ABSTRACT
The aim of this chapter is not simply to present an array of Pacific images, with all that title may imply and evoke for different readers. The previous chapters of the book have considered different aspects of ‘culture’, from apparently concrete and measurable features like population to more abstract and slippery ideas like religion and ethnicity. The aim here is to use ‘images’ to draw further attention to certain problems associated with the study of culture. The broad argument is that statements about a culture cannot be objectively checked against the reality of what is being described: it is always necessary to ask whose knowledge is being proffered, and what consequences may follow from it. The examples chosen are mainly from the Southern Pacific, that is, the ‘Pacific’ part of the ‘Asia-Pacific’. This is for several reasons. The smaller and less populous parts of the region have, inevitably, featured less in this book, so, in focusing on them, this chapter fills a possible gap. However, these places have also been important in encounters which shaped Anglo-European and later Anglo-American understandings of the region. They are therefore very relevant to any study written for and by English-language speakers, including, of course, this one.
