Island Rivers: Fresh Water and Place in Oceania

Anthropologists

have written a great deal about the coastal adaptations and seafaring

traditions of Pacific Islanders, but have had much less to say about the

significance of rivers for Pacific island culture, livelihood and identity.

The authors of this collection seek to fill that gap in the ethnographic

record by drawing attention to the deep historical attachments of island

communities to rivers, and the ways in which those attachments are changing

in response to various forms of economic development and social change. In

addition to making a unique contribution to Pacific island ethnography, the

authors of this volume speak to a global set of issues of immense importance

to a world in which water scarcity, conflict, pollution and the degradation of

riparian environments afflict growing numbers of people. Several authors take

a political ecology approach to their topic, but the emphasis here is less on

hydro-politics than on the cultural meaning of rivers to the communities we

describe. How has the cultural significance of rivers shifted as a result of

colonisation, development and nation-building? How do people whose

identities are fundamentally rooted in their relationship to

a particular river renegotiate that relationship when the river is

dammed to generate hydro-power or polluted by mining activities? How do

blockages in the flow of rivers and underground springs interrupt the

intergenerational transmission of local ecological knowledge and hence the

ability of local communities to construct collective identities rooted in a

sense of place?