Between the South Sea and the mountainous ridges: biopolitical assemblages in the Spanish colonial Americas

SUMMARY: Although the historical archaeology of the Spanish colonial world is currently witnessing an explosion of research in the Americas, the accompanying political economic framework has tended to remain little interrogated. This paper argues that Spanish colonial contexts bring into particular relief the entanglements between ‘core’ capitalist processes like ‘antimarkets’, dispossession and the disciplining of labour with the specific biopolitical ecologies assembled through co-option, coercion and accumulation. This perspective is explored through two archaeological case studies from Peru and Guatemala, where competing concerns about altitude, climate, disease, violence and populations of differentiated labouring bodies (both human and non-human) came to the fore in unexpected ways. The resulting discussion challenges the reliance on abstract analytical totalities like ‘capitalism’ and ‘colonialism’, and shifts attention towards the diverse assemblages of actors that shaped and continue to shape the processes central to political economic analyses.     

Between modernity and primitivity: Okinawan identity in relation to Japan and the South Pacific*

ABSTRACT. This article proposes that contemporary ethnic subjectivities are shaped by modernist discourses. Ethnographic material about a group of Okinawan fishermen who worked with Solomon Islanders from 1971 to 2000 is used to explore the effect on national identities of being perceived as modern, or primitive. Okinawa is an island group to the south of Japan that became part of the Japanese Empire in the 1870s. Since then Okinawa has been defined as primitive against modern Japan. Modernist discourse was one of the range of influences on relations between Okinawan fishermen and Solomon Islanders. Symbolically violent identifications of Okinawans as more modern than Solomon Islanders stymied efforts at grassroots cosmopolitanism. Insofar as perceptions of relative levels of modernness of ethnic groups act to rank them, modernism is therefore one of the factors at stake in competition between nationalisms and friction between ethnic groups.     

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.     

Binding in the Pacific: Between Loops and Knots

The paper argues that the prevailing use of the term ‘template’ in the investigation of the reproductive and generative capacity of artworks in Oceania is profoundly misleading and in need of replacing. Tracing a similar dilemma in New Genetics and Biology, the paper argues that the contemporary fascination with the knot as a model of non-linear, topological systems enables us to look at the importance of binding in the creation of the figural in Oceanic art from a new perspective. This paper intends to open up the investigation of binding as technique and as patterned design in its distinct articulation in artifactual form across the Pacific by raising questions about the relation between the figural and the social. The material provoking the rethinking of the difference created by material articulation of the mundane, personal, and yet also profoundly mathematical technique of binding in society and culture is that of malanggan figurative art.     

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.     

Australia and the South Pacific nuclear free zone treaty: a reinterpretation

A number of analysts have identified the 1986 South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone (SPNFZ) Treaty as one of Australia's major achievements in the area of arms control diplomacy. This article challenges the orthodox view in the secondary literature that Australia's pursuit of a SPNFZ Treaty was motivated exclusively by a desire to protect the nuclear dimension of its alliance relationship with the United States from more ‘radical’ proposals in the region. Drawing on previously unreleased documents made available to the author by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade under the Commonwealth's Freedom of Information Act, this article argues that the Hawke government's pursuit of a nuclear‐free zone in the South Pacific was motivated primarily by what it perceived as an opportunity to promote Australia's image as an activist middle power committed to bolstering the coherence of the global non‐proliferation regime.     

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.     

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.     

Contextualising the AIDS epidemic in the South Pacific: orthodoxies,estimates and evidence

There is a growing consensus that HIV/AIDS is a ‘time bomb’ ticking in the South Pacific. This may, in fact, be the case. However, there are at least two major problems with this approach. First, analysis of the implications of the epidemic is based on supposedly concrete links between the epidemic and social, economic and political outcomes. Many of these apparent links have not been established (because the data is not available for the South Pacific). As such, much of the method for analysing the ramifications of the epidemic is borrowed from elsewhere, notably Africa, and the strength of these links is beginning to unravel. Second, research on the vectors of the epidemic that informs this consensus is only as good as the data that it relies on. There are major testing and surveillance gaps in the South Pacific that mean projections are often based on patchy and incomplete data. This can dramatically skew priorities. Reflecting on these problems is important because of the clear ramifications they pose for the development of good public policy in, and toward, the South Pacific.