{"title":"Pacific Islands Monograph Series","description":"\u003cp\u003eDelve into vital research on the Pacific Islands with this monograph series. Explore diverse perspectives on history, culture, and society. A must-read for academics and anyone fascinated by the region.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"cultures-of-commemoration-book-keith-l-camacho-9780824836702","title":"Cultures of Commemoration","description":"Winner of the Masayoshi Ohira Memorial Prize  In 1941 the Japanese military attacked the US naval base Pearl Harbor on the Hawaiian island of O‘ahu. Although much has been debated about this event and the wider American and Japanese involvement in the war, few scholars have explored the Pacific War’s impact on Pacific Islanders. Cultures of Commemoration fills this crucial gap in the historiography by advancing scholarly understanding of Pacific Islander relations with and knowledge of American and Japanese colonialisms in the twentieth century.  Drawing from an extensive archival base of government, military, and popular records, Chamorro scholar Keith L Camacho traces the formation of divergent colonial and indigenous histories in the Mariana Islands, an archipelago located in the western Pacific and home to the Chamorro people. He shows that US colonial governance of Guam, the southernmost island, and that of Japan in the Northern Mariana Islands created competing colonial histories that would later inform how Americans, Chamorros, and Japanese experienced and remembered the war and its aftermath. Central to this discussion is the American and Japanese administrative development of \"\"loyalty\"\" and \"\"liberation\"\" as concepts of social control, collective identity, and national belonging. Just how various Chamorros from Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands negotiated their multiple identities and subjectivities is explored with respect to the processes of history and memory-making among this \"\"Americanized\"\" and \"\"Japanized\"\" Pacific Islander population. In addition, Camacho emphasizes the rise of war commemorations as sites for the study of American national historic landmarks, Chamorro Liberation Day festivities, and Japanese bone-collecting missions and peace pilgrimages.  Ultimately, Cultures of Commemoration demonstrates that the past is made meaningful and at times violent by competing cultures of American, Chamorro, and Japanese commemorative practices.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50128406511889,"sku":"CIN0824836707G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0824836707.jpg?v=1750979587"},{"product_id":"colonialism-maasina-rule-and-the-origins-of-malaitan-kastom-book-david-w-akin-9780824838140","title":"Colonialism, Maasina Rule, and the Origins of Malaitan Kastom","description":"This book is a political history of the island of Malaita in the British Solomon Islands Protectorate from 1927, when the last violent resistance to colonial rule was crushed, to 1953 and the inauguration of the island’s first representative political body, the Malaita Council. At the book’s heart is a political movement known as Maasina Rule, which dominated political affairs in the southeastern Solomons for many years after World War II. The movement’s ideology, kastom, was grounded in the determination that only Malaitans themselves could properly chart their future through application of Malaitan sensibilities and methods, free from British interference. Kastom promoted a radical transformation of Malaitan lives by sweeping social engineering projects and alternative governing and legal structures. When the government tried to suppress Maasina Rule through force, its followers brought colonial administration on the island to a halt for several years through a labour strike and massive civil resistance actions that overflowed government prison camps.   David Akin draws on extensive archival and field research to present a practice-based analysis of colonial officers’ interactions with Malaitans in the years leading up to and during Maasina Rule. A primary focus is the place of knowledge in the colonial administration. Many scholars have explored how various regimes deployed “colonial knowledge” of subject populations in Asia and Africa to reorder and rule them. The British imported to the Solomons models for “native administration” based on such an approach, particularly schemes of indirect rule developed in Africa. The concept of “custom” was basic to these schemes and to European understandings of Melanesians, and it was made the lynchpin of government policies that granted limited political roles to local ideas and practices. Officers knew very little about Malaitan cultures, however, and Malaitans seized the opportunity to transform custom into kastom, as the foundation for a new society. The book’s overarching topic is the dangerous road that colonial ignorance paved for policy makers, from young cadets in the field to high officials in distant Fiji and London. Today kastom remains a powerful concept on Malaita, but continued confusion regarding its origins, history, and meanings hampers understandings of contemporary Malaitan politics and of Malaitan people’s ongoing, problematic relations with the state.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50364388016401,"sku":"CIN0824838149G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0824838149.jpg?v=1751170123"},{"product_id":"where-the-waves-fall-book-k-r-howe-9780824811860","title":"Where the Waves Fall","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eWhere the Waves Fall\u003c\/em\u003e (1984) centres the stories of the Pacific Islanders and how they were affected by European explorers and colonisers in this unique account of human settlement and cultural interchange in the Pacific islands. \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50368698482961,"sku":"CIN0824811860G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50920539848977,"sku":"CIN0824811860VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0824811860.jpg?v=1751330502"},{"product_id":"first-taint-of-civilization-book-francis-x-hezel-sj-9780824816438","title":"The First Taint of Civilization","description":"Hezel writes clearly and with erudition and commands an impressive body of information. His book is a tour de force. Not only will it be read eagerly by Pacific scholars, but it should find a wide audience among well-educated Micronesians hungry for greater understanding of how their islands have become ensnared in world geopolitics. --Ethnohistory","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50368823361809,"sku":"CIN0824816439G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0824816439.jpg?v=1763480293"},{"product_id":"woven-gods-book-vilsoni-hereniko-9780824816551","title":"Woven Gods","description":"\u003cp\u003e\"An imaginative and thought-provoking study of clowning in Rotuma, especially of ritual clowning in contexts of marriage ceremonies and the weaving of fine mats.... Completely fascinating.\" \u003ci\u003e--Canberra Anthropology\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \"A challenge to readers both in its form and content.... This book conveys the lively, complex and often hilarious elements, both of daily life and celebratory rituals, as they are expressed in contemporary culture.\" \u003ci\u003e--Journal of Intercultural Studies\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50368828735761,"sku":"CIN0824816552G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51008507511057,"sku":"NIN9780824816551","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53181255352593,"sku":"NLS9780824816551","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0824816552.jpg?v=1751107519"},{"product_id":"god-is-samoan-book-matt-tomlinson-9780824888312","title":"God Is Samoan","description":"Christian theologians in the Pacific Islands see culture as the grounds on which one understands God. In this pathbreaking book, Matt Tomlinson engages in an anthropological conversation with the work of \"contextual theologians\", exploring how the combination of Pacific Islands culture and Christianity shapes theological dialogues. Employing both scholarly research and ethnographic fieldwork, the author addresses a range of topics: from radical criticisms of biblical stories as inappropriate for Pacific audiences to celebrations of traditional gods such as Tagaloa as inherently Christian figures. This book presents a symphony of voices-engaged, critical, prophetic-from the contemporary Pacific's leading religious thinkers and suggests how their work articulates with broad social transformations in the region.  Each chapter in this book focuses on a distinct type of culturally driven theological dialogue. One type is between readers and texts, in which biblical scholars suggest new ways of reading, and even rewriting, the Bible so it becomes more meaningful in local terms. A second kind concerns the state of the church and society. For example, feminist theologians and those calling for \"prophetic\" action on social problems propose new conversations about how people in Oceania should navigate difficult times. A third kind of discussion revolves around identity, emphasizing what makes Oceania unique and culturally coherent. A fourth addresses the problems of climate change and environmental degradation to sacred lands by encouraging \"eco-theological\" awareness and interconnection. Finally, many contextual theologians engage with the work of other disciplines' prominently, anthropology-as they develop new discourse on God, people, and the future of Oceania.  Contextual theology allows people in Oceania to speak with God and fellow humans through the idiom of culture in a distinctly Pacific way. Tomlinson concludes, however, that the most fruitful topic of dialogue might not be culture, but rather the nature of dialogue itself. Written in an accessible, engaging style and presenting innovative findings, this book will interest students and scholars of anthropology, world religion, theology, globalization, and Pacific studies.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50682328809745,"sku":"CIN0824888316G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52532513341713,"sku":"NLS9780824888312","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0824888316.jpg?v=1762598425"},{"product_id":"my-land-my-life-book-siobhan-mcdonnell-9780824899165","title":"My Land, My Life","description":"Throughout Oceania, land is central to identity because it is understood to be spiritually nourishing and sustaining. Land is the mother. Land, and the kinship it nurtures, is the basis for sustaining livelihoods and ways of life. Therefore, Indigenous dispossession from the land has deep and far-reaching consequences. My Land, My Life: Dispossession at the Frontier of Desire explores the land rush that took place in Vanuatu from 2001 to 2014 which resulted in over ten percent of all customary land being leased. In this book, Siobhan McDonnell offers new insights into the drivers of capitalist land transformations. Using multi-scalar and multi-sited ethnography, she describes not simply a linear march toward commodification of the landscape by foreign interests, but a complex web replete with the local powerful Indigenous men involved in manipulating power and property.   McDonnell meticulously describes land-leasing processes and maps the relationships between investors, middlemen, and local men. She shows how property is a tool with which foreigners reassert capitalism and neocolonial control over Indigenous landscapes. The legal identity of \"landowner\" contains foundational contradictions between the rights established in Vanuatu’s kastom system and those afforded by property, as individualized rights over land. Property has also created sites for the production of masculine authority and enabled men to manipulate claims to land and entrench their personal power. This book explores how transactions of customary land have created new domains of agency and frontiers of desire: foreign desire to possess land and local desire to lease land for cash. It concludes with a discussion of Vanuatu’s constitutional and land reform package, drafted by the author, which took effect in 2014 and delivered a more empathetic approach to Indigenous land rights and ended the land rush.  Informed by decades of study, legal work, and community engagement, My Land, My Life demonstrates an engaged anthropological practice based on reciprocity that responds directly to what Indigenous people have asked for. This book is certain to appeal to a wide range of scholars as well as policy makers.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52740372267281,"sku":"NIN9780824899165","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780824899165.jpg?v=1763482762"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/collections\/pacific-islands-monograph-series-book-series.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}