Voyaging through the Contemporary Pacific

Long known for its vast geographic and cultural diversity, the Pacific Islands region today is witness to some of the most dramatic histories of decolonisation and postcolonial development anywhere in the world. As new nations emerge - and struggle to emerge - political change is everywhere marked by efforts to reconceptualise identities, histories, and futures. In the midst of these transformations, this volume brings together a diverse range of analysis and commentary that challenge tired and simplistic paradigms of ‘area study’ and urge us to rethink the ways we imagine and represent the Pacific. The essays also challenge the conventions of scholarship itself, offering provocative reflections on the politics and ethics of research and writing across disciplines. The authors examine a range of subjects relevant to formations of cultural and regional identity, including the politics and poetics of history, of tradition, and of cultural expressions in literature, film, and the arts. In doing so, their discussions open up new ways of thinking about the Pacific as well as about relations between tradition and modernity, and about processes of ‘modernisation’ and globalisation everywhere.