ABSTRACT

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores a new approach to region governance. It argues that even well-intentioned plans for culture-led or responsive regional development, or Indigenous-led inter-regional cooperation or even 'hotspot' biodiversity conservation perpetuate neo-colonialist assumptions about authority, vesting them in the language of administrative prose and the cartography of territory. In Decolonising Governance, the archipelago is a geographical concept. Algebraic and topological formulations of the archipelago reveal the island/sea opposition as a relic of continentalist thinking. The book explains a method of cultural analysis that demonstrated the existence of a poetic economy that could sustain a new model of regional self-governance. Translated into the protocols of meeting in Indigenous societies, referred to the expectation that the messenger will introduce him/herself, saying where they come from, for the story of the messenger is inseparable from the authority of the story to be told.