ABSTRACT
This volume had its genesis in a two-day workshop convened at the Australian National University in November 2013. The workshop was titled ‘Solomon Islands in transition’ (without a question mark). Its purpose was to take the occasion of the so-called ‘transition’ of the then ten-year-old Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI) as an opportunity to consider and debate other types of transitions that had been taking place in Solomon Islands over recent decades. The discourse of RAMSI transition was narrow, technical and managerialist. It addressed the shift from one modality of external assistance to another, namely, from a multilateral peace-and state-building intervention to a more regular bilateral aid engagement. As convenors of the workshop, we were concerned to widen the frame and to shift the focus to Solomon Islands itself. In the workshop blurb, we wrote that the discourse of RAMSI transition ‘should not obscure the other significant transitions underway in Solomon Islands… the many transformations occurring within Solomon Islands’ societies’.
