Ways of Being and Place in Vanuatu

The Other Side: Ways of Being and Place in Vanuatu, by John Patrick Taylor, is the first major ethnographic and historical study of the Sia Raga people of north Pentecost Island, a region that was home to the late Father Walter Lini, Vanuatu’s first prime minister. Exploring Raga social, spatial, and historical consciousness, this richly poetic account provides important theoretical contributions to ongoing debates in Pacific anthropology about the relation between structure and history, and place and time. It reveals important insights into the convergence of indigenous and exogenous cosmologies and hegemonies historically, and shows how these are implicated in contemporary social, ritual, and material cultural expressions. These analyses engage with broader concerns relating to colonial and postcolonial identities, political economy, and globalization in island Melanesia.

Pacific Islands Monograph Series, No. 22
July 2008 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3302-2 / $52.00 (CLOTH)
Published in association with the Center for Pacific Islands, University of Hawai‘i