ABSTRACT

This chapter argues that to account for social and cultural transformations in the region, scholarly focus should move more firmly beyond clan or language group characteristics and pay attention to emerging regional and island-based singularities. Traditional sketches of societies in Melanesia habitually focus on exchange and the ways in which exchange systems have social, ceremonial and economic qualities. Exchange and exchange items are also significant in relation to ideas about and politics around difference. A famous ‘protest movement’ in Melanesia that mimicked the colonial state so as to provide an alternative is Maasina Rule. The cultural openness of Melanesian societies has enabled the creation of new forms of organisation and identity in the contemporary era. For many Melanesians, biblical narratives and prophecies are often key resources used to comprehend their own past in the light of colonial and then national modernity. Melanesians borrow the language of the state to establish forms of autonomy and elicit the recognition of powerful others.