The Italian American Experience In New Haven: Images and Oral Histories

Anthony V. Riccio's lavish new coffee table book, The ItalianAmerican Experience in New Haven: Images and Oral Histories,provides a fascinating look at the experiences of Italian immigrantsand their children in one east coast community. The field ofimmigration history has certainly benefited from the wealthof oral histories collected from immigrants and their descendants.Ranging from Al Santoli's New Americans, an Oral History: Immigrantsand Refugees in the U. S. Today (1988) to works such as La Merica:Images of Italian Greenhorn Experience (1985)     

Grammars of the South Pacific

Vanuatu is fertile ground for linguists. Six recent grammars of languages from that country's rich heritage document Austronesian linguistic structures. They also disclose current institutional support for grammar writing for documentary and comparative purposes, as well as local community and national interests that shape grammar production. These grammars, and the now increasingly digitalized and archived data upon which they draw, are models for what is likely to be a final burst of salvage linguistics in the 21st century as many of the world's smaller, unwritten vernaculars lose speakers to other encroaching languages, both local and global.     

The Art of Contested Histories: In Pursuit of Venus [Infected] and the Pacific Legacy

ABSTRACT

European artists of the eighteenth century framed an exotic textual and visual narrative of the Pacific, drawing largely on knowledge gained from exploratory journeys of the 1760s and 1770s. Visual representations of the Pacific became socially fashionable and commercially successful. The French wallpaper manufacturer, Dufour, captured this commercial potential in a dramatic, panoramic wallpaper that told stories of European encounters with Pacific peoples: Les Sauvages de la Mer Pacifique (1804). Yet it was selective, defining the Pacific by moments of contact with Cook and other explorers. Lisa Reihana's In Pursuit of Venus [Infected] (2015–17) dramatically interrogates the eighteenth-century narrative of the Pacific, responding to Dufour's wallpaper in a complex, panoramic work. By attending to ways in which the factual and speculative are brought together in Enlightenment artefacts and Reihana's restaging of them, we explore how art might be put to use in the service of historical interpretation.     

Intimate Oral Histories: Intercultural Romantic Relationships in Postwar Australia

This article examines the experiences of individuals in romantic relationships that crossed ethnic, religious or racial lines in post-World War II Australia. Using interviews from the Australian Generations Oral History Project, supplemented by archival and newspaper material, this article examines how broader changes in immigration and the cultural make-up of Australia in the second half of the twentieth century impacted individual Australians, influencing who they could desire, court and love. Through the narration of intimate life stories, this article attempts to capture the emotional experience of individuals whose relationships, while made possible by national policy decisions, still tested and breached social norms and cultural expectations at the personal and familial level.     

State functioning and state failure in the South Pacific

The South Pacific region features enormous variation in state performance. While Polynesian nations such as Samoa have proved to be relatively successful post-colonial states, Melanesian countries like the Solomon Islands are increasingly categorised as 'weak', 'failing' or 'failed' states. Drawing on a range of comparative studies by economists and political scientists in recent years, this article argues that cross-country variation in ethnic diversity between much of Polynesia and Melanesia is a key factor in explaining differences in state performance across the South Pacific. It shows how different kinds of ethnic structure are associated with specific political and economic outcomes, including variation in political stability, economic development, and internal conflict from country to country. In so doing, it helps explain why some parts of the South Pacific appear to be failing while others are relative success stories - and why this is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future.     

France in the South Pacific: power and politics

Two Worlds. First Meetings Between Maori and Europeans 1642–1772. By Anne Salmond. Auckland, Viking, 1991. 476 pp, illus., maps, appendix, refs, bibliog., index. $NZ69.95. ISBN 0–670–83298–7.

Island Kingdom: Tonga Ancient and Modern. By Ian Campbell. Christchurch, New Zealand, Canterbury University Press. 274 pp, bibliog., maps, illus., appendixes, glossary.

Mararoko: A Study in Melanesian Religion. By Mary MacDonald. New York, Peter Lang, 1991. 591 pp.

The City and County of Honolulu: a Governmental Chronicle. By Donald D. Johnson assisted by Phyllis Turnbull. Honolulu, University of Hawaii Press and City Council of the City &; County of Honolulu, 1991. viii, 462 pp, tables, notes, bibliog., index. ISBN 0–8248–1344–8. $US35.

Marquesan Societies: Inequality and Political Transformation in Eastern Polynesia. By Nicholas Thomas. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1990. xvi, 256 pp, gloss., illus., maps, append. $A75.

Micronesia: Decolonization and U.S. Military Interests in the Trust Territories of the Pacific Islands. By Gary Smith. Canberra, Australian National University, Peace Studies Centre, 1991. 131 pp. $A12.

Decentralisation in a developing country: The experience of Papua New Guinea and its health service. Edited by Jane A. Thomason, William C. Newbrander and Riita‐Liisa Kolehmainen‐Aitken. Canberra, National Centre for Development Studies, R.S.Pac.S., Australian National University, 1991. x, 162 pp, figs, tables, map, refs, index. $A25.     

China and the emerging regional order in the South Pacific

As China rises, it has become increasingly aggressive in applying its soft power in the Pacific. What does China's arrival mean for the emerging regional order in the Pacific? What is it up to in the strategic backwater of the Pacific, which has traditionally been regarded as an ‘American lake’ and Australia's ‘special patch’? Setting my analysis in the broad context of China's new global diplomacy, I argue that the pattern of China's assertive behaviour in the Pacific is no different from its approach to other regions in the global South. I further argue that with only limited strategic, diplomatic and economic investment in the Pacific, China has become a regional power by default. The arrival of China, therefore, is unlikely to provoke any new round of great power competition. Rather, it offers opportunities for the world's second most formidable development challenge.     

南太平洋上的明珠——悉尼

<正>从悉尼机场下飞机,坐上巴士,穿过绿树成荫的街道,美丽迷人的海湾映入眼帘,远远地就看见了悉尼最高建筑——悉尼塔。前行半小时左右,被誉为世界建筑艺术经典的悉尼歌剧院就矗立在我们面前了。