ABSTRACT
The insecure character of nationhood in the Pacific must loom large among the broader themes of this collection. To be sure, not all Pacific states encounter the failure of national coherence that seems so conspicuous in Papua New Guinea, as Jeffrey Clark’s chapter demonstrates from a Southern Highlands perspective, and as Australian readers of this book might find asserted more generally, and with alarming frequency, in major dailies such as the Sydney Morning Herald. In all other cases, however, national narratives seem uneasily calqued onto stories of origin or stories of religious transformation, to which local populations appear more deeply attached. Nation-states seem profoundly divided-by virtue of the contentious gendering of their symbolism and their traditions, as well as, perhaps more obviously, because of their internal regional differentiation.
