Pacific Realities

Throughout the Pacific region, people are faced with dramatic changes, often described as processes of “glocalization”; individuals and groups espouse multilayered forms of identity, in which global modes of thinking and doing are embedded in renewed perceptions of local or regional specificities. Consequently, new forms of resistance and resilience – the processes by which communities attempt to regain their original social, political, and economic status and structure after disruption or displacement – emerge. Through case studies from across the Pacific which transcend the conventional “local-global” dichotomy, this volume aims to explore these complex and interwoven phenomena from a new perspective.

Throughout the Pacific region, people are faced with dramatic changes, often described as processes of “glocalization”; individuals and groups espouse multilayered forms of identity, in which global modes of thinking and doing are embedded in renewed perceptions of local or regional specificities. Consequently, new forms of resistance and resilience – the processes by which communities attempt to regain their original social, political, and economic status and structure after disruption or displacement – emerge. Through case studies from across the Pacific which transcend the conventional “local-global” dichotomy, this volume aims to explore these complex and interwoven phenomena from a new perspective.

List of illustrations

Introduction: Resistance and Resilience
Laurent Dousset and Mélissa Nayral

Chapter 1. A Story in and on Signs: Making Resistance and Acquiescence Legible as Forms of Resilience
Yasmine Musharbash

Chapter 2. Global Models and Local Management of Land Ownership in Rapa (French Polynesia)
Christian Ghasarian

Chapter 3. Between Vulnerability, Resilience and Resistance: Fiji Islander Women Activists and the Ethno-Nationalist Political Crises in 2000
Sina Emde

Chapter 4. Resisting UN Ideals to Make Men and Women Equal in Politics: When a Humanist Concern Turns into Arithmetic in Ouvea (New Caledonia)
Mélissa Nayral

Chapter 5. Independence from Independence: History, Landownership and Politics in South Malekula, Vanuatu
Laurent Dousset

Chapter 6. The Reasonableness of Leaders and the Gaming of Mining Incomes in Papua New Guinea
John Burton

Afterword: Values in Flux – Reflections on Resilience and Change in Melanesia
Martha Macintyre

Index