It is nearly half a century from the wave of decolonisation and national independence that swept across the Pacific in the 1970s and early 1980s. Yet despite this, as across the rest of the world, issues of what can be considered appropriate dependence and independence are far from settled. From the achievement of political independence across much of Oceania onwards, debate raged as to whether or not ‘real’ independence had come with it. And alongside this ran a related controversy as to whether or not Oceanic societies had a greater tendency to valorise interpersonal interdependence than their former Western colonisers, and if this essential cultural difference really did exist, whether it was to be valorised and protected or to be denigrated and overcome. In the Introduction to this special issue, I argue, along with many of the papers in this collection, that although these two discussions are often treated separately, they are interlinked and that arguments over the appropriateness of (in)dependence in public debate and in academic discussion need to be seen in the context of global controversies on this subject.

中文翻译：

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简介：大洋洲的依附

距 1970 年代和 1980 年代初席卷太平洋的非殖民化和民族独立浪潮已经过去了近半个世纪。然而，尽管如此，与世界其他地方一样，什么可以被认为是适当的依赖和独立的问题还远未解决。从大洋洲大部分地区实现政治独立起，关于“真正的”独立是否随之而来的争论激烈。与此同时，关于大洋洲社会是否比以前的西方殖民者更倾向于重视人际相互依存，如果这种基本的文化差异真的存在，是应该重视和保护还是被诋毁，这也引起了相关的争议。并克服。在这个特刊的介绍中，我认为，