Description
The Pacific region presents a huge diversity of cultural forms, which have fuelled some of the most challenging ethnographic work undertaken in the discipline. But this challenge has come at a cost. Culture, often reconfigured as ‘custom’, has often served to trap the people of the Pacific in the past of cultural reproduction, where everything is what it has always been, or worse—outdated, outmoded and destined for modernization.Pacific Futures asks how our understanding of social life in the Pacific would be different if we approached it from the perspective of the futures which Pacific people dream of, predict or struggle to achieve, not the reproduction of cultural tradition. From Christianity to gambling, marriage to cargo cult, military coups to reflections on childhood fishing trips, the contributors to this volume show how Pacific people are actively shaping their lives with the future in mind.
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The Pacific islands include a huge diversity of languages and cultures, and an equally large diversity of contemporary settings, from islets undergoing economic and environmental crisis to large nations finding leverage in national and international politics. Dealing with all these realities as a single region has created vital challenges that have fueled innovations in the social sciences. However, the resulting icons of the past and generalizations about the present of Pacific island life have made it difficult for contemporary groups in the region to communicate about the future. This book looks at various situations in the region now, with a focus on how people imagine their futures. Each contributor deals with a particular place, from the Louisiade Archipelago to Paama to Vanuatu to the Cook Islands to Fiji to Rotuma and Tuvalu to Aotearoa/New Zealand. Several contributors consider various aspects of New Guinea: local regions, gambling, Christian and tribal critiques. It will be suitable for academic readers in the social sciences, and for readers in all fields with a special interest in the effects of developments in the Pacific Island region now and in the years to come. Annotation ©2014 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR (protoview.com)
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