The Pacific Islands: Environment and Society, Third Edition
- About the Book
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The exploration and settlement of the Pacific Island world is one of the most remarkable achievements of humanity. Early seafarers, skilled in navigation, discovered diverse habitats and biotas extending across a third of the globe. In this “sea of islands,” they established thriving communities where they lived for thousands of years. Today, although island ecosystems and cultures are facing great change, Pacific Island peoples remain resilient.
This new edition of a popular text reviews the diverse landforms, climates, ecosystems, societies, and cultures of the Pacific region. Seventy-five contributors—including numerous Indigenous scholars—address two key themes: (1) environmental dilemmas and possibilities, and (2) demographic, economic, and political challenges facing the people of the region.
New chapters highlight hydrology, ecosystem disturbance, conservation, Indigenous origins and activism, social media, ethnography, kava, contemporary dance, theater, and the cultural impact of globalization.
Other noteworthy chapters are significantly updated: biogeographical dynamics, prehistory of Near and Remote Oceania, fisheries and aquaculture, the fluidity of gender, mobility and urbanization, tourism as encounter, island economies, shifts in literary trends, Pacific music, water and development, and a new overview of land, marine, and water tenure.
The book concludes with a reflective essay. Pacific Island societies have been coping with environmental and demographic challenges for millennia; surviving societies have much to teach us about sustainable living, social justice, and reconciliation.
Policy makers, students, and the general public will find this book an indispensable resource for understanding the region's past, present, and future.
- About the Author(s)
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Moshe Rapaport, Editor
Moshe Rapaport is an independent scholar with a Ph.D. in Geography from the University of Hawai‘i.
Contributors
- Dennis A. Ahlburg
- Dakota Alcantara-Camacho
- Tammy Haili‘ōpua Baker
- Glenn Banks
- John Barker
- Simon Batterbury
- Aletta Biersack
- Hans Juergen Boehmer
- Gilianne Brodie
- Bruce Burns
- John Connell
- Ron Crocombe
- Ojeya Cruz Banks
- George Curry
- Tim Denham
- Brian Diettrich
- Ron Duncan
- Tony Falkland
- Colin Filer
- Navi Fong
- Gerard J. Fryer
- Patricia Fryer
- Stephen Galvin
- Philomena Gangaiya
- David Welchman Gegeo
- Paul Geraghty
- Lorenz Gonschor
- Jack Gray
- Nicholas Halter
- Matthew Hayward
- Anna-Karina Hermkens
- Jara Hulkenberg
- Thomas Ibanez
- Uwe Kaufmann
- David M. Kennedy
- Gunnar Keppel
- Gina Koczberski
- Matthias Kowasch
- Roselyn Kumar
- Lamont Lindstrom
- Maebh Long
- Rick Lumpkin
- Harley I. Manner
- Hamish A. McGowan
- Jean-Yves Hiro Meyer
- Bradley Moore
- Clare Morrison
- R. John Morrison
- Apisalome Movono
- Dieter Mueller-Dombois
- Stephen G. Nelson
- Patrick D. Nunn
- Kalei Nu‘uhiwa
- Patrick Pikacha
- Emma Ngakuravaru Powell
- Kirstie Petrou
- Tia Reihana-Morunga
- Will Rollason
- Richard Scaglion
- Andrew P. Sturman
- Henryk Szadziewski
- Lynne D. Talley
- John Taylor
- Randolph R. Thaman
- Frank R. Thomas
- Nunia Thomas-Moko
- Jaap Timmer
- Alexander Trupp
- Caroline Vercoe
- Camellia Webb-Gannon
- Eberhard Weber
- Terence Wesley-Smith
- Vehia Wheeler
- Ian White
- Nālani Wilson-Hokowhitu
- Reviews and Endorsements
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- Contributors and readers owe grateful thanks to Moshe Rapaport who has pulled together this volume three times, each becoming longer and more complex than the last, to achieve an elegant balance of the physical, social and economic, and shape it into the lively, informative and useful text that it now is.
—John Connell, The University of Sydney
- Contributors and readers owe grateful thanks to Moshe Rapaport who has pulled together this volume three times, each becoming longer and more complex than the last, to achieve an elegant balance of the physical, social and economic, and shape it into the lively, informative and useful text that it now is.
