The Legacy of Ian Hunter's Work on Literature Education and the History of Reading Practices: Some Preliminary Remarks

Summary

Ian Hunter's early work on the history of literature education and the emergence of English as school subject issued a bold challenge to traditional accounts that have in the main focused on English either as knowledge of a particular field or as ideology. The alternative proposal put forward by Hunter and supported by detailed historical analysis is that English exists as a series of historically contingent techniques and practices for shaping the self-managing capacities of children. The challenge for the field is to advance this historical work and to examine possible implications for English teaching.     

Leading Lights in the ‘Mother of Darkness’: Perspectives on Leadership and Value in North Ambrym,Vanuatu

In comparative political theory in Anthropology, Pacific leadership has had a prominent place, with a long history of debate about typologies and forms. In this paper I eschew such approaches in favour of a demonstration of the complexity of interactions fostered in local communities by interpretations of a protean ‘tradition’, refracted by a history of encounters with modernity and its social imaginary at a particular historical moment. The narratives of three local leaders in Vanuatu's recent history, provide a context for evaluating the relative merits of such typologies when the grounds of leadership itself are contested.