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Urban Social Change in Oceania: What is it? Why is it happening? Why is it important?
This website’s primary aim is to track urban social change in Oceania. Urban social change is deserving of academic attention because the ways cities change has implications for the everyday lives of most of the region’s population. It underscores how traditional ways of life are pursued; livelihood activities carried out, conventions of social interaction established,… Continue reading
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A Pacific Future: The Perspective of a Beche-de-mer Entrepreneur
The Pacific futures research agenda is currently tied to a discursive project that tries to form consensus around and leverage a Pacific way directed towards addressing the unique challenges the Pacific will face in the future. This discursive project has translated into the production of multiple regional frameworks that guide the actions of Pacific nation… Continue reading
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Reading Group Summary: July 11th, 2022
Havice, E. (2018). Unsettled sovereignty and the sea: Mobilities and more-than-territorial configurations of state power. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 108(5), 1280-1297. Continue reading
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Reading Group Summary: July 4th, 2022
Dégremont, M. (2022). LSMPA Sovereignties in New Caledonia and French Polynesia: Territorialities, Alliances and Powers in Oceania. Oceania, 92(1), 51-73. Continue reading
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Journal Article Review of Amin, Watson and Girard (2020). “Mapping Security in the Pacific: A focus on context, gender, and organizational culture”
In this article we review the edited book “Mapping Security in the Pacific: A Focus on Context, Gender, and Organizational Culture” by Sara Amin, Danielle Watson, and Christian Girard. In this article members of the Urban Oceania Reading Group review three chapters of this edited book offering their additional thoughts. Generally, the articles of the… Continue reading
Alienation, Beetle-nut, Boe Declaration on Security, Corporate responsibility, COVID-19, Deep Sea Mining, Economic Security, Energy, Fisheries, Fishing Observers, gift economy, Globalization, Human Security, informal insurance, Infrastructure, International Maritime Organization (IMO), Mining, Modernity, Natural Disasters, Pacific Maritime Surveillance Program, PMSP, Police, Poverty, Precariat, Private Maritime Security, Private Military Contractors, Private Security, Remittances, Resource Security, Risk, Safety, Security, Tourism, Trust, uncertainty, Urbanization, Welfare -
Journal Article Review of Szadziewski, H. (2020). Converging Anticipatory Geographies in Oceania: The Belt and Road Initiative and Look North in Fiji.
Szadziewski (2020) argues that the geo-economic ambitions expressed in Fiji’s “Look North” policy and China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has imbued emotion into Fiji’s national landscape. Their geo-economic ambitions have met in Fiji in a way that has imbued national space with a “hope” of economic prosperity. This review analyses the effect of hope… Continue reading
Anticipatory Geographies, Asia Investment Bank, Belt and Road Initiative, BRI, China, Coral Coast, Development Discourse, Emotion, Emotional geographies, Fiji, Hope, Look North, Maritime Silk Road, Moral geography, Power China, Power Construction Corporation of China, Sino-Fijian Relationship, Space, structural Re-adjustment, The Silk Road Ark Hotel -
Journal Article Review of Scheyvens, et al. (2019), “Business Serves Society: Successful Locally-Driven Development on Customary Land in the South Pacific”.
Over the last week the Urban Oceania Reading Group came together to discuss an article by Scheyven et al. (2019) “Business Serves Society: Successful Locally-Driven Development on Customary Land in the South Pacific”. We were motivated to discuss and write about this article because our conversations on other academic articles often return to how customary… Continue reading
ANU Development Bulletin, AUSAID, Business, Business Serves Society, Consumerism, Customary Land Tenure, Development, Formal Lease, Hereditary Gifted Land, Informal Lease, Land Tenure, Narratives of Success, Neo-liberalism, Oceania, Resilience, Socially Embedded Business, Talanoa, Vanua Methodology, Wellbeing -
Journal Article Review of Sheng, F., & Smith, G. (2021). The Shifting Fate of China’s Pacific Diaspora.
In this article we review Sheng and Smith’s (2021) chapter, The Shifting Fate of China’s Pacific Diaspora in the edited book The China Alternative: Changing Regional Order in the Pacific Islands. Roxane de Waegh engages with Sheng and Smith’s (2021) material on the founding of a Chinese diaspora in the Pacific in the colonial period… Continue reading
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Journal Article Review of Klepp and Herbeck (2016) The politics of Environmental Migration and Climate Justice in the Pacific Region.
In the context of global climate change, remote coastal communities are generally regarded as the most vulnerable (Uitto & Shaw, 2016). This observation arises from the combined effects of their low income, high levels of resource dependency and their exposure to sea-level rise, rainfall variability, increase in storm frequencies and intensity (Cinner et al., 2018).… Continue reading
Agency, Australia, Citizenship, Climate Change, Climate Justice, Environmental Adaption, Environmental Migration, Environmental Refugee, Fiji, Kiribati, Migrate with Dignity, New Zealand, North-South, Post-Colonialism, Resilience, Sea Level Rise, Social Capital, Solidarity, UNFCCC, United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change -
Journal Article Review of Maclellan, N. (2021) Stable, Democratic and Western: China and French Colonialism in the Pacific
Maclellan’s (2021) chapter, Stable Democratic and Western: China and French Colonialism in the Pacific, is part of Smith & Wesley-Smith (2021) edited book The China Alternative: Changing Regional Order in the Pacific Islands. The edited book as a whole brings together a collection of scholars who analyze China’s growing involvement in the Pacific. The edited… Continue reading
ANZUS, Aquaculture, Australia, Blue Economy, China, Colonialism, Development Partners, Edouard Fritch, Entrepreneurs, foreign capital, France, French Polynesia, Geopolitics, Hau Atoll, Imperialism, New Caledonia, New Commercial Pacific Diplomacy, New Pacific Diplomacy, Non-State Actors, Oceania, Pacific, Securitization, Tahiti Nui Ocean Foods, Tianrui Group, Wang Chen -
Journal Article Review of Bertram, G. (2018) Why Does the Cook Islands Still Need Overseas Aid?
You get exactly whats on the tin for Bertram’s (2018) article, Why does the Cook Islands Still Need Overseas Aid? He asks, in a context where the private sector revolving around tourism is booming(at least prior to COVID-19), why would the Cook Islands require large amounts of Overseas Development Aid (ODA)? In 2018, the Cook… Continue reading
Asian Development Bank, Cook Islands, Donor, Economic Growth, Fiscal Policy, GDP, GDP per capita, GNI, Infrastructural Equity, Infrastructure, Manatua Cable, MFAT, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Muri Lagoon, Neoliberalism, New Zealand, Oceania, Overseas Development Aid, Rarotonga, Shock Doctrine, Te Mato Vai, Tourism, Trickle Down, Water