The Pacific in Transition: 50 Years on

Abstract

The islands of the Pacific Ocean have been the subject of much study with regard to change and transformation. Current concerns with the effects climate change have not always been central and other discourses, such as development and progress, social change and decolonisation have interested the work of social scientists over several decades. Furthermore, until recently such research has been mainly carried out by individuals and institutions from outside the region. In this paper, we revisit a series of intensive fieldwork-based studies conducted over 50 years ago out of the Australian National University and included in a book The Pacific in Transition edited by Harold Brookfield. We focus on three authors in this collection (Diana Howlett, William Clarke and Isireli Lasaqa). These, we argue, contained important and sometimes prescient insights into not only some of the fundamental processes of change in the region but also the limits of the dominant theoretical paradigms of the time. In addition, they also provide valuable lessons for the present day ways we conceive, study and interpret change in Oceania, as well as the need to foreground the agency, knowledges and realities of Pacific island people.