Social Change in Melanesia: Development and History. By Paul Sillitoe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Pp. xx, 264. $59.95, cloth; $22.95, paper.

Extract

Not only have the small island states of Melanesia undergone a process of rapid social and economic change over the past few decades, from largely subsistence-based, small-scale societies to at least partially globalized nation-states, but in recent years several seem to have been heading towards the status of “collapsed states.” Since its first coup in 1987, Fiji has been stumbling through a series of crises fueled by ethnic differences between indigenous Fijians and Indo-Fijians—and, increasingly, amongst indigenous Fijians themselves. Papua New Guinea, whose national airline promotes the country to tourists as “the land of the unexpected,” has similarly staggered from crisis to crisis with, amongst other things, tensions between civilian authorities and the armed forces, and the recent killing of students by police in demonstrations against globalization. The Solomon Islands have been riven by conflicts related to ethnic divisions and migration by non-Guadalcanal people to the national capital, Honiara, precipitating a virtual collapse of the state. And West Papua, in the wake of President Suharto's demise, has seen its nationalist aspirations raised and then dashed by Jakarta with renewed military repression. Apart from New Caledonia, which is enjoying a period of relative tranquility after the turbulence of the 1980s and early 1990s, only Vanuatu seems to be achieving a reasonable degree of social and economic progress, and even in Vanuatu there have been signs of political instability, including an instance of intervention in politics by the police mobile force.