The End of Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (2003–17)

The Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI) ended in June 2017 after 14 years. It was an initiative of the Pacific Islands Forum authorized under the Biketawa Declaration of 2000, which enabled a regional response to crises in the region. Between 1998 and 2003, Solomon Islands had undergone a period usually called the ‘tenson’ in Solomons Pijin, or the ‘Tension’ or ‘Ethnic Tension’ in English, when government processes failed and two rival militia groups out of Malaita and Guadalcanal terrorized Honiara and its surrounds. Prime Minister Ulufa‘alu was removed in a de facto coup in 2000. Although all Pacific Islands Forum nations participated, Australia paid 95 per cent of the costs. This was the first time Australia and New Zealand had led a substantial intervention mission beyond their borders that was not under United Nations auspices. The article places Solomon Islands politics and governance issues into a 20-year perspective and examines the success and failures of RAMSI, which was far more adaptable than is usually admitted. The article also considers the appropriateness of the Westminster system to government in Solomon Islands.     

Continuing drivers of violence in Honiara: making friends and influencing people

The Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI) has provided a relative decline of violence in Honiara for over a decade. However, the combination of customary cultural practices utilised in negotiating status and power in Solomon Islands society with ongoing demographic and economic processes exacerbated by the period of foreign intervention has perpetuated underlying drivers of violence that are likely to reignite once RAMSI fully departs. The use of practices of social reciprocity and compensation in order to gain and effectively wield key resources such as cash, access to jobs and access to land is ongoing in Honiara, where new opportunities provide new pathways to utilising these practices by growing cohorts of youth. This article examines the use of these forms of negotiation in Honiara and argues that three ongoing processes are likely to drive future outbreaks of violence in the capital once RAMSI departs: a rapidly expanding urba; ongoing contestation over access to land; and the effects of international investment and presence of urban foreign enclaves.     

Can civic nationalism reduce corruption? Transnational and translocal insights from Solomon Islands

Some scholars and practitioners argue that the key to addressing corruption in poor countries lies in citizens eschewing patronage ties and embracing civic nationalism. This view has led some to suggest that a corruption-busting nationalist sentiment can be encouraged by exposing elites from poor countries to the liberal values of relatively well-governed rich ones. However, thus far few scholars have attempted to understand the complex ways that different types of mobility shape perceptions about nationalism and corruption. This article examines the role mobilities play in shaping attitudes towards nationalism and corruption amongst stakeholders connected to anti-corruption reforms in the Pacific Island nation of Solomon Islands. It finds that highly mobile elites framed corruption and nationalism through two distinct concepts: transnationalism (conceiving the world as comprising territorially divided states) and translocalism (which focuses on local connections developed through [im]mobilities). Transnational framings, shaped by international travel and international indices, stressed the importance of promoting civic nationalism to fight corruption. Translocal framings, reinforced by everyday experiences, were more sceptical of both anti-corruption and nation- and state-building efforts. Findings provide insights into why anti-corruption reforms in post-colonial contexts are so challenging, and the potential for reimagining the relationship between nationalism and anti-corruption.     

ZooMS: making eggshell visible in the archaeological record

Avian eggshell is a common component of many archaeological deposits, but its archaeological potential remains largely unexplored. The most obvious reasons are two-fold. Firstly, despite its abundance on many sites, eggshell is often overlooked during excavation. Even when it is recovered, small fragmented remains are difficult to identify taxonomically. Here we introduce a minimally destructive qualitative analytical technique for taxonomic identification of eggshell fragments based on highly sensitive mass spectrometry and peptide mass fingerprinting (ZooMS), and illustrate its application to eggshell recovered from the Viking Age urban site at Hungate, York. We adopt a more extreme version of the method of bleach treating used to prepare ancient eggshell for DNA analysis, followed by conventional peptide mass fingerprinting using MALDI-ToF mass spectrometry. The development of this technique will allow future research to make better use of eggshell fragments recovered from archaeological sites.     

中国考古文物类期刊的发展与中国考古学的发展

本文分析了近90年来160多种中国考古文物类期刊的创办与发展情况,提出中国考古文物类期刊的发展与中国考古学学科的发展一样,经历了初创与早期发展、全面发展、复苏时期、成熟发展等四个阶段。现在的中国考古文物类期刊的格局,是1979年以来形成的。目前主要刊物的栏目形式有所变化．但研究论文与田野资料并重的办刊方针总体上没有变化。近10年来一些刊物新增加了文化遗产保护、科技考古、公众考古的内容,这应是中国考古学在21世纪发展的三项新的内容。     

Profiling Politicians in Solomon Islands: Professionalisation of a Political Elite?

This article examines the key attributes of members of parliament from Solomon Islands. Drawing on bio-data on MPs, interviews and election results, the authors’ findings show that politicians are getting older, have atypical education levels and are from an increasingly diverse range of occupational backgrounds. The authors also find that, while Solomon Islands MPs are a political elite of sorts, they remain tightly tied to their communities. They consider the implications of these findings for research on developmental leadership, political professionalisation and elite theory. They argue that none of these three literatures adequately captures the political trajectories of politicians in Solomon Islands but that this case study contributes to research in these areas.

本文探讨了所罗门群岛议会成员的一些重要属性。作者根据对议员们传记、访谈和选举结果等资料的研究,发现政治家年龄越来越大,教育水平不太典型,职业背景愈益多样。作者同时发现,所罗门群岛议员虽属政治精英,但与各自的社群都保持紧密的联系。作者讨论了这些发现对于发展型领导人、政治职业化及精英理论所具有的意义。作者指出,这三方方面的文献都未能捕捉到所罗门群岛政治家的政治轨迹,而本研究却对此有所贡献。     

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.     

甘肃省博物馆藏佛教文物再探讨

本文对甘肃省博物馆及省内一些地县博物馆的部分佛教藏品作了简要的述评。     

Looking through the mirrors: materiality and intimacy at Domenico Grillo’s mansion in Baroque Madrid

Abstract

In 1662, the Spanish crown granted Genoese banker Domenico Grillo an incredibly generous monopoly contract aiming at reactivating the slave trade to the Spanish colonies in the New World. Yet despite the fundamental role Grillo’s slaving business played in the transformation of the geopolitics of the Atlantic, his fleeting incursion into the field of human traffic has so far received limited historiographical attention. This paradox may result from the little information that, beyond the records of his commercial transactions, colonial archives appear to have retained about the complex personality of this Ligurian financier. Seeking to bypass this frustrating documentary gap, this work draws on alternative historical, genealogical and archaeological approaches in order to explore the social and cultural meaning of the various materialities once populating Domenico Grillo’s intimate lived spaces in Baroque Madrid.