Applied Anthropology and Interwar Internationalism: Felix and Marie Keesing and the (White) Future of the ‘Native’ Pan-Pacific

ABSTRACT

This paper concerns transnational and international debate about the function of education as a progressive force in modernising colonial and race relations. It focuses on aspects of the published work and careers of New Zealanders Felix and Marie Keesing in the interwar and early post-war years in order to investigate the role these debates played in imagining new processes of adaptation and cohabitation in the settler/colonial Pacific. The paper argues that transnational networks were crucial to that project: as internationally recognised anthropologists, during the interwar years the Keesings were involved in the Institute of Pacific Relations and the Pan-Pacific Women's Association, operating out of Honolulu. Through these communities of expertise, the couple sought to promote and ultimately popularise the contemporary idea that ‘applied anthropology’ would be essential to modernising the norms of governance between ‘native peoples’ and Western citizen-subjects.     

Chinese Aid in the South Pacific: Linked to Resources?

Abstract

China’s emergence as a global development actor has implications for developing countries and “traditional” donor agencies. Its current provision of foreign aid and other forms of development assistance to developing countries throughout the world presents both opportunities and challenges for all actors. At the same time, China’s growing need for natural resources and its policy of securing access through state-led “resource diplomacy” are causing concern. While most scholars and commentators are focused on the “China in Africa” dimension, China’s engagement in the South Pacific region has also been growing rapidly over the past decade and offers some interesting and unique insights. This article examines the dynamics of China’s provision of foreign aid and its quest for natural resources in the South Pacific region, with comparative references to other regions. Drawing particularly upon interviews and site visits in Fiji and Papua New Guinea, it argues that although major commercial resource contracts do appear to be supported by Chinese Government assistance, resources deals are not explicitly part of Chinese foreign aid in the region.     

Missing or Misdiagnosed? General Paralysis of the Insane,Yaws, and Syphilis in Fiji, 1884–1940

ABSTRACT

General Paralysis of the Insane (GPI) was a deadly disease, once common in Fiji’s lunatic asylum and, by the early 20th century, thought to be caused by syphilis. The conundrum is that the majority of GPI sufferers in the asylum were Indigenous Fijians, considered to have immunity to syphilis. This immunity was probably through the prevalence of yaws amongst Indigenous Fijians. Yaws had symptoms similar to GPI and syphilis with which it was easily confused. Yaws and syphilis also invoked divergent scientific and moral discourses, with implications for how medical and scientific knowledge about the aetiology of GPI and associated moral discourses were transferred to Fiji. This paper discusses European nosology and diagnosis of GPI, yaws and syphilis, asking if GPI was misdiagnosed in Fiji, or if reports of GPI among Fijians and the effects of yaws on the nervous system are missing from tropical medicine orthodoxy.