Engendering the Anthropocene in Oceania: Fatalism, Resilience, Resistance

The concept of the Anthropocene confounds Eurocentric distinctions of natural and human history, as Dipesh Chakrabarty observes. But who are ‘we’ in the Anthropocene, how do notions of our shared humanity contend with the cascading global inequalities of place, race, class and gender. Oceania is often said to have contributed the least and suffered the most from climate change. Pacific women, and especially those living on low lying atolls, have been portrayed as the most vulnerable to the disastrous consequences of climate change. This focuses on sea level rise and the toxic mixing, the elemental confusion of salt and fresh water caused by atmospheric changes and global warming. While not negating the gravity of present and future scenarios, how can we move beyond the pervasive fatalism of foreign framings and seemingly opposed clichéd evocations of ‘resilience’? The moniker of the Pacific Climate Warriors 350.org ‘We are not drowning, we are fighting’ evokes a contrary trope of resistance and resonates with Oceanic activism in politics and the creative arts.[i] Tracing such a genealogy of resistance might start with a greater respect for Indigenous knowledges and embodied practices in contemporary understandings of ‘climate cultures’ in Oceania which do not routinely distinguish between natural and human history.[ii

Contested Paradise: Dispossession and Repossession in Hawai‘i

Perhaps of all the archipelagos of the Pacific imagined by Euro-Americans as “paradisiacal,” Hawai‘i has been the most “possessed” by an unusually harmonious combination of Christian, capitalist, and imperial agents of the United States. The notion of paradise, rooted in Zoroastrian and Judeo-Christian imaginaries, projected ideas of the harmony and beauty of a primordial state. But just as Christians saw darkness harbored in the Garden of Eden, so did the imperial occupa- tion of Hawai‘i usher in an era of ecological and cultural devastation. Reflecting on the embodied experiences of the anu Pacific Islands Field School in 2015, this essay considers how the occupation and possession of Hawai‘i, depicted by Teresia Teaiwa as “militourism,” has deployed imaginaries of paradise. But it also suggests how Kānaka Maoli engaged in the sovereignty movement are mobilizing alternative notions of paradise in projects of repossession. This is explored through stories of three sites focal to our visit: Mauna a Wākea on the Big Island, Aulani Disney Resort and the University of Hawai‘i–West O‘ahu campus, and Hālawa Valley. Kanaka Maoli notions of “paradise” emphasize balance (pono), genealogical connections between the human and the nonhuman, and the intimate imbrication of corporeal and spiritual well-being. These ideas draw from the past to imagine a future: the “fall from grace” from ancient Hawai‘i to contemporary occupation and precarity is to be redressed by projects to restore social and ecological harmony

Falling Through the Net? Gender and Social Protection in the Pacific

This paper examines the gender dimensions and implications of social protection in relation to rapid transformations in the globalizing economies in the Pacific region. The paper analyzes the dynamics of gender and social protection in three countries of the region -- Papua New Guinea, Tonga and Vanuatu -- and explores how best to approach social protection so as to promote gender equality rather than risk reinscribing prevailing gender inequalities. The paper emphasizes the need to move beyond bipolar divisions of customary and commodity economies or informal and formal economies to consider the everyday realities of making a living. Women will 'fall through the net' if social protection is unduly yoked to the public sphere of the state and the formal commodity economy in which women are marginalised. Women's own perceptions of their contemporary situation and their agency as both individuals and collectivities should be carefully heeded in finding creative solutions for gender equality in social protection for sustainable Pacific futures. The paper concludes by suggestion that efforts to ensure women's social protection in the Pacific need to be alert to the risks that women might 'fall through the net.' This paper was produced for UN Women's flagship report Progress of the World's Women 2015-2016 to be released as part of the UN Women discussion paper series

Divine Domesticities

Divine Domesticities: Christian Paradoxes in Asia and the Pacific fills a huge lacuna in the scholarly literature on missionaries in Asia/Pacific and is transnational history at its finest

Men of War, Men of Peace: Changing Masculinities in Vanuatu

The first European observers in the archipelago we now call Vanuatu characterised Indigenous men as martial warriors. Such observations occluded the diversity of Indigenous masculinities and the violence inherent in colonial processes of exploration, and later dispossession, ‘pacification’ and the imposition of colonial law. Indigenous relations between men were grounded in ascribed hierarchies of seniority and either achieved or ascribed hierarchies of divine power. Ideally more senior and higher ‘men of peace’ were seen to eclipse younger, lower ‘men of war’, but creative and destructive aspects of masculine power were often co-present in Janus-face formations. In surveying the longue durée of changing masculinities in Vanuatu we can witness complex reconfigurations associated with Christian conversion, the ‘labour trade’, commodity economy and state politics. The American military presence during the Second World War was a pivotal moment in such historical reconfigurations. As against the colonial masculine hierarchy of white mastas and black boes, it generated idioms of racial equality and fraternity between black men and white men and fuelled movements for independence. This is in stark contrast with the historical experience of another Pacific archipelago, Hawai‘i, a state of the United States and a major base for the US military securing what some Kānaka Maoli see as an occupation of their homelands. A comparison of these two Pacific archipelagos highlights how Indigenous masculinities are historically formed and transformed in the context of the race relations of different colonialisms.This work was supported by the Australian Research Council [FL100100196] and the Australian National University

Tanna: Romancing Kastom, Eluding Exoticism?

There have been protracted debates about exoticism in representations of the Pacific, in anthropology, visual arts and the cinema. The film Tanna, created and filmed in the Vanuatu island of that name by Australian filmmakers Bentley Dean and Martin Butler has been both celebrated and criticised for its representation of the people and place of Vanuatu as exotic. Such adjudications have to confront the complexities of a film that is a co-creation between Australia and Vanuatu, that hovers between ethnographic realist and fictional cinematic imaginaries and simultaneously evokes a sense of distance and difference and a sense of the shared human reality of young love and tragic loss. This article offers an analysis of the film and its critical reception.De nombreux débats portent sur les représentations de l'exotisme dans le Pacifique, que ce soit dans le domaine de l'anthropologie, des arts ou du cinéma. Le film Tanna, créé et filmé au Vanuatu, sur l’île du même nom, par les réalisateurs australiens Bentley Dean et Martin Butler, a été à la fois applaudi et critiqué pour avoir présenté le Vanuatu et ses habitants comme exotiques. De tels jugements doivent tenir compte de la complexité de cette co-création australienne et ni-Vanuatu qui se situe dans un entre-deux flottant entre réalité ethnographique et fiction cinématographique, tout en évoquant un sentiment de distance et de différence, ainsi que les émotions partagées de la réalité humaine face à un jeune amour et une disparition tragique. Cet article propose donc une analyse du film et de son accueil critique

Tanna : romancer la kastom, éluder l'exotisme ?

De nombreux débats portent sur les représentations de l'exotisme dans le Pacifique, que ce soit dans le domaine de l'anthropologie, des arts ou du cinéma. Le film Tanna, créé et filmé au Vanuatu, sur l’île du même nom, par les réalisateurs australiens Bentley Dean et Martin Butler, a été à la fois applaudi et critiqué pour avoir présenté le Vanuatu et ses habitants comme exotiques. De tels jugements doivent tenir compte de la complexité de cette co-création australienne et ni-Vanuatu qui se situe dans un entre-deux flottant entre réalité ethnographique et fiction cinématographique, tout en évoquant un sentiment de distance et de différence, ainsi que les émotions partagées de la réalité humaine face à un jeune amour et une disparition tragique. Cet article propose donc une analyse du film et de son accueil critique.There have been protracted debates about exoticism in representations of the Pacific, in anthropology, visual arts and the cinema. The film Tanna, created and filmed in the Vanuatu island of that name by Australian filmmakers Bentley Dean and Martin Butler has been both celebrated and criticised for its representation of the people and place of Vanuatu as exotic. Such adjudications have to confront the complexities of a film that is a co-creation between Australia and Vanuatu, that hovers between ethnographic realist and fictional cinematic imaginaries and simultaneously evokes a sense of distance and difference and a sense of the shared human reality of young love and tragic loss. This article offers an analysis of the film and its critical reception

Oceanic Encounters: Exchange, Desire, Violence

This volume, the result of ongoing collaborations between Australian and French anthropologists, historians and linguists, explores encounters between Pacific peoples and foreigners during the longue durée of European exploration, colonisation and settlement from the sixteenth century to the twentieth century. It deploys the concept of ‘encounter’ rather than the more common idea of ‘first contact’ for several reasons. Encounters with Europeans occurred in the context of extensive prior encounters and exchanges between Pacific peoples, manifest in the distribution of languages and objects and in patterns of human settlement and movement. The concept of encounter highlights the mutuality in such meetings of bodies and minds, whereby preconceptions from both sides were brought into confrontation, dialogue, mutual influence and ultimately mutual transformation. It stresses not so much prior visions of ‘strangers’ or ‘others’ but the contingencies in events of encounter and how senses other than vision were crucial in shaping reciprocal appraisals. But a stress on mutual meanings and interdependent agencies in such cross-cultural encounters should not occlude the tumultuous misunderstandings, political contests and extreme violence which also characterised Indigenous-European interactions over this period

Can soilless farming feed urban East Africa? An assessment of the benefits and challenges of hydroponics in Uganda and Tanzania

This research article was published by Elsevier in 2022East Africa has the potential to boost its urban food production through adoption of soilless farming techniques. The case study assessed the benefits and drawbacks allied with hydroponic vegetable farming among urban and peri‑urban farms in Northern Tanzania and Central Uganda. Snowball sampling was used to identify 150 vegetable farms/farmers through urban farmers’ groups and recommendations from the agricultural organizations from Uganda and Tanzania. Based on the complexity and distinctiveness of this farming system, only 51 individuals engaging in hydroponic vegetable production took part in responding to the semi-structured Google form questionnaire that was issued through social media platforms, face to face interviews and farm visits. Results from the study showed that hydroponics is a climate smart farming system (n = 13, 26%), produces high yields within limited space (n = 24, 48%), has no soil borne pests and diseases (n = 10, 20%) and gives the farmer the ability to control environmental conditions (n = 2, 4%). On the contrary, over 50% of the respondents reported high investment costs (n = 16, 31%) and lack of adequate knowledge on hydroponics (n = 11, 22%) as the main limitations of the technology. Based on farmers’ recommendations, hydroponics has potential to increase food security within urban areas if more efforts are put in sensitization about the farming system and research into ways to reduce the high costs associated with the technology

Noble gas solubility in silicate melts:a review of experimentation and theory, and implications regarding magma degassing processes

Noble gas solubility in silicate melts and glasses has gained a crucial role in Earth Sciences investigations and in the studies of non-crystalline materials on a micro to a macro-scale. Due to their special geochemical features, noble gases are in fact ideal tracers of magma degassing. Their inert nature also allows them to be used to probe the structure of silicate melts. Owing to the development of modern high pressure and temperature technologies, a large number of experimental investigations have been performed on this subject in recent times. This paper reviews the related literature, and tries to define our present state of knowledge, the problems encountered in the experimental procedures and the theoretical questions which remain unresolved. Throughout the manuscript I will also try to show how the thermodynamic and structural interpretations of the growing experimental dataset are greatly improving our understanding of the dissolution mechanisms, although there are still several points under discussion. Our improved capability of predicting noble gas solubilities in conditions closer to those found in magma has allowed scientists to develop quantitative models of magma degassing, which provide constraints on a number of questions of geological impact. Despite these recent improvements, noble gas solubility in more complex systems involving the main volatiles in magmas, is poorly known and a lot of work must be done. Expertise from other fields would be extremely valuable to upcoming research, thus focus should be placed on the structural aspects and the practical and commercial interests of the study of noble gas solubility