Between the 1870s and the 1930s competing European powers carved out and consolidated colonies in Melanesia, the most culturally diverse region of the world. As part of this process, great ...assemblages of ethnographic artefacts were made by a range of collectors whose diversity is captured in this volume. The contributors to this tightly-integrated volume take these collectors, and the collecting institutions, as the departure point for accounts that look back at the artefact-producing societies and their interaction with the collectors, but also forward to the fate of the collections in metropolitan museums, as the artefacts have been variously exhibited, neglected, re-conceived as indigenous heritage, or repatriated. In doing this, the contributors raise issues of current interest in anthropology, Pacific history, art history, museology, and material culture.
Why did the so-called "Cannibal Isles" of the Western Pacific fascinate Europeans for so long? Spanning three centuries—from Captain James Cook's death on a Hawaiian beach in 1779 to the end of World ...War II in 1945—this book considers the category of "the savage" in the context of British Empire in the Western Pacific, reassessing the conduct of Islanders and the English-speaking strangers who encountered them. Sensationalized depictions of Melanesian "savages" as cannibals and headhunters created a unifying sense of Britishness during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These exotic people inhabited the edges of empire—and precisely because they did, Britons who never had and never would leave the home islands could imagine their nation's imperial reach. George Behlmer argues that Britain's early visitors to the Pacific—mainly cartographers and missionaries—wielded the notion of savagery to justify their own interests. But savage talk was not simply a way to objectify and marginalize native populations: it would later serve also to emphasize the fragility of indigenous cultures. Behlmer by turns considers cannibalism, headhunting, missionary activity, the labor trade, and Westerners' preoccupation with the perceived "primitiveness" of indigenous cultures, arguing that British representations of savagery were not merely straightforward expressions of colonial power, but also belied home-grown fears of social disorder.
Focusing on the vulnerability and resilience to economic shocks at the household level, this book draws on extensive research activities carried out in two Melanesia countries: the Solomon Islands ...and Vanuatu. In particular, the book identifies the household impacts of the recent food, fuel and economic crises. The authors also examine resilience by identifying how households responded to these recent economic events in order to cope with their impacts. The authors highlight key areas in which public policy and development programmes can reduce household vulnerability and increase their resilience to future economic shocks.
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 relationship between customary land tenure and ‘modern’ forms of landed property has been a major political issue in the ‘Spearhead’ states of Melanesia since the late colonial period, and is ...even more pressing today, as the region is subject to its own version of what is described in the international literature as a new ‘land rush’ or ‘land grab’ in developing countries. This volume aims to test the application of one particular theoretical framework to the Melanesian version of this phenomenon, which is the framework put forward by Derek Hall, Philip Hirsch and Tania Murray Li in their 2011 book, Powers of Exclusion: Land Dilemmas in Southeast Asia. Since that framework emerged from studies of the agrarian transition in Southeast Asia, the key question addressed in this volume is whether ‘land transformations’ in Melanesia are proceeding in a similar direction, or whether they take a somewhat different form because of the particular nature of Melanesian political economies or social institutions. The contributors to this volume all deal with this question from the point of view of their own direct engagement with different aspects of the land policy process in particular countries. Aside from discussion of the agrarian transition in Melanesia, particular attention is also paid to the growing problem of land access in urban areas and the gendered nature of landed property relations in this region.
Although Neandertal sequences that persist in the genomes of modern humans have been identified in Eurasians, comparable studies in people whose ancestors hybridized with both Neandertals and ...Denisovans are lacking. We developed an approach to identify DNA inherited from multiple archaic hominin ancestors and applied it to whole-genome sequences from 1523 geographically diverse individuals, including 35 previously unknown Island Melanesian genomes. In aggregate, we recovered 1.34 gigabases and 303 megabases of the Neandertal and Denisovan genome, respectively. We use these maps of archaic sequences to show that Neandertal admixture occurred multiple times in different non-African populations, characterize genomic regions that are significantly depleted of archaic sequences, and identify signatures of adaptive introgression.
Bush et al emphasize that the key to establishing enduring and efficient global health systems lies in prioritizing local stakeholders and, above all, the welfare of patients.
The scope of anthropology Dousset, Laurent; Tcherkézoff, Serge
2014., 20120415, 2012, 2012-04-15, Letnik:
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Some of the most prominent social and cultural anthropologists have come together in this volume to discuss Maurice Godelier's work. They explore and revisit some of the highly complex practices and ...structures social scientists encounter in their fieldwork. From the nature-culture debate to the fabrication of hereditary political systems, from transforming gender relations to the problems of the Christianization of indigenous peoples, these chapters demonstrate both the diversity of anthropological topics and the opportunity for constructive dialogue around shared methodological and theoretical models.
The Soutwest (SW) Pacific is an expansive oceanic region with many of its islands difficult to access and relatively unexplored in a geoheritage context. Here we provide a potential framework for ...systematically assessing geoheritage values of the SW Pacific and creating a holistic and multi-value inventory. We outline the use of digital terrain models as landform classification tools, and other newly available spatial data. While New Zealand is scientifically and culturally recognised as part of the SW Pacific, due to its large landmass and significant scientific data already available, here we excluded it from our analysis. Rather, the aim of our ongoing research is to provide the first comprehensive overview of the geoheritage potential and unique characteristics of small island nations of the SW Pacific. Only those islands were included in this study where geoheritage research has been initiated and include islands reflecting a good spectrum of geodiversity such as Vanuatu (Ambrym, Ambae, Lopevi, Kuwae group, Tanna), Tonga (Tongatapu, Tofua), and Samoa (Savai’i and Upolu). In a geotectonic context the SW Pacific sits on the western extremity of the large Pacific plate, resulting in a broad array of geotectonic situations where convergent plate boundary processes govern the broad geological evolution and geomorphological processes seen on the islands of our study area. Volcanism associated with plate boundaries is one of the most characteristic and recognisable geological processes linked with the region in the public perception of the area. Volcanism is associated with arc-type geosystems forming complex and compound polygenetic volcanism which offers unique geological-geomorphological elements shaping geodiversity of the region. In addition, these volcanic processes have shaped human communities since the earliest days of their establishment. The interaction of Polynesian societies with volcanism provides a unique geocultural perspective based on accumulated oral traditions, forming the basis of cultural practices that remain part of everyday life into the 21st century.
•The SW Pacific is a complex geotectonic region with limited knowledge of its geoheritage and geodiversity•The SW Pacific consists of small islands where geological and geomorphological features concentrated in small landmasses•SW Pacific Islands are sensitive to global and planetary changes•SW Pacific islands have strong association with volcanic, tectonic, and coastal-shallow marine processes•The SW Pacific rich Polynesian and Melanesian traditions form a special geocultural aspects of the region•Geoheritage is a significant element to enforce community resilience for natural hazards in the small SW Pacific islands
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