Sorcery and Negotiating Economic Agency: A Critical Observation from Solomon Islands

In this paper, my aim is to add to the discussions of sorcery in Melanesia by focussing on its relation to economic agency in the context of a case example from Malaita, Solomon Islands. Using Taylor's (2015) categories of ‘distributive’ and ‘possessive’ agency as a critical point of departure, I illustrate how sorcery can be considered as an outcome when people are perceived not to be balancing these forms of economic agency. By drawing on the example of an entrepreneur from Malaita, I highlight the complexity of the negotiations between possessive and distributive agencies and show how critically investigating these negotiations is important for understanding why sorcery may happen but also how to limit the chances of it happening. Furthermore, I also illustrate how critical investigations of accounts of sorcery can reveal complexities of socio‐economic and political life in changing economic and social circumstances.     

Urban Women and the Transformations of Braedpraes1 in Honiara2

In the capital city of the Solomon Islands, brideprice is often given to formalize the marriage of young couples from the island of Malaita. For the young wife, brideprice is a reminder that she is expected to work and produce children for the lineage of her husband, an obligation that is at times strongly impressed upon her by her in-laws. Data gathered in Honiara over the last 15 years, most recently in 2015–2016, show the emergence of a variety of patterns among Malaitan women living in Honiara regarding their productive and reproductive autonomy, and their role in brideprice. Beyond their diversity, what these data reveal, we argue, is that the interstitial cultural spaces created by the urbanization of social and economic relations afford young urban women the possibility of engaging with brideprice in a way that had not been possible until then. We demonstrate that, as members of an emerging new middle-class, these women seek (either in agreement with their husbands, or in spite of them) to transform the meaning of brideprice: while showing respect to their in-laws and to tradition, their goal is to gain greater control over their lives within the confines of brideprice sociality.     

Bridewealth1 and the Autonomy of Women in Melanesia

Considering bridewealth in Melanesia from the angle of women's autonomy, in this introduction we review and analyse the various elements of this marriage practice that reveal its place in the symbolic, social and economic worlds of women. With an accent on social transformation, we discuss women's autonomy and agency in relation to the constraints that bridewealth puts on their lives, and on how they engage with it. Knowing what bridewealth is, and how the rules of reciprocity that it indexes obligate married women, the focus is on women's ability to act within these constraints or to redefine their contours, particularly with regards to economic and reproductive agency. The article, which serves also as the introduction for the special issue on bridewealth in the journal Oceania, discusses themes analysed in the collection, such as the moral prospects of bridewealth today, its relation to ‘capital’ in twenty-first century Oceania, the triad value/valuables/valuers, and the empowerment of women. It concludes with thoughts on gender inequality.     

Political reconciliation in Timor Leste,Solomon Islands and Bougainville: the dark side of hybridity

In recent years, the study and practice of political reconciliation has experienced a turn to hybridity. This turn has been defined by the increased rate at which liberal international and local peacebuilding practices, and their underlying ideas, have become merged, integrated or co-located in time and space. While hybrid approaches to reconciliation have been praised as an effective means of engaging local populations in peacebuilding operations, little attention has been paid to examining whether or not they also bring unintended negative consequences. Drawing on the cases of Timor Leste, Solomon Islands and Bougainville, this article examines the potentially dark side of hybridity. It demonstrates that, in each of these cases, hybrid approaches to political reconciliation have brought both positive and negative consequences. On the positive side of the equation, hybridity has seen imported international approaches to reconciliation adapted to meet local demands and ensure resonance with local populations. On the negative side, however, the misappropriation and instrumentalisation of local practices within hybrid approaches has served to damage their legitimacy and to jeopardise their contributions to reconciliation. The article thus concludes that the existence and extent of this dark side necessitates a re-evaluation of how hybrid approaches to political reconciliation are planned and implemented.     

Resisting RAMSI: Intervention,Identity and Symbolism in Solomon Islands

ABSTRACT The Australian‐led Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI) continues to enjoy high levels of approval amongst Solomon Islanders. However, this approval belies the existence of a minority, but nevertheless important, dissenting perspective, one which has mostly emanated from Malaitan quarters. How are we to interpret Malaitan expressions of opposition to RAMSI? While these dissenting voices can, in part, be seen through a lens of legal and economic rationality, Malaitan opposition to RAMSI must be properly located within a deeper tradition of Malaitan resistance to the imposition of alien and centralised authority. Malaitans have responded to the RAMSI intervention by invoking kastom as a symbol of difference, unity and resistance, just as they have done in the past. It is argued that resistance to RAMSI must be (re)interpreted as having fundamentally cultural and historical underpinnings. Resisting RAMSI is as much about asserting culture and identity as it is about money and power. This argument is drawn out through an historically contextualised analysis of contemporary articulations of Malaitan resistance. The voices examined come from the public statements of prominent Malaitans, the published manifesto of the Malaita Ma'asina Forum, and interviews with former members of the Malaita Eagle Force.     

‘On a nos mots à dire’: Kanak Women's Experience of Bridewealth in Lifou

Bridewealth in Lifou cannot be discussed on its own; rather it should be considered within the plurality of ceremonial acts which are needed to legitimize a marriage as customary. What do these transactions mean? Where does women's agency lie? Through a longitudinal analysis of ethnographic materials from my fieldwork in Lifou, Loyalty Islands, I consider how Kanak women are engaged in and perceive these ceremonial and cultural processes through a declared women's perspective that highlights their ability to make autonomous choices in an open ended historical context. I argue that it is a case of ‘positive agency’. I emphasize that local categories (june hmala and wenehleng) which define specific moments in this process can be subsumed under the anthropological term ‘bridewealth’. Further, I examine the meaning of money in bridewealth and the fact that the monetary contribution keeps increasing, raising local concerns about the need to regulate the amount circulating in marriage exchanges and its dispersion. Furthermore in Lifou there is no indication that the assembling of the bridewealth by the grooms implies a commoditization and (later) exploitation of women.     

How the Missionary got his Mana: Charles Elliot Fox and the Power of Name‐Exchange in Solomon Islands

Charles Elliot Fox (1878–1977) was one of the Anglican Melanesian Mission's most emblematic figures, extending its reputation for scholarship and respect for Pacific traditions. Uniquely among the Mission's European figures, however, Fox is also credited with exceptional powers (mana). Based on archival research and ethnographic fieldwork among the Arosi (Makira, Solomon Islands), I argue that Fox's name‐exchanges with Makirans have contributed in unrecognized ways to his reputation for mana. In so doing, I show how, in contrast with name‐exchange in Polynesia, Arosi name‐exchange implies the internalization of a gap between ontological categories that renders name‐exchange partners two persons in one body, endowed with access to one another's being and ways. Fox's writings indicate that he understood this aspect of Arosi name‐exchange as a prefiguration of the Christian doctrine of the incarnation. This understanding, in turn, shaped his mission method and motivated his otherwise puzzling claims that he was a Melanesian.     

Ancient Solomon Islands mtDNA: assessing Holocene settlement and the impact of European contact

Archaeologists, linguists and geneticists generally agree that Near Oceania was subject to two major pulses of human dispersal: a Pleistocene occupation around 40,000 BP and a Late-Holocene migration at 3500 BP commonly associated with the Austronesian expansion out of Taiwan. The latter led to the development of the Lapita cultural complex in the Bismarck Archipelago which resulted in the settlement of Remote Oceania and there are a variety of competing models (express train, slow boat, entangled bank, etc.) used to explain this. Recent genetic studies have focused on this issue, but none of them have taken into consideration the bias possibly introduced by 19th-century historically reported population decline caused by European contact.     

Church Women's Groups and the Empowerment of Women in Solomon Islands

Throughout the Pacific, church women's groups play an important social and spiritual role in the lives of many indigenous women. However, these groups rarely attract the interest of development practitioners or theorists concerned with the empowerment of women, largely because of their outwardly conservative stance. Preoccupied with sewing classes, pastoral care, and social work, church women's groups appear to epitomize a welfare approach to women's development. Yet, while welfare concerns remain central to the activities of many such groups, by drawing on case studies from Solomon Islands in the period leading up to the onset of political crisis in 1999, this article demonstrates that a welfare approach does not preclude women's groups from engaging in strategic activities for the empowerment of women. Such activities include support for logging protests, workshops to affirm the importance of women's roles and develop their confidence, and opportunities for them to travel and expand their knowledge basis. Furthermore, the process of coming together to engage in welfare activities which many women enjoy greatly can provide opportunities for confidence‐building, income generation, and networking.     

Introduction: space,place and the geographies of women's caregiving work

The vast majority of caregivers, whether formal or informal, paid or unpaid, are women. Health care restructuring across the West, inspired by a shift from the welfare to neoliberal state, has greatly impacted caregiving. The idea for this collection arose as a result of a special paper session on the geographies of caregiving, held as part of the Association of American Geographers Meeting (Chicago, 2006). In hearing the papers presented, it became clear that geographers are engaged in interesting and innovative research in this area, much of which involves women's caregiving work in particular. As both unpaid informal family caregiving and paid formal practitioner-provided care are mainly addressed in this collection, they are briefly discussed in this editorial. This is followed by a discussion of the geographical contributions to the growing caregiving literature, which provides the foundation for an overview of ongoing and new research directions. The four articles that make up this special issue are then reviewed in brief. Finally, we identify issues that cut across all four articles, leading to a discussion of future research directions.     

《旧金山对日和约》再研究--关于其对西沙群岛、南沙群岛的处理及后果

西沙群岛、南沙群岛主权本属中国,第二次世界大战期间被日本占领,日本战败后理应由中国收回,但1951年美国起草和主导签署的<旧金山对日和约>只表明日本放弃这些岛礁,未明确主权归属问题,为的是防止中国(大陆)从<对日和约>中得出对中国主权有利的结论来.<对日和约>如此处理主权问题为日后两群岛"主权未定"论埋下了祸根.     

20世纪30年代日本对我国南沙群岛政策的演变

20世纪30年代,日本对我国南沙群岛政策呈现出阶段性变化。1933年“九小岛事件”发生之际,日本在对外政策中坚持“协调外交”路线,与法国达成妥协,实现共存。1936年当“南进”政策成为日本的国策时,向我国南沙群岛的扩张成为日本实施向外南洋扩张计划中的一部分。随着日本军部逐渐主导国家对外决策及国际局势的新变化,日本外务省从极力反对海军省的行动演变为积极献策,一致主张驱逐法国势力,武力侵占我国南沙群岛。1939年3月末,日本将我国南沙群岛非法“编入”领土。20世纪30年代日本对我国南沙群岛政策演变是日本外务省、海军省基于国内政治与国际时局综合考量,也是他们分歧、折冲、平衡的结果。     

Community-based Fisheries Management,Tradition and the Challenges of Development in Marovo,Solomon Islands

This study examines traditional fisheries-related resource management through a case in which local communities, from a basis of customary, ‘common property’ control over the sea and its resources, handle a multitude of development issues. Presenting first some important issues relating to people's role in fisheries management and to the ‘common property’ debate, the article then describes a traditional system for management of land and sea resources in a Pacific Islands society; that of Marovo Lagoon, Solomon Islands. Emphasis is given to fisheries resources, with a view to explaining in practical terms how a system of customary marine tenure operates under the wider social, political, economic and ecological circumstances of change arising from development pressures. Against this background, assessments are made of the viability of this traditional fisheries management system under present conditions of state control and of both external and internal pressures for large-scale resource development enterprises.     

16th-Century Ship Graffiti on the Town Walls of Eivissa, Balearic Islands, Spain

Among the historical ship depictions in Eivissa (Balearic Islands, Spain), the graffiti of galleys on the Renaissance city walls are of particular interest. From archival documents the building sequences of this monument can be confirmed. Thus the galley graffiti on the eastern side of the bastion of Sant Bernat can be narrowed down chronologically to slightly after 1568. These graffiti are also interpreted from the social history point of view, in the light of ongoing corsair incursions during the 16th century.
© 2009 The Author     

Dogomomo Xmas,Kwangwe's Races,and a Murder: W.E. Armstrong and the Rossel Island Money

W.E. Armstrong, British anthropologist, visited Rossel Island in 1921 and derived a theory regarding the islanders' monetary system, which attracted much debate at the time. However, his analysis was ultimately shown to be a misunderstanding of the situation. In this examination of Armstrong's field notes, I show how the linguistic difficulties he worked under, together with the complexity of the monetary exchange and the short term of his fieldwork, combined to lead him astray.     

Linking Theory and Evidence in an Archaeology of Human Agency: Iconography,Style, and Theories of Embodiment

Many of the theories that inspire agency approaches in archaeology identify deep philosophical problems with other lines of thought. This creates challenges for identifying methods: do radical theories require radical methods? Choosing as a case study one of agency’s interpretive frameworks (embodiment) and, further, a single class of evidence (anthropomorphic imagery), I argue that the answer is “no.” In this case, familiar art historical methods, deliberately played off one against the other, provide a middle range framework for linking theory and evidence.     

Agency Evolution, New Institutionalism, and 'Hybrid' Policy Domains: Lessons from the 'Greening' of the U.S. Military

Neoinstitutionalists applying the logic of rational choice institutionalism have leavened our understanding of public agency design and evolution in the domestic and national security policy domains. This paper seeks to advance theory building in empirically grounded ways by assessing the explanatory power of an important theoretical perspective (rational choice institutionalism), in an understudied "hybrid" policy domain where domestic and national security aims interact (domestic environmental policy and national security policy), and in an organizational type (the U.S. military) that has drawn scant attention from students of bureaucracy in political science, public administration, or public management. Analysis of three major efforts to green the U.S. military suggests that the patterns of politics accompanying agency evolution involving hybrid policy domains differ from domestic and national security domains in ways that limit the generalizability of rational choice institutionalism.     

Stable isotope chemistry,population histories and Late Prehistoric subsistence change in the Aleutian Islands

Aleut population history has been a topic of debate since the earliest archaeological investigations in the region. In this paper, we use stable isotope chemistry to evaluate the hypothesis that two distinct groups of people, Paleo- and Neo-Aleut, occupied the eastern Aleutians after 1000 BP. This study focuses on 80 sets of directly dated eastern Aleutian burial assemblages from Chaluka midden, Shiprock Island and Kagamil Island. We use a linear mixing model informed by isotopic analysis of two large Aleut faunal assemblages to address temporal and spatial variation in human carbon and nitrogen stable isotope data from these sites. The patterning we report addresses both Aleut demographic and economic prehistory, illustrating a transition in both at ca. 1000 BP. Our results suggests that the Chaluka diet, dominated by Paleo-Aleut inhumations, differed in both trophic level and foraging location from the other two sites for much of the past 4000 years. Trends in our data also suggest that individuals from Shiprock and Kagamil burial caves, primarily Neo-Aleuts, had enough access to higher trophic level foods to differentiate their bone chemistries from those buried in Chaluka midden. These trends in diet, recently reported genetic differences, as well as the introduction of novel mortuary practices at ca. 1000 BP, suggest that Neo-Aleuts do represent a population new to the eastern Aleutians.     

The Ba/Sr ratio,carious lesions,and dental calculus among the population buried in the church La Concepción (Tenerife,Canary Islands)

Certain trace elements may accumulate in bone in relation to dietary habits, so some of them are of interest in paleodietary analysis. This is the case with strontium (Sr) and barium (Ba), whose potential value as paleodietary indicators is enhanced by their relatively inert metabolic behaviour. The presence of carious lesions may indicate consumption of sugar and vegetables, whereas the etiology of dental calculus deposition is multifactorial, although some authors consider this as an indicator of protein consumption. Based on these facts we analysed (1) Ba, Sr, and calcium (Ca) content of inner cortical bone obtained from the ramus mandibularis, by atomic absorption spectrophotometry, (2) presence of teeth with carious lesions, and (3) presence of teeth with calculus deposition in 62 mandibles. All samples were obtained from the church La Concepción, an 18th century burial place in Tenerife. Gender was assessed by analysing genetic expression of amelogenin in some cases (14), and by inspection of pelvic bones when available (41 cases). We found (1) Carious lesions in 32 cases, and dental calculus, in 39; no association was observed between sex and presence of dental caries or calculus deposition, nor between the sex and the proportion of carious teeth nor the proportion of teeth with calculus deposition; (2) people buried near the altar (priests and individuals of the highest social class) showed a significantly higher proportion of teeth with dental calculus deposition (χ² = 5.36, p = 0.021); (3) bone Sr and bone Ba were significantly higher than the values observed in a control group of 10 modern omnivorous individuals; the lowest Sr values were observed among people buried near the altar; and (4) the Ba/Sr ratio was directly related with the proportion of teeth with carious lesions. These data suggest that there were differences in dietary pattern among the individuals belonging to different social classes; overall, consumption of vegetables was widespread, as shown by the high proportion of carious lesions, in relation with raised Ba/Sr ratio, whereas consumption of marine products was scarce.     

从地图在解决边界争端中的作用看我国对南沙群岛的主权

本在对国际边界争端的典型案例进行研究后,指出地图在解决争端中发挥着重要的作用,并从国际法的角度研究了众多标明南沙群岛属于中国的中外地图,进一步指出南海断续国界线是中国拥有南沙主权的重要依据和标准。