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‘Never a Colony’?: Rethinking the Colonisation of Enga Province, Papua New Guinea Oceania (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2024-08-07 Alex Golub
This article examines the history of Enga Province, Papua New Guinea, from 1952 to 1975 in order to understand how pre‐colonial governance of the province laid the groundwork for the problems of weak governance that plagued Enga in the independence era. The most appropriate models to understand this issue, the article claims, come not from the comparative study of decolonised states such as those in
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Activating the Vā: Performance, Academia and the Sublime Association for Social Anthropology in Oceania (ASAO) 2023 Distinguished Lecture Oceania (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2024-08-07 Vilsoni Hereniko
The concept of vā in various Oceanic cultures came into academic discourse among Pacific Islands scholars in the mid‐1990s, but it was not until covid became a global pandemic and an academic conference focusing solely on the vā took place in 2021 that the concept became a focus of my interest. This is partly because certain rules of behavior such as ‘social distancing’ drew attention to the importance
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Introduction to Special Issue ‘Rethinking Decolonisation in Papua New Guinea’ Oceania (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2024-08-06 Alex Golub, Courtney Handman
This article is an introduction to a special issue entitled ‘Rethinking Decolonisation in Papua New Guinea’. This introduction suggests that we view ‘decolonisation’ or ‘independence’ not only as a historical period, but as an event that has been imagined by many people both during and after it occurred. Drawing on the work of Adom Getachew, we argue that it is fruitful to examine decolonisation in
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Decolonisation beyond Independence: Reflections from the Papua New Guinea Experience — An Afterword Oceania (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2024-08-06 Keir Martin
Discussions of colonialism and decolonialism often take as a starting point an assumption that these processes can be defined in particular ways and consequently morally evaluated. Whilst defining terms can act as a theoretical or political simplification that is indispensable for certain kinds of discussion, it is important to remember that to evoke ‘colonialism’ is to make a claim about and on social
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‘Life Will Be Very Different after the War’: Administrative, Political and Academic Tensions in the Development of Papua New Guinea after the Second World War Oceania (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2024-07-31 Geoffrey Gray
At the end of the Pacific War (1941–1945) in Papua and New Guinea and the restoration of Australian rule, the Australian Labor government anticipated a self‐governing colony. It was not an act of decolonisation per se. Rather it was a step toward a self‐governing colony under the umbrella of Australia. Independence was for the future. The change of government at the end of 1949, and the replacement
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Defying Predictions: Global Bureaucracy and the Art of not Making Guesses about Papua New Guinea Oceania (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2024-07-31 Courtney Handman
Papua New Guinea's story of decolonisation has never meshed very well with standard visions of nationalist struggle. Focused exclusively on the coloniser and the colonised, these narratives ignore the role played by post‐war global groups and organisations whose decolonial work has largely been forgotten. In this article, I examine the role of the United Nations Trusteeship Council in pushing Australia
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Haunting Biology: Science and Indigeneity in Australia. By Emma Kowal. Durham, NC, USA: Duke University Press. 2023. Pp: xv + 248. Price: US$27.95 and 104.95. Oceania (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2024-07-15 Kirsty Wissing
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From Colonial Order to Decolonial Future: Colonial Mimesis and Identity among the Papua Besena Movement Oceania (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2024-07-15 Ming‐Jen Wu
During the 1970s and 1980s, a nationalist movement called Papua Besena emerged in Papua New Guinea. On the one hand, the group believed that the Papuan people were neglected by Australian colonisation and campaigned for Papuan sovereignty, either by creating an independent state or joining Australia as a state. On the other hand, as some scholars and politicians have pointed out, Papua Besena's rhetoric
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Gridiron Capital. How American Football Became a Samoan Game. By LisaUperesa. Durham, NC, USA: Duke University Press. 2022. Pp: xviii+218. Price: A$102.95. Oceania (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2024-06-26 Dion Enari
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The Wind Is Always Blowing: Generative Crosscurrents of Ethnographic Dialogue in Australia Oceania (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2024-03-26 Samuel Curkpatrick, Daniel Wilfred
Live conversations and writing play an important role in ethnographic research that seeks to develop understanding across cultural differences. Both forms of communication need not remain distinct: written dialogue can develop critical thought while foregrounding the shared contexts and relational impetuses of communication across cultures. Set against the background of recent styles in ethnographic
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How They Fought. Indigenous Tactics and Weaponry of Australia's Frontier Wars. By RayKerkhove. Tingalpa, AU: Boolarong Press. 2023. Pp: x + 420. Price: A$39.99 Oceania (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2024-03-26 Christophe Darmangeat
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Frontier Narratives That Take on Flesh: Tracing Legacy, Labour, and Legitimacy in Outback Queensland, Australia Oceania (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2024-03-26 Alana Brekelmans, Richard J. Martin
In this article, we explore the notion of legacy through the ways graziers in Outback Queensland, Australia, draw on material, narrative, and embodied traces of past ‘events’ to emplot their lives during times of uncertainty. Through an ethnography of pastoral work and storytelling on stations, or ranches, we show how settler‐colonial narratives of the frontier and legacy circulate as affective forces
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Correction to “Water's Ethical Time: The Art of Deindustrialising Human-Water Relationships” Oceania (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2024-02-07
Eickelkamp, U. (2023), Water's Ethical Time: The Art of Deindustrialising Human-Water Relationships. Oceania, 93: 321–334. https://doi.org/10.1002/ocea.5384 The source detail for Fig. 2 is incorrect. It should read as: Source: the author. We apologize for this error.
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Making Waves: The Role of Indigenous Water Beings in Debates about Human and Non-Human Rights Oceania (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2024-01-16 Veronica Strang
Rejecting nature-culture dualism, contemporary anthropology recognises the mutually constitutive processes that create shared human and non-human lifeworlds. Such recognition owes much to ethnographic engagement with diverse indigenous cosmologies many of which have, for millennia, upheld ideas about indivisible worlds in which all living kinds occupy a shared ontological space and non-human species
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Water as Country on the Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands, South Australia Oceania (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2024-01-16 Diana Young
Anangu, Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara people living in the north-western areas of South Australia, conceptualize changes in the surface of land as evincing the presence of Ancestral power. Rain is one such catalyst of change, though it is by no means a certainty on the Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands. When it does appear, water does not stay long on the surface: it is shimmering and unstable
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Ontological Collisions in the Northern Territory's Aboriginal Water Rights Policy Oceania (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2024-01-16 Sue Jackson, Erin O'Donnell, Lee Godden, Marcia Langton
Amid a renewed push to extract water for agriculture and mining, Indigenous advocacy in northern Australia has resulted in the introduction of a new water allocation mechanism: a reserve of water to be retained for the use and benefit of Indigenous communities. Our socio-legal analysis of the Oolloo Water Allocation Plan shows that the Strategic Aboriginal Water Reserves carry essential hallmarks of
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Sustainable Water in Mining? The Importance of Traditional Owner Involvement in Commercial Water Use and Management in the Pilbara Region of Western Australia Oceania (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2024-01-16 Emma Garlett, Sarah Holcombe
The mining industry is a significant water user, an issue that gains a particular prominence in arid zone mining regions, such as the Pilbara region in Western Australia (WA). Mining companies extract vast amounts of water from the groundwater aquifers to access orebodies and to dewater the mine pits. Much of this water is dumped in creeks, injected back into the aquifer downstream or used in mining
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Kes (Passageway): Cross-Cultural Considerations of Island Field Containment in the Torres Strait Oceania (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2024-01-16 Kirsty Wissing, Torres Webb
Synthetic biology (synbio) scientists have identified islands as potential environments in which to trial the release of approved gene drives in the future for conservation and biosecurity purposes. However, islands, and their interconnected waterscapes, can connect as much as they contain. The Torres Strait Islands stretch between mainland Australia, of which they are a part, and Papua New Guinea
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Water's Ethical Time: The Art of Deindustrialising Human-Water Relationships Oceania (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2023-12-03 Ute Eickelkamp
I explore by way of a thought experiment the temporality of waterways in the context of restorative art interventions. As a substance that moves and gives form, and as a medium that retains and discharges, connects and divides, water that flows can make tangible the experiential flow of return and anticipation. Arguably, this bi-directional structuring of time is pivotal to transformative and reparative
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Water Futures in Australia: Materialities, Temporalities, Imaginaries Oceania (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2023-11-29 Sally Babidge, Ute Eickelkamp, Linda Connor
This special issue is part of a shift in social science and humanities thinking and in public awareness towards planetary water concerns. As societal and scholarly attention to the wet element – and its political import and its cultural constitution – is growing, we ask, how can we rethink our relationships with water in Australia now and into the future? The collection of papers in this issue shows
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‘Why can't we speak up for ourselves…?’ Water Futures and Ethnographic Provocations Oceania (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2023-11-27 Anne (Wagaba) Poelina, Sandy Toussaint, Stephen Muecke
Via a three-person dialogue, we engage with an inquiry posed for this special issue: ‘What questions are ethnographers asking about water in Australia?’ Canvassing such an inquiry led us to being both provoked and provocateurs, in part by following Luci Pangrazio's (2016) discussion about the value of provocation in the social sciences. Turning from provocation as heuristic tool, we then focus on the
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Misty Bodies of Water and Artistic Relationality in the Hydrocene Oceania (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2023-11-27 Bronwyn Bailey-Charteris
The Hydrocene is the watery, disruptive, conceptual epoch that I name for the tide of art going into the blue in response to the climate crisis. In this short watery provocation and essay, I share the potential significance of ‘misting’ as a hydro-artistic method of reorientation from within fog, where fog becomes a portal towards embodied encounters in art practices. I look to the extensive fog-based
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Afterword: Kinship Possibilities in Water Futures Oceania (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2023-11-22 Fiona McCormack
This special issue of Oceania interrogates the material and cultural factors underpinning water socio-economies in Australia; a critical project given the wet and dry crises now unfolding in the Anthropocene. Three themes inform the collection – materialities, imaginaries and temporalities – each of which animates a diverse array of ethnographic inquiry into transformative water futures. The radical
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The Wet: Shifting Seasons, Climate Change and Natural Cycles in Cape York Peninsula, Queensland Oceania (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2023-11-15 Mardi Reardon-Smith
Land managers in Cape York Peninsula, far northeast Australia, hold different ideas around the causes of climate variability. Understandings of changes in climate are underpinned by particular environmental knowledges, values, and practices. These understandings are articulated in the context of the wet season, when land managers must adapt to the changing duration and intensity of the rainfall each
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Yinbarnini Ngukunginyi (Singing of Water) Oceania (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2023-11-14 Ray Dimakarri Dixon, Terry Morgan
Exploratory fracking has commenced in the Beetaloo Basin, adjacent to Mudburra Country. At the time of writing, the Northern Territory Government is preparing to issue production licences to the gas companies involved. Environmental groups and some Aboriginal traditional owners, however, are insisting that the potential impact on land, water, pastoral operations, and Aboriginal communities has not
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Coercive Exchange: Magic, Agency and the Gift in a Melanesian Society Oceania (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2023-07-25 Richard Eves
Here I offer a challenge to some of the theoretical truisms that have developed concerning gift exchange, which has been a topic of scholarly debate for almost a century. Much discussion has focussed on how giving creates obligations and increases the power of the giver. Taking the case of the Lelet of New Ireland, Papua New Guinea, I examine how people use magic to usurp the agency of the giver, thus
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Achievement, Ascription, and Mana: A Step beyond Binary Opposition in Studying Leadership in Oceania Oceania (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2023-07-25 Francois-Xavier Faucounau
This paper critiques the recent use of Marshall Sahlins' model, which opposes big men to chiefs to establish a contrast between Austronesian and Non-Austronesian communities in Oceania. By reviewing Sahlins' model and drawing upon Oceania-wide ethnographic work, I argue that the two opposed paradigms underlying Sahlins' model of leadership, namely achievement and ascription, are in fact entangled in
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The Larrakia Kinship Terminology: Asymmetrical Cross-Cousin Marriage and Omaha Skewing Oceania (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2023-07-25 Mark Harvey
The Larrakia terminology is a member of the very small class of asymmetric terminologies in Australia, but it is the most poorly described. There are a number of documentary sources, and this paper considers principled bases for the comparative evaluation of sources in order to produce a well-founded description which can contribute to theories of kinship both in Australia and more generally. In terms
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Stalked by the Malignant Father's Spirit: A Case of Patricide among the Yagwoia (PNG) Oceania (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2023-07-25 Jadran Mimica
Among the Yagwoia (PNG), the dynamics of fatherhood is a process of man's transmission to and incorporation of his vital substance by his progeny. In this way, the father becomes replaced principally by his son(s). This process, referred to as the incorporation and replacement of the father's ‘bone’, has multiple actualisations whose concrete reality and significance can only be adequately understood
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‘Stalked by the Malignant Father's Spirit: A Case of Patricide among the Yagwoia (PNG)’ by Jadran Mimica Oceania (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2023-07-25 Gillian Gillison
Jadran Mimica presents the ‘life-world’ of Yagwoia people of Papua New Guinea as a unique variant of the Jungian Ouroboric archetype, a primal pattern or symbol derived from the ancient Greek ‘tail devourer’ (the serpent that eats its own tail), found in many cultures and individual unconscious phantasies. Treated in terms of ‘ouroboric dialectics’, relations between Yagwoia father and son are hostile
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Sama Bajo Resilience in the Time of COVID Oceania (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2023-07-25 Nur Isiyana Wianti, Andrew McWilliam
Sama Bajo fishing communities in Southeast Sulawesi maintain a strong cultural and economic orientation to diverse fishing-based livelihoods and varied engagement with high value seafood market supply chains. The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic within Indonesia in early 2020, and its viral spread across the archipelago over 2021, had dramatic and disruptive impacts on local economies and distribution
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A Research Note on Austronesian Relationship Terminologies With and Without Relative Age Categories Oceania (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2023-03-10 James J. Fox
This research note examines the formal patterning of Austronesian relationship terminologies with or without relative age categories. Specifically, the article considers (1) the formal contrast between these patterns, (2) the key variant forms of these patterns, and (3) the distribution of these patterns and their associated variants throughout the Austronesian-speaking world. It offers a succinct
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The religious self-alteration of Shem Irofa'alu during the anti-colonial Maasina Rule in Solomon Islands (1944–1953) Oceania (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2023-03-10 Jaap Timmer, Ian Frazer
This essay explores the post-World War Two anti-colonial Maasina Rule in north Malaita, Solomon Islands, to show how a church leader Shem Irofa'alu decided to establish a religious movement independent of the state and the traditional evangelical church. Irofa'alu's movement indexes an important moment of culture change towards increasing enthusiasm for the often-overlooked Christianity-based forms
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Kurangara in Queensland?: A Critique of Duncan-Kemp's Account Oceania (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2023-03-10 David Nash
A particular historical travelling religious complex in northern Western Australia, usually known as Kurangara, has been the subject of anthropological attention since the late 1930s. Overlooked in all the literature is a similar account assigned to 1912–1918, in the distant Channel Country of southwest Queensland. This is in Alice Duncan-Kemp's last book, published in 1968. My examination shows that
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Association for Social Anthropology in Oceania 2022 Conference Distinguished Lecture: Social Movement Sightseeing in Melanesia and Beyond Oceania (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2022-11-28 Lamont Lindstrom
Social movements often attract tourists in their wake. The Association for Social Anthropology in Oceania convened a successful annual meeting in Portland, Oregon, less than a year after passionate protests that attracted national attention in the United States. Concerned city boosters, in response, invited tourists to enjoy Portland's vibrant diversity. That same year, Tulsa (Oklahoma) commemorated
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The Wagiman Landscape: Mental Maps and Prototypes Oceania (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2022-11-28 Mark Harvey
This paper examines the classification of the landscape, both biota and terrain, in Wagiman, a language of northern Australia. There is considerable debate as to the comparative roles of cognitive and cultural factors in the analysis of landscape terminologies. Any analysis of terminologies necessarily involves consideration of meaning. There are many approaches to the analysis of meaning and analysis
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Gender Equality Theology and Essentialism: Catholic Responses to Gender-Based Violence and Inequality in Papua New Guinea Oceania (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2022-11-28 Anna-Karina Hermkens, Roselyne Kenneth, Kylie McKenna
This paper addresses how Christianity, and in particular Catholicism, is deployed in response to gender-based violence (GBV) in Papua New Guinea. It provides insights into the various ways the Catholic community, Church, and its clergy respond to and manage GBV. Focusing on a case study in the Autonomous Region of Bougainville in Papua New Guinea, the article reveals how Gender Equality Theology is
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Erratum Oceania (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2022-11-28
In Lipset 2022, the author's name of the book reviewed by David Lipset was erroneously published as “Emily E. Skrzypek” and “Skrzpek”. The correct author's name should be “Emilia E. Skrzypek”. All incorrect instances of the author's name have been amended in the online version of this article. We apologize for the error and any inconvenience it may have caused.
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Association for Social Anthropology in Oceania 2021 Conference Distinguished Lecture: Contemporary Filmmaking in Oceania Oceania (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2022-07-17 Ikaika Ramones, Marina Alofagia McCartney, Martin Maden
This piece is an edited version of the Distinguished Lecture at the 2021 ASAO conference. The discussion centers the real life lessons and experiences of filmmakers, contributing to and challenging conversations about media and cultural production. The piece begins with a brief overview of the past and present of visual anthropology and media in Oceania. Panelists then recount their own journeys to
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Review Essay on Of Humans, Pigs, and Souls. An Essay on the Yagwoia Womba Complex. By Jadran Mimica. Chicago: Hau Books. 2020. p. xvii + 160, Price: US$17.96 Oceania (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2022-07-17 Pierre Lemonnier
In addition to his warm, unforgettable hospitality, I have three salient memories of my meeting with Jadran Mimica on my way to Ankave country in 1985: his perfect command of an Anga language; an endless discussion of G. Devereux's argument on the difficulty of combining psychology and sociology in the analysis of the same phenomenon; and the (very worried) look of the Baruya who had helped me carry
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Intra-Action in a Central Australian Community Development Project Oceania (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2022-06-26 Drew Anderson
Service providers commonly understand development projects in Indigenous Australia to play out at the intersection of a pre-existing binary between Indigenous and non-Indigenous groups. It follows that effective development practice is seen to depend on building partnerships across the ‘intercultural’ divide. Instead of taking this assumption as a baseline from which analysis proceeds, I draw on Karen
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Suspicion and Overlapping Orders of Precedence: Imagining Secret History in Founder-Focused Societies of Eastern Indonesia Oceania (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2022-06-23 Geger Riyanto
This article describes how the dominant order of precedence in Seram, eastern Indonesia is challenged by the suspicion of the existence of a secret history. In a context where being the original founder is of importance and the sequence of predecessors' arrival is the basis of orders of precedence, such a suspicion evokes a hopeful possibility for marginal communities that the present social order
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Remote Freedoms: Politics, Personhood and Human Rights in Aboriginal Central Australia. By Sarah E.Holcombe. Stanford: Stanford University Press. 2018. Pp: 384. Price: A$30 Oceania (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2022-03-30 Timothy Rowse
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‘A Filmmaker Fond of Anthropology’: Ian Dunlop (1927–2021) Oceania (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2022-03-28 Howard Morphy
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‘Wallis and Futuna Have Never Been a Colony’: A Non-sovereign Island Territory Negotiating Primary Education with Metropolitan France Oceania (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2022-03-27 Gerard Prinsen, Allison Lotti, Elisabeth Worliczek
Wallis and Futuna are a French overseas collectivity in Oceania. In 1969, the French state formally ceded responsibility for the territory's primary education to the Catholic mission and reimburses related expenses. Against this backdrop, this article uses the negotiations about primary education between these two non-sovereign island territories and their colonial metropole to explore islanders' views
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Mining and Competing Sovereignties in New Caledonia Oceania (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2022-03-27 Pierre-Yves Le Meur, Claire Levacher
Mining, especially nickel mining, has a long history in New Caledonia and cannot be separated from the trajectory of this territory as a settler colony. However, the construction of mining as a political stake and resource in the New Caledonian public arenas has come surprisingly late, only emerging explicitly in the 1990s as pro-independence parties pushed the issue to the fore in their negotiations
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Sovereignty and Coloniality in the French-Speaking Pacific: A Reflection on the Case of New Caledonia, 1980–2021 Oceania (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2022-03-27 Isabelle Leblic
Following the end of Indigénat rule (1946), Kanaks as the Indigenous people of New Caledonia entered the political world to claim their rights as full French citizens, demand recognition of their identity, and subsequently assert their independence and the sovereignty of their own country. Nine years after the May 4, 1989 drama of Ouvéa, where Jean-Marie Tjibaou, Yeiwéné Yeiwéné and Jubely Wea were
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Quilting Power: Mana, UNESCO and Spiritual Sovereignty in the Marquesas Islands Oceania (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2022-03-14 Emily C. Donaldson
The Marquesas Islands were added to UNESCO's Tentative World Heritage List (WHL) in 1996. Twenty-five years later, the project to join the coveted WHL continues, plagued by volatile politics and, more subtly, an underlying discomfort with the colonial past. This world heritage initiative highlights key cultural and political tensions between the Marquesas and the two much larger partners involved in
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France and Oceanian Sovereignties Oceania (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2022-03-07 Pierre-Yves Le Meur, Alexander Mawyer
The character of sovereignty in its constitution, expression, and experience across Pacific Islands has come into renewed focus over recent years. Decades after the onset of the post-war period of decolonization and independence, non-self governing French territories in Oceania are seeing communities chart and navigate new relationships with sovereignty conceptions and practices across local, regional
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Tribute: Friedegard Elsbeth Tomasetti, 1937–2020 Oceania (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2022-03-01 Garry Trompf
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Phone & Spear: A Yuṯa Anthropology. By Miyarrka Media (Paul Gurrumuruwuy, Jennifer Deger, Enid Guruŋulmiwuy, Warren Balpatji, Meredith Balanydjarrk, James Ganambarr, Kayleen Djingadjingawuy) . Cambridge, MA and London, UK: MIT Press (for Goldsmiths Press). 2019. Pp: xxvii + 260. Price: $21.95 Oceania (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2021-11-01 Faye Ginsburg
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Farmers or Hunter‐Gatherers? The Dark Emu Debate. By PeterSutton & KerynWalshe. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press. 2021.Pp: 288. Price: US$ 34.99 Oceania (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2021-11-01 Peter Bellwood
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On the Backside of a Wave: An Obituary for a Star – Marshall Sahlins (December 27, 1930–April 5, 2021) Oceania (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2021-11-01 Frederick H. Damon
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Response to Letter to the Editor by Sally Babidge Oceania (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2021-11-01 Peter Bellwood