"French and Australian collaborative research in the humanities and the social sciences in the South Pacific has grown and intensified significantly over the past two decades, beginning with the international symposium Changing Identities in the Pacific at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century held at the Australian Embassy in Paris in 1997 ... In April 2006, another French-government sponsored international symposium, AGORA (Ateliers Gouvernance et Recherche Appliquée) was held at IRD (Institut de Recherche pour le Développement), Noumea, New Caledonia, major themes being governance and economic development, again bringing together Francophone and Anglophone scholars from France and the Pacific region. This was followed in October 2009 by two conjoint Francophone/Anglophone conferences, held at the IRD Centre in Noumea, Stability, Security and Development in Oceania, preceded by AGORA-2, an international conference on Anglophone research in the humanities and the social sciences in the Francophone Pacific, sponsored by the French Government and the Government of New Caledonia. The first of these conferences was sponsored by the French Fonds Pacifique and the State, Society and Governance Program at The Australian National University. An edited selection of presentations from this symposium constitutes the present volume."--Preface.