To continue the project of explicating Pacific values and worldviews, this paper focuses on correlative thinking in some of the cultural philosophies of the Pacific islands, especially Micronesia. Correlative thinking differs, in degree, from scientific and academic logic that emphasize the truth-value of statements. After examining aspects of correlative thinking in Bali and the Philippines, I extract some characteristics of Pacific philosophies from cultural practices, myths, and beliefs. Unlike William Alkire (Alkire, 1972), I find that (...) class='Hi'>Pacific islanders use correlative thinking, not dualism, to fill their canoes and baskets of wisdom, so that they can navigate between contemporary logic or scientific thinking, and their cultural knowledge systems and ways of reasoning. (shrink)

This article illustrates how a collaborative research process can successfully engage an underserved minority community to address health disparities. Pacific Islanders, including the Marshallese, are one of the fastest growing US populations. They face significant health disparities, including extremely high rates of type 2 diabetes. This article describes the engagement process of designing patient‐centered outcomes research with Marshallese stakeholders, highlighting the specific influences of their input on a randomized control trial to address diabetes. Over 18 months, an interdisciplinary research (...) team used community‐based participatory principles to conduct patient‐engaged outcomes research that involved 31 stakeholders in all aspects of research design, from defining the research question to making decisions about budgets and staffing. This required academic researcher flexibility, but yielded a design linking scientific methodology with community wisdom. (shrink)

The Oceania region is home to some of the world's most restrictive abortion laws, and there is evidence of Pacific Island women's reproductive oppression across several aspects of their reproductive lives, including in relation to contraceptive decision-making, birthing, and fertility. In this paper we analyse documents from court cases in the Pacific Islands regarding the illegal procurement of abortion. We undertook inductive thematic analysis of documents from eighteen illegal abortion court cases from Pacific Island countries.Using the (...) lens of reproductive justice, we discuss the methods of abortion, the reported context of these abortions, and the ways in which these women and abortion were constructed in judges' summing up, judgements, or sentencing. Our analysis of these cases reveals layers of sexual and reproductive oppression experienced by these women that are related to colonialism, women's socioeconomic disadvantage, gendered violence, limited reproductive control, and the punitive consequences related to not performing gender appropriately. (shrink)

The Oceania region is home to some of the world's most restrictive abortion laws, and there is evidence of Pacific Island women's reproductive oppression across several aspects of their reproductive lives, including in relation to contraceptive decision‐making, birthing, and fertility. In this paper we analyse documents from court cases in the Pacific Islands regarding the illegal procurement of abortion. We undertook inductive thematic analysis of documents from eighteen illegal abortion court cases from Pacific Island countries.Using the (...) lens of reproductive justice, we discuss the methods of abortion, the reported context of these abortions, and the ways in which these women and abortion were constructed in judges' summing up, judgements, or sentencing. Our analysis of these cases reveals layers of sexual and reproductive oppression experienced by these women that are related to colonialism, women's socioeconomic disadvantage, gendered violence, limited reproductive control, and the punitive consequences related to not performing gender appropriately. (shrink)

The Pacific Islands are estimated to have among the highest global burdens of hearing loss, however, hearing health services are limited throughout this region. The provision of hearing aid is desirable, but should be delivered in accordance with WHO recommendations of appropriate and locally sustainable services. Large-scale hearing aid donation programmes to the Pacific Islands raise ethical questions that challenge these recommendations.The aim of this paper is to consider the ethical implications of large-scale hearing aid donation (...) programmes to Samoa, a nation of the Pacific Islands. Evaluation of both ‘Western’ and ‘Pacific Island’ perspectives reveals important cross-cultural differences regarding attitudes to donation programmes. We attempt to offer possible solutions that satisfy both ethical frameworks, and which should enable us to deliver an effective hearing health service for Samoa. These solutions may be translational and benefit other Pacific Island nations in a similar context. (shrink)

Permanent congenital and early-onset hearing impairment is the most common sensory disorder among newborns. The WHO recommends newborn and infant hearing screening for all member states to facilitate early identification and intervention for children with PCEOHI. Ethical implications of newborn/infant hearing screening in low-income and middle-income countries should be considered. Although the Pacific Island region is estimated to have among the highest global burden of hearing loss, hearing health services are limited and virtually non-existent in Pacific Island countries. (...) The aim of this brief report is to consider the ethical implications of implementing hospital-based universal newborn hearing screening in Samoa. Based on well-acknowledged screening principles, this report found that the Samoan context does not satisfy the screening principles for such a programme, and that the implementation of UNHS would, therefore, be unethical. This conclusion was reached even after considering the hypothetical provision of necessary screening and diagnostic audiology equipment from external donors. We recommend that current efforts should be directed towards the wider professional community involved in the daily care of children with a permanent hearing loss. Given the high prevalence of paediatric ear disease in the Pacific Islander population, an interim ear and hearing programme could be considered at the community level. These strategies should provide the infrastructure and referral pathways required in the advent of UNHS in Samoa. (shrink)

This work, an initiative of the University of French Polynesia, Tahiti, showcases research collaboration between small island universities in the Pacific. It addresses a number of 'big issues' for Oceania which are also big issues for the world, concerning the biosphere and human society, sustainable development and well-being. The authors seek to create an ecosystem of knowledge through a dialogue, in English and French, between the natural sciences, the social sciences and the humanities. The work also brings into perspective (...) academic and traditional knowledge, with a view to enhancing cultural and agricultural practices and the development of public policy. Climate change, environmental degradation and food security are key questions for survival. How can the preservation of cultural heritage, the transmission of native languages and the integration of traditional knowledge into formal education contribute to a harmonious future? How is the phenomenon of violence relevant to an understanding of history, interpersonal relations and social inclusiveness, including for women in the political sphere? The Tongan-Fijian writer Epeli Hau'ofa described Oceania imaginatively as a 'Sea of Islands'. This volume sees Pacific islands as being interconnected in ways beyond imagining, in which nowhere is remote, where the peripheral has become a decentred centre. (shrink)

I would like to thank Dr. Gabaccia for her intriguing essay on the origins of the term "nation of immigrants." It really has helped me think about immigration with more historical richness. In my own work, I examine what goes into transnational and diasporic identities. I understand transnational identities as those operating between the loyalties of two or more countries. Going against perhaps unidirectional ways of understanding the immigrant as a foreigner entering into a country, I understand the immigrant identity (...) within a transnational framework where the immigrant negotiates between more than one country. In my larger work, I want to look at the space-between that emerges for many immigrants and. (shrink)

This paper will investigate how geographic features were recorded on maps in the eighteenth century in order to outline the construction of geographic knowledge by British mapmakers. Due to practical and economic factors, early modern cartography was a conservative practice based on source compilation and comparison. For the Pacific region especially, the paucity of first-hand observations and the conflicting nature of those observations rendered the world's largest ocean difficult to chart and prone to the retention of mythical continents, passages (...) and islands. After a discussion of the practical and economic reasons why geographic features were difficult to revise on maps, the article focuses on a case study to show how geographic enigmas could be placed and persist. It will use Pepys Island to illustrate the ways in which a chimeric feature could become instilled in geographic parlance. (shrink)

This Introduction offers a conceptualization of the Indo-Pacific, its islands and their place within the history of science. We argue that Indo-Pacific islands present a remarkable combination of social, political and spatial circumstances, which speak to themes that are central to the history of science. Having driven movements of people and represented staging grounds for explorations, expansions and cross-cultural exchanges, these spaces have been at the forefront of historical change. The historiographies of the two oceans have (...) traditionally emphasized indigenous agency while downplaying European historical trajectories, and therefore they provide historians of science with materials and methodologies that promise nuanced portrayals of knowledge production in cross-cultural settings. Rather than unifying the oceans into a cohesive narrative, we seek to uncover the many horizons of Indo-Pacific worlds and pluralize the spaces within which knowledge travelled at specific times, but not at others. Offering a middle plane between the globe and the region, islands are particularly productive sites for such analyses, as they bring to attention both localized kinds of agency and the impacts of colonialism and globalization. This special issue investigates what happens to knowledge within island spaces and demonstrates that even as small strips of land, islands can significantly enhance our understanding of the practices of knowledge making within the broader contours of world history. In bringing to the fore the contributions of actors from across the wider social spectrum and, especially, the interacting roles of indigenous agents and their traditions, Indo-Pacific worlds thus offer exciting new directions for a field which has often been dominated by a focus on European institutions. (shrink)

일찍이 필자는 미래세대나 자연적 존재가 법적 권리능력을 발휘할 수 있는 ‘생태법인 (eco legal person)’ 제도의 도입을 제기한 바가 있다. 이글의 목적은 생태법인의 구체적 인 적용 모델 제시를 통해 생태법인 제도 도입의 의의와 실용성을 논증하는 데 있다. 법치주의 체제에서는 법인 제도를 통해 인간 이외의 존재에게 법인격을 부여하여 그들 의 권리를 스스로 행사할 수 있도록 한다. 그러나 현행 법체제에서는 자연의 존재물을 법 인격의 주체로 인정하지 않는다. 하지만 법인 제도는 사회의 원활한 운용을 위해 창조된 것이다. 그리고 법인의 대상과 내용은 사회적 필요성에 의해서 다양해지고 (...) 확장되었다. 따 라서 자연의 존재물에 법인격을 부여하지 말라는 절대 원칙은 없다. 스톤(Christopher D. Stone)은 미네랄 킹 계곡에서 추진되는 스키장 건설을 반대하는 소송에서 개발로 인해 파괴될 자연에도 법적 지위가 부여되어야 한다고 주장하였다. 2017 년 뉴질랜드 의회는 원주민 마우리족의 오랜 삶의 터전인 환가누이강에 법인격을 부여하 는 법률을 만들었으며 필리핀에서는 아직 태어나지도 않은 아이가 소송 당사자의 일원이 되어 밀림 개발을 막는 재판에서 승소한 사례가 있다. 제주남방큰돌고래는 세계자연보전연맹(IUCN)에서 보호가 필요하다고 지정한 멸종위기 해 양생물이다. 하지만오늘날 제주남방킁돌고래는 해양오염과난개발, 해양관광산업의난립으로 심각한 위협에 처해있다. 제주남방큰돌고래에 법인격을 부여하고 그 권리를 행사할 수 있는 생태법인 제도를 운용한다면 제주남방큰돌고래가 스스로 자기보호에 나설 수 있게 된다. 생태법인 제도의 도입은 자연을 바라보는 인간의 인식과 태도를 근본적으로 전환하는 계기가 될 수 있다. 이 글을 통해 헌법에 자연의 권리가 명시되고 특별환경법원 기능을 담 당하는 생태법원 설치 논의가 촉발되기를 기대한다. (shrink)

Papers from the Pacific islands, India, Bangladesh and elsewhere illustrate the ethical dilemma of environmental policy, sustainable development and the needs of communities to make a living.

The ascription of desires or beliefs to other people is a milestone of human sociality. It allows us to understand, explain, and predict human behaviour. During the last years, research on children's knowledge about the mental world, better known as theory of mind research, has become a central topic in developmental psychology and the role of cultural impact is subject of various theoretical yet hitherto few empirical accounts. This book is the result of intensive collaboration between anthropologists and psychologists in (...) the field of cross-cultural research on social cognitive development. Five interdisciplinary research teams, coming from the University of Heidelberg, were investigating five Pacific Island societies. All together, they were interested in the question of how and when children in these different cultures come to assign mental states to others. This unique research project combines sound ethnography of different Pacific cultures with thoroughly conducted experimental work, done by developmental psychologists; it presents a shared, thoughtful analysis of the results and provides deeper insight into current debates on the ontogeny of theory of mind competencies. (shrink)

The rise of blockchain as a techno-solution in the development sector underscores the critical imbalances of data power under ‘computational capitalism’. This article will consider the political economy of techno-solutionist and blockchain discourses in the developing world, using as its object of study blockchain projects in Pacific Island nations. Backed by US State Department soft power initiatives such as Tech Camp, these projects inculcate tech-driven notions of economic and political development, or ICT4D, while opening up new terrains for data (...) accumulation and platform control. Blockchain developers in search of proof of concept have found the development sector a fecund space for tech experimentation as they leverage a desire for tech-development and exploit regulatory weakness. The material implications of blockchain projects and discourse have been to create governance solutions which bypass the developing world state as a largely corrupting intermediary. In the Pacific, this has meant blockchain supply-chain management systems, proprietary financial innovation in humanitarian relief and an Asian Development Bank project to manage indigenous Fijian lands exclusively on the blockchain. In all these instances, discourses of solutionism, innovation and data empowerment have been deployed in aid of blockchain cartographies of control. (shrink)

By demonstrating that many of the concepts and styles associated with Modernism were actually derived directly from cultures such as Japan, China, Korea, India, Egypt, Assyria, West Africa, and the Pacific Islands, this book provides an entirely new way of looking at the evolution of Modernist art and literature in the West.

Tongan people in Aotearoa New Zealand experience higher rates of mental health challenges than Tongans born in Tonga. Engagement with services is lower for Pacific Island groups than it is for the dominant population in Aotearoa New Zealand. Meanwhile, the Pacific population is growing in Aotearoa New Zealand year after year. This paper explores how services could use evidence to support more appropriate responses for Pacific Islanders, in particular, Tongan communities. It takes recovery in mental health and (...) explores the relevant concepts that would better support engagement and response for Tongans in Aotearoa New Zealand. (shrink)

Most documented extinctions of vertebrates in the last 400 years have been island endemics. In this paper, we focus on the need to develop a historical framework to establish conservation priorities for insular faunas and, in particular, to test the validity of nominal endemics. We use the example of the islands of the North Pacific Coast of North America, a region that includes approximately one-half of all mammals endemic to North American islands north of Mexico. Few of (...) these endemics have been re-evaluated since their original descriptions, although many of these islands have been heavily impacted by habitat conversion, species introductions, over-exploitation, and secondary ripple effects. Evidence from molecular genetics and paleontology suggests that many taxa arrived in the region since the last glacial advance. Some of these nominal endemics show minimal differentiation, while others comprise multiple evolutionary lineages. The NPC may also have played an important role in the in situ diversification of some taxa during the Pleistocene. Evidence, such as new fossil discoveries and numerous described endemics, lends support for refugia hypotheses. However, these ideas cannot be tested until a better understanding of geographic variation and the evolutionary relationships of the fauna and flora of the North Pacific Coast is developed. This framework would provide significant insight into the dynamic biogeographic history of the region and help prioritize conservation efforts. (shrink)

Anuta is a small Polynesian community in the eastern Solomon Islands that has had minimal contact with outside cultural forces. Even at the end of the twentieth century, it remains one of the most traditional and isolated islands in the insular Pacific. In Oral Traditions of Anuta, Richard Feinberg offers a telling collection of Anutan historical narratives, including indigenous texts and English translations. This rich, thorough assemblage is the result of a collaborative project between Feinberg and a (...) large cross-section of the Anutan community that developed over a period of twenty-five years.The volume's emphasis is ethnographic, consisting of a number of texts as related by the island's most respected experts in matters of traditional history. Feinberg's annotations, which arm the reader with essential ethnographic and historical contexts, clarify important linguistic and cultural issues that arise from the stories. The texts themselves have important implications for the relationship of oral tradition to history and symbolic structures, and afford new evidence pertinent to Polynesian language sub-grouping. Further, they provide insight into a number of Anutan customs and preoccupations, while also suggesting certain widespread Polynesian practices dating back to the pre-contact and early contact periods. (shrink)

The broad arc of islands north of Australia that extends from Indonesia east towards the central Pacific is home to a set of human populations whose concentration of diversity is unequaled elsewhere. Approximately 20% of the worlds languages are spoken here, and the biological and genetic heterogeneity among the groups is extraordinary. Anthropologist W.W. Howells once declared diversity in the region so Protean as to defy analysis. However, this book can now claim considerable success in describing and understanding (...) the origins of the genetic and linguistic variation there. In order to cut through this biological knot, the authors have applied a comprehensive battery of genetic analyses to an intensively sampled set of populations, and have subjected these and complementary linguistic data to a variety of phylogenetic analyses. This has revealed a number of heretofore unknown ancient Pleistocene genetic variants that are only found in these island populations, and has also identified the genetic footprints of more recent migrants from Southeast Asia who were the ancestors of the Polynesians. The book lays out the very complex structure of the variation within and among the islands in this relatively small region, and a number of explanatory models are tested to see which best account for the observed pattern of genetic variation here. The results suggest that a number of commonly used models of evolutionary divergence are overly simple in their assumptions, and that often human diversity has accumulated in very complex ways. (shrink)

One of France's colonial enterprises in the eighteenth century was to acclimatize nutmeg, native to the Maluku islands, in the French colony of Isle de France (today's Mauritius). Exploring the acclimatization of nutmeg as a practice, this paper reveals the practical challenges of transferring knowledge between Indo-Pacific islands in the second half of the eighteenth century. This essay will look at the process through which knowledge was created – including ruptures and fractures – as opposed to looking (...) at the mere circulation of knowledge. I argue that nutmeg cultivation on Isle de France was a complex process of creolizing expertise originating from the local populations of the plants’ native islands with the horticultural knowledge of colonists, settlers, labourers and slaves living on Isle de France. In this respect, creolization describes a process of knowledge production rather than a form of knowledge. Once on Isle de France, nutmeg took root in climate and soil conditions which were different from those of its native South East Asian islands. It was cultivated by slaves and colonists who lacked prior experience with the cultivation of this particular spice. Experienced horticulturalists experimented with their own traditions. While they relied on old assumptions, they also came to question them. By examining cultivation as an applied practice, this paper argues that the creolization of knowledge was a critical aspect in French colonial botany. (shrink)

Group process consultants use themselves as instruments of intervention at the micro, meso and macro levels, and therefore need to have a deep sense of personal self-awareness and self-regulation as they serve as complex dynamic containers of group consultation processes. In this paper, I proceed from an ethnographic perspective to describe, reflect on and explore my emotional and cognitive lived experiences as consultant to participants’ diversity encounters during a Robben Island Diversity Experience (RIDE) event in South Africa. Nineteen participants attended (...) the event. It became clear that discussions were enhanced when the consultant was able to tap into somatic experiences as an additional source of information. The understanding of my consulting role experience may assist both current and emerging consultants in this and similar paradigms to gain insight into the impact of their own psychological disposition and socio-demographic profiles in contributing towards the deconstruction or formation of a good-enough consulting container. (shrink)

This paper investigates the history of a discursive figure that one could call the intelligent whaler. I argue that this figure's success was made possible by the construal and public distribution of whaling intelligence in an important currency of science – facts – in the preparatory phase for the United States Exploring Expedition (1838–1842). The strongest case for the necessity of the enterprise was New England whalers who were said to cruise uncharted parts of the oceans and whose discoveries of (...) uncharted islands were reported in the local press. The document that stood at the core of the lobbying for an expedition was a table that newspaperman and public lecturer Jeremiah Reynolds had compiled after interviewing whaling captains in the country's principal whaling ports. Presenting whalers’ experience in tabular and synoptic form, Reynolds's table helped forge the figure of the ‘intelligent whaler’, a mariner who had better geographical knowledge than other seafarers. By investigating the paper technologies that produced the ‘intelligent whaler’, this paper shows how Reynolds's translation of ‘whaling intelligence’ from news into facts marks the beginning of the intelligent whaler's long career in US-American debates about expansionism, exploration and science. (shrink)

BackgroundThe Pacific Islander population is the second fasting growing population in the United States and Arkansas is home to the largest Marshallese population in the continental US. The Marshal...

In this volume philosophers from throughout the Asia-Pacific region discuss a wide range of topics related to the development of democratic values and ways of life. The papers explore ideas, values and practices related to democracy from the different perspectives of the great religious and philosophical traditions of Asia, as well as considering both philosophical issues and the place of philosophy in a democratic society. While the contributors represent different philosophical traditions, they are connected through a common concern with (...) humanity, a belief in the value of philosophical inquiry and scholarship and by a commitment to the value of philosophy education in building and sustaining democracy. (shrink)