Review of British Documents on the End of Empire. Series B, Volume 10: Fiji, edited by Brij V Lal (original) (raw)
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Bearing Witness: Essays in Honour of Brij V. Lal
The Journal of Pacific History
in brokering a peace deal between the warring militia groups of Malaita and Guadalcanal. His publications include a novel, Fata'abu: The Voice of God (2003), and a chapter entitled 'Rainbows across the mountains: The first post-RAMSI general elections', in Politics and State Building in Solomon Islands edited by Sinclair Dinnen and Stewart Firth (2008). Alasia is currently completing a book on the ethnic crisis in the Solomons within the broad framework of state-and nation-building in the Solomons. Lance Brennan, having taught Indian History at Flinders University from 1973 to 1999, is now an adjunct Associate Professor. He has published on the agrarian and political history of Uttar Pradesh, famine and its relief, and-with Ralph Shlomowitz and John McDonald-has published Well Being in India, Studies in Anthropometric History.
Looking beyond RAMSI: Solomon Islanders’ perspectives on their future
The Journal of Pacific History, 2015
wish to remain a part of France. In this way the book contains valuable empirical and anecdotal material that would be useful for Pacific scholars interested in postcolonial state-building. The town of Bourail and its surrounds are the focus of Lindenmann's fieldwork. He lived and conducted his research for an extended period in the tribe of Pothé in 2004-05, located within the commune of Bourail in the South Province of New Caledonia. This was followed up with several more periods of research between 2006 and 2011. Despite the choice of Bourail not being explained in much detail, it appears to have been a good one given its colonial history and its diverse ethnic population. It is also clear that Lindenmann has taken advantage of his local connections. Bourail is large enough to contain offices of some of the most common state institutions, such as a town hall and a gendarmerie, as well as a military camp on the outskirts of town. The history of Bourail as the site of a penal settlement, with a strong caldoche (an ethnic European of New Caledonian birth or descent) identity, adds another level of nuance to the way in which French identity is understood. Colonisation established a separation between the urban centre and the Kanak tribes around it, which continues to shape relations between the Kanak community and state actors and institutions in addition to shaping the provision of infrastructure and services. The book is structured according to what the author sees as the three primary functions of the projet étatique: to rule (régner), to class (classer) and to serve (servir). 'To rule' explores key aspects of state law enforcement such as the military, the gendarmerie, taxation, customary status and controls on immigration and citizenship. 'To class' examines the important role of civil and customary legal status in addition to issues surrounding land ownership and agriculture. Finally 'to serve' focuses on the state's delivery of key services such as roads, electricity and water. Lindenmann is to be congratulated on the extent of the research on display and the way in which the challenges of conducting research in New Caledonia are presented, though the book's overall size may inhibit a number of readers, let alone the fact that it is in French. The projet étatique in New Caledonia reveals a tension between, on one side, a French state that aims to be uniform in its entirety through the imposition of the same laws and regulations within its territory and, on the other side, the push towards emancipation, where local state and political actors are challenging long-held assumptions about best practice, with their own ways of doing things. Undoubtedly New Caledonia is a site of impressive ingenuity, but Lindenmann's account suggests that the French way is still very much seen by both French politicians and many in New Caledonia as the best course to follow. Yet the path of self-determination being trodden is opening up new possibilities for the way in which the territory is governed. Without doubt, Lindenmann's reflections provide a rich account of the complexities facing New Caledonian society as its population heads towards a decision on independence.
A short history of Colonial and Post-colonial Fiji With focus on
This a brief pictorial history of Fiji which places Fiji's Indian indenture system (girmit) in perspective. It provides a timeline of key events with pictures of some key personalities and events. Some people have stated that this is the best short history of Fiji and girmit so far...
'My Twenty-One Years in the Fiji Islands'−A Review Essay
Indenture Review: Studies on Girmit, 2021
Totaram Sanadhya's Fiji Dwip Mein Mere Ikkis Varsh (1914), later translated as My Twenty-One Years in the Fiji Islands (1991), is the first book written by an indentured labourer or 'girmitiya' in Fiji. The book encompasses the author's first-hand experiences and anecdotes from the point of view of an Indian. As a result, Sanadhya's book counters many western biases generally highlighted in history texts about the Indenture System. For the scholars of diaspora studies, this book provides insights into why many Indians chose to indenture themselves and eventually became part of 'old' diaspora. This paper seeks to review and highlight the major threads of My Twenty-One Years in the Fiji Islands. The main threads are treachery used in recruiting labourers, unjust/unfair treatment, social and moral degeneration, and racism suffered by the girmitiyas in Fiji.
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 2016
Dream zones takes us into the realm of India's Special Economic Zones (SEZs), iconic large-scale industrial infrastructure projects that, over the last twenty years, have come to represent both the promised land of growth and development and highly charged flashpoints of protest and resistance across the country's post-liberalization landscape. It is precisely against these polarized ideological positions that Jamie Cross situates his important ethnographic intervention. Steering clear of both triumphalist narratives of India's rise and dystopic counter-narratives of capitalist modernity, Cross responds to totalizing abstractions with grounded and open-ended anthropological engagement, building on influential works on 'friction' (A.L. Tsing, Friction: an ethnography of global connection, 2005), an 'aesthetic of emergence' (H. Miyazaki, The method of hope: anthropology, philosophy, and Fijian knowledge, 2006), and, most centrally, diverse 'dreamed-of futures' and their complex material effects. SEZs in contemporary India, the book argues, are built on an 'economy of anticipation' (chap. 1), and it is the relentless pursuit of diverse and often divergent dreams that continuously reconfigures relations of power and makes spaces of global capital in particular regional contexts and historical moments. In this case, the context is Andhra Pradesh (AP) in South India, which in 2013 was the Indian state with the largest number of SEZs in various stages of development. Between 2004 and 2011, Cross spent twenty-six months conducting fieldwork in AP, based primarily in and around the economic zones in the state's north coastal plains, outside the city of Vishakhapatnam. Fieldwork covered multiple sites, including villages and market towns, resettlement colonies and industrial townships, government, trade union, and NGO offices, and, most notably, work as a machinist on the factory floor of a subcontracting company operating inside the SEZ. This material is presented in five ethnographic chapters, each centred on a different mode of anticipation and set of actors: regional politicians, planners, and real-estate speculators (chap. 2); farmers and agricultural labourers, dispossessed and resettled owing to land acquisition (chap. 3); the British general manager of an Anglo-Dutch diamond manufacturing company and his Indian management team (chap. 4); young, unmarried male labourers who work on the factory floor (chap. 5); and metropolitan and local anti-SEZ activists (chap. 6). The book is accessibly written with a number of well-chosen photographs, giving us a view of vast and unfinished infrastructures, filled in with intimate observations of life in motion, the stuff of ethnographic connection. The chapters work in different ways. Chapters 2 and 3 on visions and speculations around agrarian land and its industrial (and real-estate) futures are the most closely grounded in the regional histories, political economy, and developmental genealogies of Andhra Pradesh.