The Death of the Big Men and the Rise of the Big Shots

The Death of the Big Men and the Rise of the Big Shots PDF Author: Keir Martin
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 0857458736
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
In 1994, the Pacific island village of Matupit was partially destroyed by a volcanic eruption. This study focuses on the subsequent reconstruction and contests over the morality of exchanges that are generative of new forms of social stratification. Such new dynamics of stratification are central to contemporary processes of globalization in the Pacific, and more widely. Through detailed ethnography of the transactions that a displaced people entered into in seeking to rebuild their lives, this book analyses how people re-make sociality in an era of post-colonial neoliberalism without taking either the transformative power of globalization or the resilience of indigenous culture as its starting point. It also contributes to the understanding of the problems of post-disaster reconstruction and development projects.

The Death of the Big Men and the Rise of the Big Shots

The Death of the Big Men and the Rise of the Big Shots PDF Author: Keir Martin
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 0857458736
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 272

Get Book Here

Book Description
In 1994, the Pacific island village of Matupit was partially destroyed by a volcanic eruption. This study focuses on the subsequent reconstruction and contests over the morality of exchanges that are generative of new forms of social stratification. Such new dynamics of stratification are central to contemporary processes of globalization in the Pacific, and more widely. Through detailed ethnography of the transactions that a displaced people entered into in seeking to rebuild their lives, this book analyses how people re-make sociality in an era of post-colonial neoliberalism without taking either the transformative power of globalization or the resilience of indigenous culture as its starting point. It also contributes to the understanding of the problems of post-disaster reconstruction and development projects.

In Memory of Times to Come

In Memory of Times to Come PDF Author: Melissa Demian
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1800731175
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
Drawing on twenty years of research, this book examines the historical perspective of a Pacific people who saw “globalization” come and go. Suau people encountered the leading edge of missionization and colonialism in Papua New Guinea and were active participants in the Second World War. In Memory of Times to Come offers a nuanced account of how people assess their own experience of change over the course of a critical century. It asks two key questions: What does it mean to claim that global connections are in the past rather than the present or the future, and what does it mean to claim that one has lost one’s culture, but not because anyone else took it away or destroyed it?

Transformations of Gender in Melanesia

Transformations of Gender in Melanesia PDF Author: Martha Macintyre
Publisher: ANU Press
ISBN: 1760460893
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 202

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Book Description
Despite the plethora of research on gender and the many projects designed to improve their status in the Pacific region, women continue to be disadvantaged and marginalised in social, economic and political spheres. How are we to understand this and what does it mean for researchers, policy-makers and development practitioners? This book examines these questions, partly by looking back but also by continuing the effort to explain and understand gender inequities in the Pacific through reference to the concept of societies in transition. The contributors discuss emerging masculinities and femininities in the Pacific in order to chart the development of these in their contexts. Exploring how contemporary Pacific identities are shaped by local contexts and traditions, they focus on how these are remade through interaction with global ideas, images and practices, including new forms of Christianity and economic transformations. Grounded in recent, original research in both the villages and towns of Melanesia, the collection engages with the study of gender in Melanesia as well as scholarship on global modernities. ‘This collection is a welcome addition to the study of gender in Melanesia … Collectively, the essays present complex, locally contextualised and regionally situated case studies of gender transformation occurring alongside, in many instances, the re-codification of hegemonic gendered norms and practices. Gender is not understood as simply code for women in this volume rather, the majority of chapters incorporate men and masculinities in their analysis of gender relations and dynamics. A highlight of the collection is the attention paid to how “the politics of tradition” (and of modernity) are expressed through morally loaded concepts of the “good” or “bad” woman or man and vice versa.’ — Kalissa Alexeyeff, University of Melbourne

The Quest for the Good Life in Precarious Times

The Quest for the Good Life in Precarious Times PDF Author: Chris Gregory
Publisher: ANU Press
ISBN: 1760462012
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 245

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Book Description
The study of the quest for the good life and the morality and value it presupposes is not new. To the contrary, this is an ancient issue; its intellectual history can be traced back to Aristotle. In anthropology, the study of morality and value has always been a central concern, despite the claim of some scholars that the recent upsurge of interest in these issues is new. What is novel is how scholars in many disciplines are posing the value question in new ways. The global economic alignments of the present pose many political, moral and theoretical questions, but the central issue the essays in this collection address is: how do relatively poor people of the Australia-Pacific region survive in current precarious times? In looking to answer this question, contributors directly engage the values and concepts of their interlocutors. At a time when understanding local implications of global processes is taking on new urgency, these essays bring finely honed anthropological perspectives to matters of universal human concern-they offer radical empirical critique based on intensive fieldwork that will be of great interest to those seeking to comprehend the bigger picture.

Navigating the Future

Navigating the Future PDF Author: Monica Minnegal
Publisher: ANU Press
ISBN: 1760461245
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 315

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Book Description
Navigating the Future draws on long-term ethnographic fieldwork with Kubo people and their neighbours, in a remote area of Papua New Guinea, to explore how worlds are reconfigured as people become increasingly conscious of, and seek to draw into their own lives, wealth and power that had previously lain beyond their horizons. In the context of a major resource extraction project—the Papua New Guinea Liquefied Natural Gas (PNG LNG) Project–taking shape in the mountains to the north, the people in this area are actively reimagining their social world. This book describes changes in practice that result, tracing shifts in the ways people relate to the land, to each other and to outsiders, and the histories of engagement that frame those changes. Inequalities are emerging between individuals in access to paid work, between groups in potential for claiming future royalties, and between generations in access to information. As people at the village of Suabi strive to make themselves visible to the state and to petroleum companies, as legal entities entitled to receive benefits from the PNG LNG Project, they are drawing new boundaries around sets of people and around land and declaring hierarchical relationships between groups that did not exist before. They are struggling to make sense of a bureaucracy that is foreign to them, in a place where the state currently has minimal presence. A primary concern of Navigating the Future is with the processes through which these changes have emerged, as people seek to imagine—and work to bring about—a radically different future for themselves while simultaneously reimagining their own past in ways that validate those endeavours.

Environmental Transformations and Cultural Responses

Environmental Transformations and Cultural Responses PDF Author: Eveline Dürr
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137533498
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
This book explores the various ways in which different communities and peoples in Oceania respond to and engage with recent environmental challenges and concurrent socio-political reconfigurations. Based on empirical research, the book discusses topics such as belonging, emotional attachment to land, and new forms of environmental knowledge. The theoretical framework of the book is inspired by current debates among diverse conceptualisations of the environment and thus, of various ways of knowing, making sense of, and interacting with worlds. With this focus in mind, the book provides new insights into recent socio-cultural and environmental dynamics in the Pacific.

The Melanesian World

The Melanesian World PDF Author: Eric Hirsch
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131552967X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 676

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Book Description
This wide-ranging volume captures the diverse range of societies and experiences that form what has come to be known as Melanesia. It covers prehistoric, historic and contemporary issues, and includes work by art historians, political scientists, geographers and anthropologists. The chapters range from studies of subsistence, ritual and ceremonial exchange to accounts of state violence, new media and climate change. The ‘Melanesian world’ assembled here raises questions that cut to the heart of debates in the human sciences today, with profound implications for the ways in which scholars across disciplines can describe and understand human difference. This impressive collection of essays represents a valuable resource for scholars and students alike.

Emergent Masculinities in the Pacific

Emergent Masculinities in the Pacific PDF Author: Aletta Biersack
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351850474
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 275

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Book Description
Emergent Masculinities in the Pacific focuses on the plasticity and contingent nature of Pacific Island masculinities over the course of colonial and postcolonial histories. The several case histories concern the use of sports to recuperate but also refashion past masculinities in the name of contemporary masculine pride; the effects of market participation on younger males; how urbanisation and migration set the stage for experimenting with male gender and sexuality; the impacts of military and labour histories on local masculinities; masculinity and violence in war and gender violence; and structural violence and disruptions in male gender identity. Depicting contemporary Pacific Island societies as a space of gender invention and pluralism as indigenous gender regimes respond to the stimulations of transnational flows, the book asks a key historical question: Do emergent masculinities signal a rupture, or some continuity with, past masculinities? This book was originally published as a special double issue of The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology.

Citizens Without a City

Citizens Without a City PDF Author: Jan-Jonathan Bock
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253058872
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
In 2009, after seismic tremors struck the Italian mountain town of L'Aquila, survivors were subjected to a "second earthquake"—invasive media attention and a relief effort that left them in a state of suspended citizenship as they were forcibly resettled and had to envision a new future. In Citizens without a City, Jan-Jonathan Bock reveals how a disproportionate government response exacerbated survivors' sense of crisis, divided the local population, and induced new types of political action. Italy's disenfranchising emergency reaction relocated citizens to camps and sites across a ruined townscape, without a plan for restoration or return. Through grassroots politics, arts and culture, commemoration rituals, architectural projects, and legal avenues, local people now sought to shape their hometown's recovery. Bock combines an analysis of the catastrophe's impact with insights into post-disaster civic life, urban heritage, the politics of mourning, and community fragmentation. A fascinating read for anyone interested in urban culture, disaster, and politics, Citizens without a City illustrates how survivors battled to retain a sense of purpose and community after the L'Aquila earthquake.

Engaging with Strangers

Engaging with Strangers PDF Author: Debra McDougall
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1785330217
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
The civil conflict in Solomon Islands (1998-2003) is often blamed on the failure of the nation-state to encompass culturally diverse and politically fragmented communities. Writing of Ranongga Island, the author tracks engagements with strangers across many realms of life—pre-colonial warfare, Christian conversion, logging and conservation, even post-conflict state building. She describes startling reversals in which strangers become attached to local places, even as kinspeople are estranged from one another and from their homes. Against stereotypes of rural insularity, she argues that a distinctive cosmopolitan openness to others is evident in the rural Solomons in times of war and peace.