The Newest System-Program of Pacific Philosophy (original) (raw)
The Contemporary Emergence of Pacific
2004
Pacific thought is like a dormant volcano: as long as it does not erupt, no one notices it. When it does boil to the surface, it comes, to the many who would rather dismiss it, as an unpleasant reminder of its persistent exis-tence.1 And when it settles again, it is easily forgotten. But we (whether researchers, educators, policymakers, donors, or others) ignore it at our peril. Why should we be concerned about Pacific thought? Answers to this question are partially provided by the literature that has explored facets of national and local philosophies and epistemologies. Over the past thirty-five years or so, Pacific theologians have examined how Samoan, Kiribati, Tuvaluan, Fijian, Tongan, Papua New Guinean, and other Pacific Islander fundamental concepts and philosophies are linked to the gospel and to Christianity in general in order to make the latter more relevant to their societies.2 They have mainly sought to show that, while Christianity can-not survive without integrating ex...
The Quest for a Pacific Theology: A Re-consideration of its Methodology
This paper offers a critique of the Pacific theological enterprise and its foundational principles set forth in the beginning by Dr Sione 'Amanaki Havea of Tonga. In my view, the current shape of Pacific theology and its theological constructs has proven profoundly unhelpful to Pacific people on the grassroots level.
30 years of the Pacific and The Pacific Review: long time yet no time
The Pacific Review
This paper is a review of scholarship found in the pages of The Pacific Review over the last 30 years. It does so in three ways: (1) it highlights issues in the theory and practice of the international relations, strategic studies, political culture and political economy of the Asia Pacific region. (2) It looks at change in the region over time by an analysis of the shifting fortunes of the major regional powers, namely Japan, China and Indonesia and the challenges they, and China in particular, post to US regional hegemony. (3) It looks at regional process reflected in the fate and fortunes of the regional integrative project in the key policy domains of trade, finance and the environment. The paper concludes with a reflection on the strains on the regional political and economic orders by the rise in nationalist politics.
The Pacific Past That Is Not One: Problematising Re-Indigenised Pacific Futures
Desires for relevant, locally-determined social futures in the Pacific region are often made contingent upon a view of the colonial past that re-asserts Pacific agency, culture and identity, albeit in an often singular and essentialised form. These views of the Pacific past, understandably perhaps, have emerged in response to a perceived erasure in the dominant colonial historical record of local Pacific institutions, social structures, values, cultures and identities. This chapter rejects historical colonial erasure where it still exists, but also calls for caution in re-thinking familiar contemporary Pacific institutions, such as schooling, using simplistic singular and essentialised views of the Pacific past as a basis. The tensions between historical discourses of reduction and erasure, ‘one-ness’ and ‘nothingness’ and debates about new Pacific futures are illustrated well in the call to re-indigenise Pacific education systems and the accompanying focus on so called Pacific epis...
Talanoa Radio: Exploring the Interface of Development, Culture and Community Radio in the South Pacific, 2014
The first part of this draft chapter discusses ancient Pacific navigation and cultural norms arising from the "vaka" voyages, such as collective identities, the culture of silence, the importance of language, and the permeability of identity performance. The second part of this chapter discusses the place of islands in the Western imagination, how this informed the European colonial eras in the Pacific Islands, and "upside-down decolonization" of the islands in the late 20th Century.