Politics and State Building in Solomon Islands

Politics and State Building in Solomon Islands
Author: Sinclair Dinnen
Publisher: ANU E Press
Total Pages: 310
Release: 2008-05-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1921313668

Politics and State Building in Solomon Islands examines a crisis moment in recent Solomon Islands history. Contributors examine what happened when unrest engulfed the capital of the small Melanesian country in the aftermath of the 2006 national elections, and consider what these events show about the Solomon Islands political system, the influence of Asian interests in business and politics, and why the crisis is best understood in the context of the country's volatile blend of traditional and modern politics. Until the disturbances of April 2006 and subsequent deterioration in bilateral relations between Australia and Solomon Islands under the Sogavare government, experts had hailed the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI) as an unqualified success. Some saw it as a model for 'cooperative intervention' in 'failing states' worldwide. Following these developments success seems less certain and aspects of the RAMSI model appear flawed. Using the case of Solomon Islands, this book raises fundamental questions about the nature of 'cooperative intervention' as a vehicle for state building, asking whether it should be construed as a mainly technical endeavour or whether it is unavoidably a political undertaking with political consequences. Providing a critical but balanced analysis, Politics and State Building in Solomon Islands has important implications for the wider debate about international state-building interventions in 'failed' and 'failing' states.

A Kind of Mending

A Kind of Mending
Author: Sinclair Dinnen
Publisher: ANU E Press
Total Pages: 324
Release: 2010-11-01
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1921666838

With their rich traditions of conflict resolution and peacemaking, the Pacific Islands provide a fertile environment for developing new approaches to crime and conflict. Interactions between formal justice systems and informal methods of dispute resolution contain useful insights for policy makers and others interested in socially attuned resolutions to the problems of order that are found increasingly in the Pacific Islands as elsewhere. Contributors to this volume include Pacific Islanders from Vanuatu, Fiji, the Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea including Bougainville, as well as outsiders with a longstanding interest in the region. They come from a variety of backgrounds and include criminal justice practitioners, scholars, traditional leaders and community activists. The chapters deal with conflict in a variety of contexts, from interpersonal disputes within communities to large-scale conflicts between communities. This is a book not only of stories but also of practical models that combine different traditions in creative ways and that offer the prospect of building more sustainable resolutions to crime and conflict.

Rank and Status in Polynesia and Melanesia

Rank and Status in Polynesia and Melanesia
Author: Douglas l. Oliver
Publisher:
Total Pages: 139
Release: 2014-04-03
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 2854300599

One of the less fortunate legacies that we who practice ethnography in Oceania have given the scholarly world is the stereotype of the Melanesian leader as "Big Man". The designation "Big Man", derived literally from the metaphor commonly used in Austronesian languages or from the Neo-Melanesian Pidgin lexicon, has come to denote a "pure type" or "species" of leadership, authority and government. (Rightly or wrongly, ethnographic sources usually ignore women's role in government, although they may have significant impact). In countless introductory anthropology courses students are asked to accept and perpetuate the cliches that Melanesian leaders typify achieved rather than ascribed status, that Melanesian leaders are archetypal symbols of primitive capitalistic competition, and that Melanesian leadership represents an inferior form.

Melanesian Pidgin and the Oceanic Substrate

Melanesian Pidgin and the Oceanic Substrate
Author: Roger M. Keesing
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 288
Release: 1988
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9780804714501

Topics in this volume include: interlingual contact in the Pacific to the mid-19th century; the Sandalwood period; the Tok Pisin language; oceanic Austronesian languages; structures and sources of pidgin syntax; the pidgin pronominal system; and calquing - pidgin and Solomons languages.

Malaita

Malaita
Author: Ben Burt
Publisher: British Museum Research Public
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2015
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780861592012

Malaita traces the history and culture of a Pacific island from the 19th to 21st centuries through over 600 images drawn from the archives of the British Museum and public and private photographic collections around the world. This book explores Malaita as it was represented to the wider world through photographs, artifacts, maps and drawings over a period of 150 years. Malaitans have been portrayed as exotic natives and migrant workers, as Christian converts and colonial subjects, and as ordinary people leading a distinctive way of life in a rapidly changing society. The colonization of Malaita through the work of missions, government and business in the early twentieth century, the upheavals of the Second World War and the economic and political developments that followed were documented in thousands of photos. Thousands more were made by anthropologists researching detailed studies of local culture in the second half of the 20th century. As Malaitans migrated to neighbouring Guadalcanal to participate in the commercial development of Solomon Islands, a civil conflict in the early 21st century was followed by renewed efforts to build upon their ancestral culture for the peaceful development of their island. This book is an image-led and accessible narrative that provides fascinating new insights into the history of a Pacific island and will be an essential reference for researchers, students and general readers with an interest in the anthropology and history of Melanesia and the Pacific Islands.

Tokugawa Religion

Tokugawa Religion
Author: Robert N. Bellah
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 431
Release: 2008-06-30
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1439119023

Robert N. Bellah's classic study, Tokugawa Religion does for Japan what Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism did for the West. One of the foremost authorities on Japanese history and culture, Bellah explains how religion in the Tokugawa period (160-1868) established the foundation for Japan's modern industrial economy and dispels two misconceptions about Japanese modernization: that it began with Admiral Perry's arrival in 1868, and that it rapidly developed because of the superb Japanese ability for imitation. In this revealing work, Bellah shows how the native doctrines of Buddhism, Confucianism and Shinto encouraged forms of logic and understanding necessary for economic development. Japan's current status as an economic superpower and industrial model for many in the West makes this groundbreaking volume even more important today than when it was first published in 1957. With a new introduction by the author.