealand to Melanesia and on to Colombia. The volume will whet the appetite of anyone interested in the latest linguistic research in this richly multilingual part of the globe."
Stevenson, Christopher M., José Miguel Ramírez Aliaga, Francis J. Morin, and Norma Barbacci (eds). 2005. The Reñaca Papers: VI International Conference on Easter Island and the Pacific / VI Congreso Internacional sobre Rapa Nui y el Pacifico. Los Osos, CA: Easter Island Foundation. 544 pages. ISBN: 1-880636-08-5 (pb).
"Proceedings of the conference held at Reñaca, Viña del Mar, Chile, 21-25 September 2004 and hosted by The Easter Island Foundation and the University of Valparaíso, Chile.
This volume contains 54 papers in ten chapters, plus Keynote Address by Atholl Anderson. English papers have Spanish abstracts; Spanish papers have English abstracts. Subjects covered include: palaeoenvironments, human settlement patterns, cultural identity, geophysical studies, human eco-dynamics, human biology in Polynesia, Samoan studies, anthropology and history, Pacific arts, language and culture, conservation management."
AUSTRALIA
Attwood, Bain and Andrew Markus. 2007 (May). The 1967 Referendum: Race, Power and the Australian Constitution. 2nd edition. Camberra: Aboriginal Studies Press. 176 pages. ISBN: 978-0-85575-555-3 (pb). First published in 1997 as: The 1967 Referendum, or, When the Aborigines Didn't Get the Vote.
"On 27 May 1967 a remarkable event occurred: an overwhelming majority of electors voted in a national referendum to amend clauses of the Australian Constitution concerning Aboriginal people. 27 May 2007 is the 40th anniversary of this landmark event.
Nowadays, a younger generation have never heard of this landmark event; an older generation remain unclear about its significance.
The referendum is commonly considered the turning point in Australian historical and cultural life. The historic moment when citizenship rights were granted - including the vote - and the Commonwealth finally assumed responsibility for Aboriginal affairs. However, the outcomes for Indigenous Australians haven't improved significantly. So what is the referendum's value now?
This book explores the legal and political significance of the referendum and the long struggle by Australians for constitutional change. It traces the emergence of a series of powerful narratives about the Australian Constitution and the status of Aborigines. It reveals how and why the referendum acquired significance and has since become the subject of highly charged myth in contemporary Australia.
Bain Attwood is Associate Professor of History, Monash University. Andrew Markus is Professor of Jewish Civilisation and Director of the Australian Centre for the Study of Jewish Civilisation, Monash University. They collaborated on The Struggle for Aboriginal Rights and Thinking Black. Attwood is author of best-selling Rights for Aborigines and the recent Telling the Truth about Aboriginal History."
Austin-Broos, Diane and Gaynor Macdonald (eds). 2005, Culture, Economy and Governance in Aboriginal Australia: Proceedings of a Workshop Held at the University of Sydney, 30 November - 1 December 2004. Sydney: University of Sydney Press. ISBN: 1-9208982-0-4.
"A new book suggests that the best policy response to current issues affecting rural and remote Indigenous communities involves attending to cultural and regional differences as well as providing jobs and better education.
A book of essays drawn from the proceedings of an Australian Social Science Academy workshop, Culture, Economy and Governance in Aboriginal Australia calls for a balancing of these priorities if federal government resources are to be used effectively.
Written by Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars, among them anthropologists, demographers, and economists, the papers provide a historical perspective on remote Indigenous economies along with accounts of successes and failures.
In the past few years, the book's editors say, the Australian federal government has significantly revised its priorities concerning remote Indigenous communities. Attempts to improve the poor health, education and low levels of employment in many communities have taken precedence over the outstation movement and self-determining governance.
At the same time, this collection suggests that, if they are to prove successful, strategies to improve health, education and employment cannot ignore the particular values and concerns of remote Indigenous life. These values and concerns involve regional ritual and kinship relations as well as the fear of racism in large population centres where more jobs seem available.
As well as documenting the current and increasingly serious employment situation for many Indigenous Australians, the essays canvas various forms of response. Crucial aspects of family life, education and Indigenous governance are also analysed.
The collection is required reading for all Australians who wish to be better informed concerning the current situation and the future of Indigenous communities."
Biddle, Jennifer. 2007 (March). Breasts, Bodies, Canvas: Central Desert Art as Experience. Sydney: University of New South Wales Press. 160 pages. ISBN: 9780868409948.
"A unique book that combines an appreciation of Aboriginal art with contemporary theoretical concerns. On one level it is a beautifully illustrated book about contemporary Aboriginal art from the Central Desert of Australia, which has become immensely popular in the world's art markets. At the same time the book will draw on various theoretical considerations as it attempts to define, explain and understand this art."
Dé Ishtar, Zohl. 2005. Holding Yawalyu: White Culture and Black Women's Law. Melbourne: Spinifex Press. 388 pages. ISBN: 1876756578.
"Mapping inter-cultural relationships as they are played out in a remote Aboriginal settlement in Western Australia's Great Sandy Desert, this book challenges White Australians to reconsider their relationship with Indigenous peoples. Unpacking White cultural practices, it explores the extraordinary difficulties which Indigenous women face when they attempt to maintain and pass their cultural knowledge, customs and skills on to their children and youth.
From 1999 to 2001, Zohl dé Ishtar lived and worked intimately with a group of thirteen women elders to establish a vibrant intergenerational cultural knowledge transmission program: the Kapululangu Women's Law and Culture Centre. Through this profound experience Zohl identified 'Living Culture', the cultural energy which is created when individuals live their culture to its fullest expression enabling them to transform their worlds even when to do so seems impossible. Her profound radical feminist analysis of the socio-cultural context surrounding this Indigenous women's initiative challenges White attitudes and behaviours and offers a deeper comprehension to those who aspire to be involved in collaborative projects with Indigenous peoples. A lyrical and passionate book.
Zohl dé Ishtar is the author of Daughters of the Pacific and Pacific Women Speak Out for Independence and Denuclearisation. She is currently a post-doctoral fellow at the Australian Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Queensland."
Magowan, Fiona. 2006. Melodies of Mourning: Music and Emotion in Northern Australia. Oxford: James Currey Publishers. 288 pages. ISBN: 9780852559925 (pb) and 9780852559932 (hb).
"This work presents a theoretically rich and ethnographically vivid account of the way that song, dance and musical sensitivity weave into the lives of an aboriginal community of Australia. It focuses upon the song and associated emotional experience of women, and the way in which children are socialized into the musical and imaginative discourses and practices of the adult world. It makes a distinctive contribution to the tradition of anthropological analysis which focuses on the located nature of human sensual experience.
Contents: Introduction; Song, sense and sentiment; Changing cultural rhythms; Ecologies of song; Performing emotions; Seeing in sound; Embodying ancestors; Crying for Jesus; Unifying religious experiences; Senses of empathy; Notes on orthography; Glossary; Appendix; References."
Muecke, Stephen. 2005. Textual Spaces: Aboriginality and Cultural Studies. Revised edition. Bentley, Perth: API Network, Australian Research Institute, Curtin University of Technology. First published in 1992 by New South Wales University Press. 194 pages. ISBN: 1920845100.
"How does one talk about Aboriginality? Is it best talked 'about' by academics? Or talked 'through' by Aboriginal people? In the end, does academic discourse represent Aboriginality, negotiate it, or perhaps, somehow, own it? Must it be discussed in English, or by using individual aboriginal languages or Aboriginal English? Through written languages, spoken languages, through physical depictions? Textual Spaces: Aboriginality and Cultural Studies discusses the implications of the use of language, especially in the politically loaded relationships between the speakers and those spoken about. Muecke addresses the idea of representation and asks us whose representation it is. Is it Academia giving aboriginals a 'representation' in society or do aboriginals themselves exercise the right to 'representation'? - Rhian Healy in API Review of Books."
Nichol, Raymond Matthew. 2005. Socialization, Land, and Citizenship Among Aboriginal Australians: Reconciling Indigenous and Western Forms of Education. Lewiston: Edward Mellen Press. 480 pages. ISBN: 978-0-7734-5935-9.
"Culturally appropriate education for people of Indigenous descent is not a privilege; it is a fundamental right. Such an education is also a powerful resource for all educators and all cultures. This book explores Indigenous Australian education, particularly over the last thirty years. The major objective is to examine issues of education and pedagogy and to suggest forms of reconciliation between the dominant Western education and Indigenous forms of education. The work is grounded in an ethnographic case study and wide-ranging interaction and consultation with Indigenous Australians. The provision of the most appropriate education for Indigenous students is extraordinarily complex and presents an enormous challenge to educators, in Australia and elsewhere. The implications are profound; continued ignorance and arrogance from the dominant cultures will lead to even greater resentment, social alienation, poverty and divisiveness. The book explores these issues and concerns in both the broad historical, and more particular localized sense, each informing the other.
Contents: Preface by Professor Rob Gilbert; Acknowledgements; Introduction; Learning about Socialisation in the Indigenous World: The Wangaaypuwan and Wiradjuri; Transforming the 'Natives': Background to the Case Study; Researching Education and Indigenous Australians Examining Culture Contact: Colonialism and Resistance; From 'Dying Pillow' to Assimilation: Educational Implications; Educating for Self-Management, The 1960s to the 2000s; Aboriginal Education in New South Wales: Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries; Education for the Indigenous Community; Education for Integration and Self-Management; Secondary Schooling: Towards a More Effective Pedagogy; Towards Reconciliation: Pedagogy and Citizenship; Appendices, 1,2,3,4; Bibliography; Index."
Sharpe, Margaret. 2005. Grammar and Texts of the Yugambeh-Bundjalung Dialect Chain in Eastern Australia. München: Lincom Europe. 194 pages. ISBN: 3895867845 (pb).
"The Yugambeh-Bandjalang chain of dialects (most
now either extinct or having only limited use) stretches from some 16 km south
of Brisbane to north of Yamba on the mouth of the Clarence River in New South
Wales, and inland almost to Tenterfield (NSW) and past Warwick (Qld). It is a
member of the Pama-Nyungan family of Australian languages. Dialect names (which
include Yugambeh, Bandjalang and Gidhabal) were mostly named for the way some
words were pronounced, the named being assigned sometimes by the group in
question and sometimes by their neighbours. Reasonably uncommon among
Australian languages there are fricative allophonic variations in the four
obstruents (written b, d, j/dh/dj, g/k in practical orthographies); word
medially /d/ and /j/ collapse together to an interdental fricative, an alveopalatal
stop or a sibilant fricative according to dialect.
Worby, Gus and Lester-Irabinna Rigney (eds). 2006. Sharing Spaces: Indigenous and Non-Indigenous Responses to Story, Country and Rights. Bentley, Perth: API Network, Australian Research Institute, Curtin University of Technology. 488 pages. ISBN 1-920845 20-8.
" This broad-ranging, interrelated collection of conversations and essays by Elders, Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars addresses a range of contemporary issues including the politics of sharing space derived from a colonial history of non-sharing, the relationship between the stories Australians tell themselves about their place in the world as peoples and nation, the differing concepts of country and knowledge that give stories their context and meaning and the way this combination of grounded narratives animates and informs rights discourse - in Australia and beyond."
MELANESIA
Bamford, Sandra. 2007 (February). Biology Unmoored: Melanesian Reflections on Life and Biotechnology. Berkeley: University of California Press. 245 pages. ISBN: 978-0-520-24712-3 (hc) and 978-0-520-24713-0 (pb).
"Biology Unmoored is an engaging examination of what it means to live in a world that is not structured in terms of biological thinking. Drawing upon three years of ethnographic research in the highlands of Papua New Guinea, Sandra Bamford describes a world in which physiological reproduction is not perceived to ground human kinship or human beings' relationship to the organic world. Bamford also exposes the ways in which Western ideas about relatedness do depend on a notion of physiological reproduction. Her innovative analysis includes a discussion of the advent of assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs), the mapping of the human genome, cloning, the commodification of biodiversity, and the manufacture and sale of genetically modified organisms (GMOs).
Contents: List of Illustrations; Acknowledgments; Introduction: Conceptual Frameworks; 1. Cultural Landscapes; 2. Insubstantial Identities; 3. Embodiments of Detachment; 4. (Im)Mortal Undertakings; 5. Conceiving Global Identities; Conclusion: Conceptual; Displacements; Notes; References; Index.
Sandra Bamford is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Toronto. She is the editor of Embodying Modernity and Postmodernity: Ritual, Praxis and Social Change in Melanesia, and coeditor of Genealogy - Beyond Kinship: Sequence, Transmission and Essence in Ethnography and Social Theory."
Bamford, Sandra C. (ed.). 2006. Embodying Modernity and Post-Modernity: Ritual, Praxis, and Social Change in Melanesia. Durham: Carolina Academic Press. 316 pages. ISBN: 978-0-89089-476-7 (pb).
" This collection of original essays critically examines the relationship between ritual, embodiment, and social change in the South Pacific. Over the past few decades, the societies of Melanesia have undergone profound and revolutionary social change. Encounters with colonialism, postcolonialism, and the forces of globalization have put indigenous peoples in touch with processes of state formation, late capitalist culture, and the emergence of a complex network of transnational identities. In addition to shaping the contours of the nation state, these developments are having a profound impact on the nature of embodied experience. In recent years, many Melanesian societies have witnessed the rise of charismatic Christianity, changing gender configurations, and the growing use of consumerism as a means of defining new social and political hierarchies.
Embodying Modernity and Post-Modernity provides detailed analyses of those social changes that are becoming part of contemporary Melanesia. Written by scholarly experts with first-hand fieldwork experience, this volume furnishes novel insights concerning the social implications of modernity and postmodernity. More specifically, it addresses two interrelated themes: how the rise of new social and economic forms has influenced the ways in which Melanesians think about, experience and act upon their bodies, and the ways in which these new forms of bodily experience contribute to the emergence of new social and cultural identities.
Contents: 1. Bodies in Transition: An Introduction to Emerging Forms of Praxis in the Pacific, Sandra Bamford; 2. Producing Ömie Locality, Marta A. Rohatynskyj; 3. 'Our Skins are Weak': Ipili Modernity and the Demise of Discipline, Jerry Jacka; 4. Machine-Thinking: Changing Social and Bodily Divisions around the Ok Tedi Mining Project, Tony Crook; 5. 'Dying Culture' and Decaying Bodies, Thomas Strong; 6. Modalities of Modernity in Maisin Society, John Barker; 7. Unholy Noses, Sandra Bamford; 8. The Thickness of Blood: Kwoma Definitions of 'Us' and 'You,' Margaret Holmes Williamson; 9. 'Family Planning': The Politics of Reproduction in Central New Ireland, Karen Sykes; 10. Self-Decoration in Hagen and Duna (Papua New Guinea): Display and Disjuncture, Pamela J. Stewart and Andrew Strathern; 11. A Body of Postcards from Vanuatu, Lamont Lindstrom; Afterword - Embodied Historicities, Eric Hirsch. "
Claus, Marga. 2006. De vader van Serafyn. Amsterdam: Van Gennep. 320 pages. ISBN: 9789055156351.
"In 1962 laat de jonge franciscaan Gerhard het klooster achter zich om in de vroegere Nederlandse kolonie Nieuw-Guinea het bestaan te delen van de Papoea's. Het wordt de mooiste maar ook de zwaarste tijd van zijn leven. Twintig jaar lang verblijft hij bij een stam in het hooggebergte en deelt hij in hun lief en leed. Door een bijzondere samenloop van omstandigheden komt Gerhard ertoe zich over een vondeling te ontfermen; hij neemt haar aan als dochter en noemt haar Serafyn. Langzaam aan worden hem de idealen duidelijk van zijn dertiende-eeuwse leermeester, Franciscus van Assisi.
Voor zijn gezondheid moet hij begin jaren tachtig voorgoed terug naar Friesland. Als hij in 1996 zijn aantekeningen begint uit te werken, confronteert zijn vroegere hulp Taddeus hem met de bloedige werkelijkheid waarin de Papoea's leven: aanhoudende schendingen van de mensenrechten door het Indonesische leger, plunderingen van de bodemschatten, de wanhoop van de vrijheidsstrijders. Gerhard sterft voor zijn verslag af is. Zijn medebroeder Johan, net terug uit Nieuw-Guinea, werkt de notities om tot een boek, om zo de verhalen door te geven over het volk waarvan ze beiden zo veel hielden.
Het verhaal van De vader van Serafyn baseerde Marga Claus op de ervaringen van een Friese pater die naar de missie in Nieuw-Guinea ging. Zo komt ze tot dit indringende tijdsbeeld waarin de moeilijkheden van het missieleven en het tragische lot van de Papoea's elkaar raken.
Oorspronkelijke titel: De heit fan Serafyn."
Friedlaender, Jonathan S. (ed.). 2007 (April). Population Genetics, Linguistics, and Culture History in the Southwest Pacific. New York: Oxford University Press. 272 pages. ISBN: 978-0-19-530030-7 (hb).
"The broad arc of islands north of Australia that extends from Indonesia east towards the central Pacific is home to a set of human populations whose concentration of diversity is unequaled elsewhere. Approximately 20% of the worlds languages are spoken here, and the biological and genetic heterogeneity among the groups is extraordinary. Anthropologist W.W. Howells once declared diversity in the region so Protean as to defy analysis. However, this book can now claim considerable success in describing and understanding the origins of the genetic and linguistic variation there.
In order to cut through this biological knot, the authors have applied a comprehensive battery of genetic analyses to an intensively sampled set of populations, and have subjected these and complementary linguistic data to a variety of phylogenetic analyses. This has revealed a number of heretofore unknown ancient Pleistocene genetic variants that are only found in these island populations, and has also identified the genetic footprints of more recent migrants from Southeast Asia who were the ancestors of the Polynesians. The book lays out the very complex structure of the variation within and among the islands in this relatively small region, and a number of explanatory models are tested to see which best account for the observed pattern of genetic variation here. The results suggest that a number of commonly used models of evolutionary divergence are overly simple in their assumptions, and that often human diversity has accumulated in very complex ways.
Contents: Part One: The Framework: 1. Introduction (Jonathan S. Friedlaender); 2. Island Melanesian Pasts - A view from Archaeology (Glenn Summerhayes); 3. Recent Research on the Historical Relationships of the Papuan Languages: or, What does Linguistics Say about the Prehistory of Melanesia? (Andrew Pawley); Part Two: Core Studies in Northern Island Meleanesia: 4. Mitochondrial DNA Variation in Northern Island Melanesia (Jonathan S Friedlaender, Francoise R. Friedlaender, Jason A. Hodgson, Stacy McGrath, Matthew Stoltz, George Koki, Theodore G. Schurr, D. Andrew Merriwether); 5. Y Chromosome Variation in Island Melanesia (Laura Scheinfeldt, Francoise R. Friedlaender, Jonathan S. Friedlaender, Krista Latham, George Koki, Tatiana Karafet, Michael Hammer, Joseph Lorenz); 6. Pigmentation and Candidate Gene Variation in Northern Island Melanesia (Heather Norton, George Koki, Jonathan Friedlaender); 7. The Distribution of an Insertion/Deletion Polymorphism on Chromosome 22 (Renato Robledo); 8. The Languages of Island Melanesia (Eva Lindström, Angela Terrill, Ger Reesink, Michael Dunn); Chapter 9. Inferring Prehistory from Genetic, Linguistic, and Geographic Variation (Keith Hunley, Michael Dunn, Eva Lindström, Ger Reesink, Angela Terrill, Heather Norton, Laura Scheinfeldt, Françoise R. Friedlaender, D. Andrew Merriwether, George Koki, Jonathan S. Friedlaender); Part Three: Related Studies in Regional Phylogenetics: 10. Animal Translocations, Genetic Variation and the Human Settlement of the Pacific (Elizabeth Matisoo-Smith); 11. Viral Phylogeny and Human Migration in the Southwest Pacific (Jill Czarnecki, Jonathan S. Friedlaender, Gerald Stoner); 12. Origin of Plant Exploitation in Near Oceania: A Review (Robin Allaby); 13. Extraordinary Population Structure Among the Baining of New Britain (Jason Wilder and Michael F. Hammer); 14. Allotype Variation in the Southwest Pacific (Moses S. Schanfield, Frank. B. Austin, Peter. B. Booth, D. Carlton. Gajdusek, Richard. W. Hornabrook, Keith. P. W. McAdams, Jan. J. Saave, Susan. W. Serjeantson, Graeme. W. Woodfield); 15. Neutral and Malaria Selected Polymorphisms of the Pacific (J. Koji Lum); 16. Conclusion (Jonathan S Friedlaender)."
Gunn, Michael. 2006. Ritual Art at the Source: Malagan on Tabar Island, New Ireland, Papua New Guinea. Belair, SA: Crawford House Publishing. 350 pages. ISBN: 1863332359 (hc).
"Some of the most fascinating masks and figurative sculpture created in the South Pacific have come from the Tabar Islands of New Ireland in Papua New Guinea. Ever since this art tradition was brought to Western attention by Abel Tasman in 1643, scholars have been seduced by the urge to interpret the symbolism apparent on many of these artworks. Explorers first, then whalers, traders, missionaries, and professional artefact collectors managed to bring to the West perhaps 5000 works of art from northern New Ireland, including Tabar, and many of the surviving artworks are to be found today in museums and private collections throughout the West.
Michael Gunn was one of those scholars who was seduced by the almost irresistible urge to interpret the symbolism found on malagan artworks from northern New Ireland. After several years of preliminary research in museums in the West, he traveled to the Tabar Islands, legendary source of the malagan ritual that resulted in the creation of many of these masks and painted wooden figures. He had anticipated that this work would be a form of ethnohistory - asking the old men about a tradition long dead, more an exercise in the effects of memory upon the re-creation of culture. But to his surprise Gunn found that malagan was still alive and actively practiced by the 2500 people living on Tabar in 1982.
This book results from a bargain that Gunn struck with some of the Big Men on Tabar - they would direct his research, and he would eventually publish it. His initial interest in symbolism soon dwindled when he was repeatedly told that 'we could reinvent meanings for you, if you want, but its our reality that we want you to document'. 'Our reality' entailed visiting every village on Tabar, locating each of the owners of the art-producing malagan ritual, then asking him (or occasionally her) which part of the malagan ritual property he or she owned. This resulted in descriptions of more than 450 distinct works of malagan sculpture and masks, as well as providing the basis for an understanding of a structure of the malagan subtraditions on Tabar - the structure that contains all the ownership rights of malagan. For it became quite apparent that all aspects of malagan were controlled by copyright, and that no malagan object could be created outside the copyright system. But it was also made clear that non-malagan art objects (including masks) could be created and used outside but in close proximity to the malagan system.
In addition to providing a description and analysis of the malagan art-producing ritual traditions as practiced on Tabar in the late 20th century, this book also includes a number of photographs of malagan figures and masks, as well as other objects of material culture that were collected from the Tabar Islands during the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Contents: Preface; Acknowledgements; List of maps, illustrations and tables; 1. Introduction; 2. Malagan ritual behaviour: Death and burial sequence; 3. Malagan ritual behaviour: Commemorative sequence; 4. Social and cultural connections of malagan; 5. Taxonomic structure and typology of malagan on Tabar; 6. Conclusions; Appendices: A. Malagan big-name subtraditions and components; B. Selected tap transcripts of oral traditions, recorded from Tabar, 1982, 1983-84; Glossary; References; Index.
Michael Gunn became fascinated by the art of New Ireland when he worked as a volunteer the Australian Museum in Sydney in 1980. Later, as a curator at the Northern Territory Museum in Darwin, Gunn and his wife, Bee, documented malagan ritual on the Tabar Islands. From 1994 to 1999, while working as a curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, he was able to examine thousands of pieces from New Ireland, which were collected in the 19th century and are now in museums in Europe. He is currently curator for Oceanic Art at the Saint Louis Art Museum, and has just returned from his third field-trip to New Ireland."
Kivimäki, Timo. 2006. Initiating a Peace Process in Papua: Actors, Issues, Process, and the Role of the International Community. Honolulu: East-West Center. 88 pages. ISBN: 978-1-932728-49-1 (online version). Retrieved May 21, 2007, from the World Wide Web at: http://www.eastwestcenter.org/stored/pdfs/PS025.pdf.
"Drawing on the Aceh peace process that resulted in the Helsinki agreement, this study investigates the possibility of a peace process to resolve the conflict over the political status of Papua vis-à-vis Indonesia."
Lal, Brij Vilash. 2006. Islands of Turmoil: Elections and Politics in Fiji. Canberra: Asia Pacific Press. 282 pages. ISBN: 978-0731537518.
"It is not so much whether things are not as bad as they ought to be or could have been. It is, rather, whether things could be, could have been, much better.
By rights, the island nation of Fiji should be thriving. It is easily the most developed country in the South Pacific; it is a hub for regional transportation and communication links, the home of international diplomatic, educational and aid organisations, with a talented multiethnic population. Yet, since its independence it has suffered two military coups in 1987 and an attempted putsch in 2000, resulting in strained race relations, damage to the economy, poorly developed public institutions, and disrupted improvements to essential infrastructure, education and social and medical services.
Brij V. Lal examines these issues historically by focusing on the last two decades of Fiji's post-independence life. He maps the contours of Fiji's political development in an attempt to shed light on Fiji's social and economic fragmentation."
Majnep, Ian Saem and Ralph Bulmer. 2007. Animals the Ancestors Hunted: An Account of the Wild Mammals of the Kalam Area, Papua New Guinea. Edited by Robin Hide and Andrew Pawley. Illustrated by Christopher Healey. Belair, SA: Crawford House Publishing Australia. 452 pages. ISBN: 978-1-86333-298-9 (pb).
"This is the second volume of a planned trilogy on Kalam ethnobiology by Ian Saem Majnep, a native speaker of Kalam, and Ralph Bulmer, a social anthropologist, the first being Birds of My Kalam Country, which appeared in 1977.
The present book has an unusual history. Majnep completed the Kalam text of Animals the Ancestors Hunted in the early 1980s. Before Bulmer died in 1988 he had translated the Kalam text into English and added commentaries to some of the chapters. The task of editing the bilingual version as a series of working papers then fell to Andrew Pawley, Bulmer's literary executor. Later, in accordance with the wishes of Majnep and Bulmer, Robin Hide and Pawley prepared for publication an English-only version of the book, a task that occupied several years.
Majnep has now drafted most of the Kalam text for the third volume of the trilogy, Kalam Plant Lore. However, a vast amount of work remains to be done before an English version of this with commentaries will be ready
The Book is a very special kind of animal book. The first author, Majnep, grew up on the edge of the cool upper montane forest, hunting, foraging and gardening and absorbing an immense body of traditional knowledge and belief about animals and wider Kalam natural history. Saem gives an insider's view of the wild mammals of his home area and shows how Kalam animal lore is woven into the customary life of his people.
Some 53 species of wild terrestrial mammals (28 marsupials, 24 rodents and the wild New Guinea singing dog) are present in and near the Kaironk Valley. The Kalam high-order taxonomy of mammals is very different to that of Western zoologists. They divide terrestrial mammals into two broad categories: kmn 'game mammals', that is, the larger marsupials and giant rats, that are mainly arboreal and are men's prime game, and as 'small mammals and frogs', that are mainly ground-dwelling and are hunted chiefly by women. In over twenty chapters, Saem describes these animals, grouping them in terms of their appearance, habitats and behaviour. Over the past 50 years the Kalam have gone from pre-contact isolation to partial participation in the modern world. This shift has come at a price - much of the natural history knowledge that Saem records is in danger of being lost to younger Kalam, and to the scientific world.
The book includes three major appendices detailing the mammals recorded in the Kalam region, their Kalam names, and the hundreds of plants that are of significance in the text. About the authors. Ian Saem Majnep was born about 1948 among the Kalam people, in the remote southwest corner of Madang Province, Papua New Guinea, a region that came under government control in 1959. At the age of 15 Saem met the anthropologist Ralph Bulmer, who had begun an interdisciplinary team study of Kalam society, language and environment. Later he became Bulmer's leading field assistant and co-author in a series of projects. Their first book was the ground-breaking Birds of My Kalam Country, published in 1977. Saem then began to write in Kalam the core chapters of Animals the Ancestors Hunted. Bulmer translated these and added commentaries to some. Ralph Bulmer was Professor of Anthropology at the University of PNG from 1968-73 and then at the University of Auckland until 1988. Much of his own extensive fieldwork among the Kalam was devoted to ethnobiology. After Bulmer's premature death in 1988 the tasks of completing the commentaries, indices and appendices and editing the English text for publication were undertaken by Andrew Pawley and Robin Hide.
About the editors and the illustrator. Robin Hide is an ecological anthropologist who has worked extensively in PNG. Andrew Pawley is a linguist who has worked with the Kalam since 1963. Christopher Healey, who drew the illustrations, is a social anthropologist who studied bird of paradise hunting and trade among the Maring, the eastern neighbours of the Kalam."
Naepels, Michel and Christine Salomon (eds). 2007. Terrains et destins de Maurice Leenhardt. Paris: Éditions de l'École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS). 166 pages. ISBN: 978-2-7132-2115-6.
"Table of contents (all articles in French): M. Naepels and C. Salomon: Between Ethnology and Moral Issues; B. de L'Estoile: Politics of the Soul: Ethnology and Colonial Humanism; F. Keck: Mythical or mystical mentality? Maurice Leenhardt and Lucien Levy-Bruhl; M. Naepels: The Concept of Person and Missionnary Dynamics; M. Naepels: Maurice Leenhardt's Fieldwork Practices; M. P. Salaün: Missionary Education, Colonial Education (Do Neva, 1903-1926); H. Mokaddem: Kanak uses of Social Sciences: Jean-Marie Tjibaou Reader of Maurice Leenhardt; Annex: Jean-Marie Tjibaou: A Lecture on Leenhardt, Musee de L'Homme Symposium, Paris, April 13th 1978.
By examining the practices and the ideas of Maurice Leenhardt (1878-1954), missionary and ethnologist of New Caledonia, in several universes, this book sheds light on the production of the ethnographic knowledge in a colonial situation, on the relation between colonization, mission and the anthropological knowledge, and on Christianity in Oceania. Close to Lucien Levy-Bruhl and Marcel Mauss, a colonial reformist of humanistic inspiration - but not a forerunner of the Kanak national movement - , he took part in the institutionalization of ethnology in 1930s' France. Taking up James Clifford's call to read Leenhardt anew, this volume shows how the missionary project of M. Leenhardt directed his theoretical interests (studying mind or mentality with a view to conversion ), his problematization focused on the person, the family and the religion, his 'fieldwork', or educational practices. Back to the 2003 debate, the book closely examines the relationship between Leenhardt and Levy-Bruhl, and states that if Leenhardt clearly was anti-rational and maybe anti-individual, he certainly not ended up anti-colonial and anti-missionary."
Papoutsaki, Evangelia and Dick Rooney (eds). 2006. Media, Information and Development in Papua New Guinea. Madang: Divine Word University Press. 227 pages. ISBN: 9980- 9956-1-0 (pb).
"In Papua New Guinea, as in other South Pacific Islands, there has been a noticeable lack of research into media and little information about how people use the media. Lack of proper research in this field has further contributed to a general perception that communication is not a priority for the country's development.
This book touches on a wide number of media issues in PNG, such as ethics, freedom of expression, ownership, journalism education, community media, culture and identity and government and media. Its approached these issues through a communication and development perspective."
Scott, Michael W. 2007 (March). The Severed Snake: Matrilineages, Making Place, and a Melanesian Christianity in Southeast Solomon Islands. Durham: Carolina Academic Press. 414 pages. ISBN: 978-1-59460-153-8 (pb).
"Examining the secretive dynamics of competing land claims among the Arosi of the island of Makira (Solomon Islands), Michael W. Scott demonstrates the explanatory power of ethnographic attention to the nexus between practice and indigenous theories of being.
His focus on the ways in which Arosi understand their matrilineages to be the bearers of discrete categorical essences exclusively emplaced in ancestral territories forms the basis for a timely and accessible rethink of current anthropological representations of Melanesian sociality and opens up new lines of inquiry into the transformative relationships among gendered metaphors of descent, processes of place making, and the indigenization of Christianity.
Informed by original historical research and newly documented variants of regionally important mythic traditions, The Severed Snake is a work of multidisciplinary scope that proposes critical and methodological shifts relevant to historians, development professionals, folklorists, and scholars of religion as well as anthropologists.
Contents: List of Illustrations; Series Editors' Preface; Acknowledgments; Prologue; Abbreviations; Introduction Comparative Ontology; 1. The Appearance of an Arosi Village; 2. Moving Toward Heterotopia; 3. 'Where is the Kastom Landowner?' Maasina Rule in Arosi; 4. Cutting the Cord: Reproduction as Cosmogony; 5. Re-Presenting Autochthonous Histories; 6. Being and Becoming Auhenua; 7. Present Primordialities; 8. The Severed Snake: Scales of Origin; 9. Arosi Ethno-theologies; Glossary; Bibliography; Index."
Stanley, Nick (ed.). 2007 (Spring). The Future of Indigenous Museums: Perspectives from the Southwest Pacific. New York: Berghahn Books. 272 pages. ISBN 978-1-84545-188-2 (hb).
"Indigenous museums and cultural centres have sprung up across the developing world, and particularly in the Southwest Pacific. They derive from a number of motives, ranging from the commercial to the cultural political (and many combine both). A close study of this phenomenon is not only valuable for museological practice but, as has been argued, it may challenge our current bedrock assumptions about the very nature and purpose of the museum. This book looks to the future of museum practice through examining how museums have evolved particularly in the non-western world to incorporate the present and the future in the display of culture. Of particular concern is the uses to which historic records are put in the service of community development and cultural renaissance.
Nick Stanley is Director of Research and Chair of Postgraduate Studies at Birmingham Institute of Art and Design, University of Central England. He has worked on collections and display within museums of Oceanic materials both in Melanesia as well as Europe and North America. His current work is on the artistic production of the Asmat people in West Papua."
Stewart, Pamela J. and Andrew Strathern (eds). 2007 (June). Exchange and Sacrifice. Durham: Carolina Academic Press. 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.'"
World Bank, Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID), and Asian Development Bank. 2007 (May). Papua New Guinea: Strategic Directions for Human Development. London: World Bank Publications, Eurospan Group. 250 pages. ISBN: 978-0-8213-6987-6 (pb).
"There is an emerging consensus in Papua New Guinea (PNG) - both at the governmental level and among civil society more generally - that there is a large unfinished human development agenda. Currently health, HIV/AIDS, and education outcomes are far less than commensurate with expenditure effort, and provision of basic services in many parts of the country is failing. The authors show the critical need to focus public resources on outcomes and cost-effectiveness while reducing sectoral fragmentation and addressing the decline in the integrity of government systems."
Young, Douglas W. 2004. "Our Land is Green and Black": Conflict Resolution in Enga. Goroka: Melanesian Institute. 318 pages. ISBN: 9980-65-002-8. Point No. 28.
"This book is concerned with conflict resolution. Young explores various situations and developments in Enga as conflicting elements are resolved, and in doing so he describes the numerous cultural relationships and values that are involved in a Melanesian society. This is certainly one of the most outstanding books that deal with modern and traditional Papua New Guinea as it moves into the third millennium."
MICRONESIA
Wright, Derrick. 2005. Pacific Victory: Tarawa to Okinawa, 1943-1945. Stroud: Sutton Publishing. 256 pages. ISBN: 9780750937467 (hb). Foreword: Brig. Gen. E.H. Simmons USMC.
"The American 'island-hopping' campaign in the Pacific during the Second World War was a crucial factor in the eventual defeat of Japan in 1945. The assault and capture of these islands meant US bombers and their fighter escorts could now reach mainland Japan, eventually crippling Japan's war economy. In November 1943, Tarawa tested the doctrine of seaborne assault to the limit in a 76-hour battle in which Marines waded ashore from the surrounding reefs in the face of murderous enemy fire. In the Marshall Islands in the following January, the lessons learned were put into practice and Army units were deployed alongside the Marines. In June 1944 the US Marine Corps secured the main islands of the Marianas group to facilitate the construction of massive airfields for the bombing campaign against the Japanese mainland. Peleliu in September 1944 was the 'unknown battle', where a combination of poor planning, dubious leadership and a major change in Japanese defensive strategy turned what was expected to be a three-day battle into one of the most savage battles of the war. Iwo Jima in February 1945 was a titanic struggle that eclipsed all these battles, as three Marine divisions struggled in appalling conditions against an enemy for whom surrender was not an option. That April a massive Marine/Army operation against Okinawa was a foretaste of what could be expected in the proposed assault on the Japanese mainland. These battles were all characterised by savage fighting and heavy casualties on both sides. Employing archive colour and black and white photographs, maps and first-hand accounts, the author relates these pivotal battles to the wider struggle against the Japanese in the Pacific."
Wukovits, John F. 2006. One Square Mile of Hell: The Battle of Tarawa. New York: New American Library (NAL) Caliber. 320 pages. ISBN: 978-0451218476 (hc).
"In the Tarawa atoll lies the tiny islet of Betio - barely a speck on the map in the Pacific Ocean. In November 1943, the young men of the 2d Marine Division watched in awe as naval and air bombardments smashed and incinerated the island and its Japanese defenses. Then they were to simply sweep across the island, clearing out any token resistance, and return to their waiting ships.
But when the Marines landed, the truth became nightmarishly clear as the Japanese - most of whom had, incredibly, survived the onslaught - poured out of their protective subterranean bunkers and began one of the most brutal and bloody encounters of World War II. During the ensuing three days of nonstop fighting, the entire island was transformed into an all-encompassing kill zone. Attackers and defenders faced off with one another over every square inch of sand in a battle with no defined front lines, in which combatants found themselves mixed together in a chaotic hell of cross fires, and where there was no possibility of retreat - if only because there was nowhere to retreat to. It was a clash that would leave both sides stunned and exhausted, and prove both the fighting mettle of the Americans and the fanatical devotion of the Japanese.
Drawn from new sources, such as participants' letters and diaries and exclusive firsthand interviews with survivors of those bloody three days, One Square Mile of Hell is the riveting true account of a battle between two determined foes, neither of whom would ever look at the other in the same way again."
POLYNESIA
Biggs, Bruce. 2006. Let's Learn Maori. Reprint of the 1998 edition. Auckland: Auckland University Press. 208 pagers. ISBN: 1- 86940-186-7 (pb).
"Let's Learn Maori has been a best-selling self-help tutor in the Maori language since 1969. This well-established and highly respected guide to the study of Maori has been revised and now appears in a new, larger, easy-to-read format. Designed by Maori language expert Bruce Biggs, it covers the parts of speech, the structure of each type of phrase, the combinations of phrases that form simple sentences, and each aspect of grammar (all illustrated by sentence examples). Let's Learn Maori has a unique referencing system with a combined vocabulary and index and also contains a section on pronunciation."
Blackburn, Mark. 2005. Tattoos from Paradise: Traditional Polynesian Patterns. Atglen, PA: Schiffer Publishing. 208 pages. ISBN: 978-0764309410 (hc).
"Traditional tattooing designs are depicted from the exotic Pacific Polynesian cultures of Easter Island, Hawaii, the Marquesas, New Zealand, Samoa, Tahiti and Tonga. The actual process and ceremonies involved in tattooing are described and illustrated with over 250 drawings and color illustrations of native people. Included are actual 19th century photographs as well as early exploration art, paintings, drawings, engravings, and artifacts all relating to tattooing."
Erueti, Andrew and Claire Charters (eds). 2007 (April). Maori Property in the Seabed and Foreshore: The Last Frontier. Wellington: Victoria University Press. ISBN: 9780-86473-5539 (pb).
"In this recent era of indigenous peoples' rights recognition, many states around the globe are faced with reconciling the pre-existing, inherent rights of indigenous peoples with those held and asserted by the state. Within New Zealand we remain engaged in this process of reconciliation and while there has been significant progress, there remain many outstanding and controversial questions about the status of Maori and their treaty and customary rights. This fact was brought into sharp focus by the Court of Appeal decision of Ngati Apa.
The Ngati Apa decision was one of the most controversial modern decisions on Maori rights. Did it grant Maori tribes exclusive rights to the New Zealand coastline or was it merely an endorsement of their right to engage in long-practised traditional activities? It was quickly decided by government that Parliament would intervene and enact legislation to administer Maori customary claims to foreshore. However, the speed with which the legislation was enacted left little time for meaningful debate and reflection.
Now that the dust has settled it is time to reflect more fully on these matters. This collection of essays does not aim to be an exhaustive treatment of the legal issues raised. It does, however, address many of the salient issues raised. Topics covered include the historical origins of Ngati Apa, how the Foreshore and Seabed Act (FSA) compares with schemes created in other countries with indigenous inhabitants, and how the FSA stacks up against international human rights law and environmental law.
They are essays written by academics on topics that fall within their area of expertise. The general tenor is that New Zealand in its haste has enacted legislation that undermines the rights of Maori tribes. In short, the view is that the reconciliation process has tipped too far in favour of the rights of the state and non-Maori. While the foreshore may be the last frontier in terms of terra firma in this country, there are many challenging issues ahead of us."
Henare, Amiria. 2005. Museums, Anthropology, and Imperial Exchange. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 344 pages. ISBN: 9780521835916.
"Amiria Henare explores the study of material culture in the development of anthropology and shows that the collection of artefacts and their formal study, both in museums and in the field, have been central anthropological strategies over the past two centuries. Scotland and New Zealand provide the two principal ethnographic bases for Dr Henare's pioneering work, as she traces the movement across space and time of objects now held in contemporary collections. Using evidence from across the British Empire, Dr Henare demonstrates how and why things were bought, exchanged and stolen, and carried across the oceans to reach their final institutional settings, and how the material, social and intellectual 'worlds' often invoked by scholars of imperialism were mutually constructed, with artefacts themselves constituting and instantiating social relations. This book is a major contribution to historical anthropology and imperial history, and to our understanding of the material past and present.
Contents: 1. String games; 2. Objects of exploration; 3. Objects of knowledge; 4. Improvement and imperial exchange; 5. Colonial baggage; 6. 'Storehouses of science'; 7. Trophies and souvenirs; 8. Things and words; 9. Words and things; Appendix; Index."
Johnson, Henry Mabley and Brian Moloughney (eds). 2006. Living Together: Towards Inclusive Communities. Dunedin: Otago University Press. 240 pages. ISBN: 1-877372-29-3 (pb).
"Accessible book about community planning for professionals/leaders. Expert advice and practical solutions for community development. Topical NZ case studies. Well illustrated with photographs and diagrams.
How do we develop inclusive, engaged communities? In this book experts in community planning review some of the challenges, strategies and solutions, using New Zealand case studies. The needs of specific groups - whether migrant, the young, elderly or indigenous - and community ties with local and central government are explored. The Treaty of Waitangi, the influence of feminism and the development of online communities are other aspects that are considered. Importantly, the book provides tools for achieving healthy commuities, with strategies to empower their members and ensure they are heard.
Contents: 1. Introduction; Part I: Empowering our diverse communities: 2. Central government and its role in community planning; 3. Treaty values and the Resource Management Act 1991; 4. Planning for cultural diversity ; 5. Is New Zealand a post-feminist paradise? 6. Creating welcoming communities for children and young people; 7. Planning for an ageing population; 8. Communities online; Part 2: Tools for achieving better communities: 9. From floral clocks to civic flourish; 10. Theoretical and practical co-management: an indigenous perspective; 11. Design-led participatory planning; 12. Building community consensus and social capital; 13. Community development; 14. 'Getting on': living close together; 15. Healthy communities; 16. Planning to live together.
Claire Freeman is Director of the Planning Programme, University of Otago. She has held lecturing posts at universities in Britain, South Africa and New Zealand. She was a planner for the Urban Wildlife Trust in Birmingham (UK). Michelle Thompson-Fawcett is Senior Lecturer in Planning and Environmental Management at the University of Otago. She worked in planning practice for ten years. With Claire Freeman, she co-edited Living Space: Towards sustainable settlements in NZ (Otago, 2003)."
Lee, Georgia. 2006. Rapa Nui, Island of Memory. Los Osos: Easter Island Foundation. 212 pages. ISBN 1-880636-23-9 (pb).
"This book is a celebration of the people of Rapa Nui, embracing their continuity with the past. Georgia Lee's memoir of her life on Easter Island in the 1980s is a rollicking good story, by turns hilarious and poignant. Oh, to have been there, in those simpler days! Lee's fieldwork has taken her to Rapa Nui countless times, often for extended periods. She is perhaps as uniquely comfortable deciphering the history of the place as she is among the people themselves, who have moved from isolation to being residents of a prized destination for tourists." From the Introduction by Beverley Haun.
Paterson, Lachy. 2006. Colonial Discourses: Niupepa Maori 1855-1863. Dunedin: Otago University Press. 206 Pages. ISBN: 978-1-877372-26-1 (pb).
"First book on Maori newspapers in this vital period in Maori-Pakeha relations, leading into the wars of the 1860s. Uses an under-utilised resource of great value. Analyses and discusses content, much written by Maori. Provides translations of all Maori text discussed.
In 1855, most Maori lived in a tribal setting, as they expected, exercising the chiefly rights guaranteed by the Treaty of Waitangi. But their world was changing. Many Maori had entered the market economy, most had converted to Christianity, many could read and write, some had sold land to the government. These trends pleased the government, which envisaged a New Zealand dominated by Europeans, with the benefits of European civilisation being extended to Maori, elevating them socially and economically. Ultimately the two races would become he iwi kotahi - one people.
The government used its own newspaper, Te Karere Maori, to disseminate this message to Maori. Other newspapers were published by government agents, evangelical Pakeha, the Wesleyan Church and the rival Maori government, the Kingitanga. But while the newspapers were used for propaganda, they provided a forum, with many Maori debating the issues of the day. As a result, this book is able to illuminate the whole colonial discourse between Maori and Pakeha as it appeared in the Maori-language newspapers.
Contents: Introduction; 1. The Newspapers; 2. Literacy and Education; 3. Language; 4. Propaganda; 5. Law; 6. Civilisation; 7. Politics; 8. And More Politics; 9. Conclusion.
Lachy Paterson is graduate of the University of Otago and lecturer in Maori History at Massey University, Palmerston North. His research interests include nineteenth-century Maori-Pakeha race relations, Maori social, religions and political history, and the New Zealand Land Wars."
Reed, A.W., and Ross Calman. 2006. Reed Book of Maori Exploration: Stories of Voyage and Discovery. Auckland: Reed Publishing. 320 pages. ISBN: 079001095X (hb).
"The Reed Book of Maori Exploration is a revision of A.W. Reed's Treasury of Maori Exploration (1977). Sensitively reworked for the 21st century, the Reed Book of Maori Exploration presents A.W. Reed's lively retellings of these classic stories of waka, voyaging and discovery.
The stories gathered together here are central to Maori. Sourced from tribal traditions throughout the country, they also explain many familiar New Zealand place names - an interesting subject in its own right. New Zealanders from all backgrounds will find the stories appealing and fascinating.
Like its companion volume, the highly acclaimed Reed Book of Maori Mythology (2004), this is the definitive reference work on its subject."
Stafford, Jane and Mark Williams. 2007 (April). Maoriland: New Zealand Literature 1872 - 1914. Wellington: Victoria University Press. 350 pages. ISBN: 978-0864735225 (pb).
"The literature of Maoriland, as New Zealand was popularly known from the 1880s to the beginning of the First World War, remains the 'black hole' in New Zealand's literary memory. In the 1930s Allen Curnow and Denis Glover associated the Maoriland writers with sentiment, gentility and colonial deference. Today, Maoriland evokes a world of saccharine fantasy in which Maori warriors in heroic attitudes and Maori maidens in seductive ones inhabited outmoded Victorian literary forms, while at the same time the business of settlement sidelined and dispossessed actual Maori.
Maoriland: New Zealand Literature 1872-1914 argues that such glib dismissals of the past do disservice to the present, seeing in the writing of Maoriland something more complex and more diverse: the beginnings of a self-consciously New Zealand literature, which adapts European literary forms to the new place. In this period are the origins of much of New Zealand's progressive social legislation, the roots of modern feminism, the establishment of ways in which we regard the natural world, and the manufacture of the defining roles by which we still enact our bicultural relations.
This is the first book to examine a crucial period in the shaping of New Zealand literature. It connects the cultural forms of Maoriland to both larger patterns of empire and contemporary criticism, looking at the writing in all its complexities, contradictions and evasions."
Vaite, Célestine Hitiura. 2006. Tiare: The Husband That Didn't Deserve His Wife and Everything That Happened Next. Melbourne: Text Publishing. 250 pages. ISBN: 1921145013.
"Pito Tehana is a big zéro - that's the word on the coconut radio. His lovely wife Materena is now a big radio star, and she hasn't turned into a show-off or anything. But Pito? He won't even take her to a restaurant to celebrate her success. He just smirks and says, 'Eh bien, I congratulate my wife in my own way.' Well, nobody would be surprised to see Materena trade him in. Especially after he gets a bit drunk and says something careless, something that hurts her so deeply she can't breathe.
In the keenly awaited third instalment of the Materena story, we see the Mahi and Tehana clans of Tahiti from the male perspective. And we find out that a man can do a lot with a second chance - if he's lucky enough to get one.
Célestine Hitiura Vaite was born in Tahiti. The daughter of a Tahitian mother and a French father who went back to his country after military service, she grew up in her big extended family in Faa'a, Tahiti, where storytelling was part of the every day life and women overcame obstacles with gusto and humour. Célestine's trilogy of Tahitian novels were the subject of heated international auctions in 2004, and will now be published in more than 10 countries."
Walters, Mark Jerome. 2006. Seeking the Sacred Raven: Politics and Extinction on a Hawaiian Island. Washington: Island Press. 293 pages. ISBN: 978-1559630900 (cloth).
"Will the 'Alala ever return to the wild? A bird sacred to Hawaiians and a member of the raven family, the 'Alala today survives only in captivity. How the species once flourished, how it has been driven to near-extinction, and how people struggled to save it, is the gripping story of Seeking the Sacred Raven.
For years, author Mark Jerome Walters has tracked the sacred bird's role in Hawaiian culture and the indomitable 'Alala's sad decline. Trekking through Hawaii's rain forests high on Mauna Loa Volcano (Hawai'i Island), talking with biologists, landowners, and government officials, he has woven an epic tale of missed opportunities and the best intentions gone awry. A species that once numbered in the thousands is now limited to about 50 captive birds.
Seeking the Sacred Raven is as much about people and culture as it is about failed policies. From the ancient Polynesians who first settled the island, to Captain Cook in the 18th century, to would-be saviors of the 'Alala in the 1990s, individuals with conflicting passions and priorities have shaped Hawaii and the fate of this dwindling cloud-forest species.
Walters captures brilliantly the internecine politics among private landowners, scientists, environmental groups, individuals and government agencies battling over the bird's habitat and protection. It's only one species, only one bird, but Seeking the Sacred Raven illustrates vividly the many dimensions of species loss, for the human as well as non-human world.
Contents: Prologue; Part I. Beginning in Deep Darkness: 1. Mountain of Emerald Light; 2. In the Beginning; 3. Captain Cook; 4. For Love of the Gods; 5. Paniolo, Hoku, and Mahoa; 6. Searching for the 'Alala; 7. The Raven-Warrior; 8. Abundance and Loss; 9. 'Umi's Children; Part II. Night Dawning Yesterday: 10. Escape to Captivity; 11. Mountain of Sorrow; 12. Barbara Churchill Lee; 13. The Bird Catcher; 14. Scientists to the Rescue; 15. Kapu; 16. Yahoo! 17. Helicopter Dreams; 18. Ali'i Neo; 19. Guardian Spirits ; Part III: Last Light: 20. Hope - At Last; 21. A Cruel Kindness; 22. Dead Ravens Flying; 23. The 'Alala from Hell ; 24. Regrets; 25. Heart of Koa; 26. Kahuna 'Alala ; 27. Broken Home; 28. Quagmire; 29. Last Light; Epilogue; Acknowledgments; Notes; Index."
Wright, Matthew. 2006. Two Peoples, One Land: The New Zealand Wars. Auckland: Reed Publishing. 285 pages. ISBN: 9780790010649 (pb).
"In Two Peoples, One Land historian Matthew Wright sheds new light on the New Zealand Wars, tackling several of the theories popularised by historian James Belich head on.
Wright, author of The Reed Illustrated History of New Zealand, views the New Zealand wars as a cultural collision - a clash of language and cultural differences. Though the physical conflict ended in 1872, Wright argues the issues and forces that gave rise to the New Zealand Wars are the same issues and forces with which contemporary New Zealand continues to grapple.
Wright's examination of this defining period in our history is a comprehensive and fascinating exploration of cultural miscommunication and the impact of Maori and Pakeha society on each other."
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