Pacific Futures: Past and Present

Book

Pacific Futures

Past and Present

Edited by: Warwick Anderson , Miranda Johnson and Barbara Brookes
With contributions by: Warwick Anderson , Tony Ballantyne , Chris Ballard , Warwick Anderson , Tony Ballantyne , Chris Ballard , Barbara Brookes , Bronwen Douglas , David L. Hanlon , Miranda Johnson , Margaret Jolly , Christine Manganaro , Matt K. Matsuda , Frances Steel , Michael J. Stevens , Alice Te Punga Somerville and Henry Yu

Language: English

Published/Copyright: 2018

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About this book

How, when, and why has the Pacific been a locus for imagining different futures by those living there as well as passing through? What does that tell us about the distinctiveness or otherwise of this “sea of islands”? Foregrounding the work of leading and emerging scholars of Oceania, Pacific Futures brings together a diverse set of approaches to, and examples of, how futures are being conceived in the region and have been imagined in the past.

Individual chapters engage the various and sometimes contested futures yearned for, unrealized, and even lost or forgotten, that are particular to the Pacific as a region, ocean, island network, destination, and home. Contributors recuperate the futures hoped for and dreamed up by a vast array of islanders and outlanders—from Indigenous federalists to Lutheran improvers to Cantonese small business owners—making these histories of the future visible. In so doing, the collection intervenes in debates about globalization in the Pacific—and how the region is acted on by outside forces—and postcolonial debates that emphasize the agency and resistance of Pacific peoples in the context of centuries of colonial endeavor. With a view to the effects of the “slow violence” of climate change, the volume also challenges scholars to think about the conditions of possibility for future-thinking at all in the midst of a global crisis that promises cataclysmic effects for the region.

Pacific Futures highlights futures conceived in the context of a modernity coproduced by diverse Pacific peoples, taking resistance to categorization as a starting point rather than a conclusion. With its hospitable approach to thinking about history making and future thinking, one that is open to a wide range of methodological, epistemological, and political interests and commitments, the volume will encourage the writing of new histories of the Pacific and new ways of talking about history in this field, the region, and beyond.

Author / Editor information

Contributor: Warwick Anderson Warwick Anderson is Janet Dora Hine Professor of Politics, Governance, and Ethics in the Department of History and the Charles Perkins Centre at the University of Sydney. He was awarded the 2023 Bernal Prize by the Society for Social Studies of Science for his contributions to science and technology studies. --- Contributor: Miranda Johnson Miranda Johnson is senior lecturer in Indigenous and colonial histories at the University of Sydney. --- Contributor: Barbara Brookes Barbara Brookes is professor of history at the University of Otago. --- Contributor: Warwick Anderson Warwick Anderson is Janet Dora Hine Professor of Politics, Governance, and Ethics in the Department of History and the Charles Perkins Centre at the University of Sydney. He was awarded the 2023 Bernal Prize by the Society for Social Studies of Science for his contributions to science and technology studies. --- Contributor: Barbara Brookes Barbara Brookes is professor of history at the University of Otago. --- Contributor: David L. Hanlon David Hanlon is a past director of the Center for Pacific Islands Studies at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. A former editor of The Contemporary Pacific: A Journal of Island Affairs and the Pacific Islands Monograph Series, he currently teaches in the university’s Department of History. --- Contributor: Miranda Johnson Miranda Johnson is senior lecturer in Indigenous and colonial histories at the University of Sydney. --- Contributor: Alice Te Punga Somerville Alice Te Punga Somerville (Te Āti Awa) is a scholar, poet, and irredentist. She researches and teaches Māori, Pacific, and Indigenous texts in order to center Indigenous expansiveness and de-center colonialism. Te Punga Somerville currently is professor in the Department of English Language and Literatures and the Institute for Critical Indigenous Studies at the University of British Columbia. Prior to joining UBC in 2021, she taught Māori and Indigenous studies at the University of Waikato and has held academic positions in Australia, Hawai‘i, and elsewhere in New Zealand. Her first book, Once Were Pacific: Māori Connections to Oceania (University of Minnesota Press, 2012), won Best First Book from the Native American & Indigenous Studies Association. Her thought-provoking second book is Two Hundred and Fifty Ways to Start an Essay about Captain Cook (Bridget Williams Books, 2020).

Reviews

If this book has a singular project, it is in an underlying search for ways in which history can be helpful. Recognizing that much of the Pacific is facing a state of existential emergency, the book opens with an appeal for history to “offer us new insights for a world in crisis” and ends by reminding the reader of Alice Te Punga Somerville’s ethical questions of “which histories do we tell, and which futures do we imagine?” Thus the book is concerned with how history is about the future, and how the project of creating desired futures for the Pacific needs the discipline of history to keep it afloat. --- This book both enriches and challenges the field of global history by returning—from a variety of archival and theoretical concerns—to questions about the very nature of history that have variously engaged scholars such as Greg Dening, Reinhart Koselleck, and Marshall Sahlins. The rich essays collected here will have much to say to anyone contemplating the status of the discipline of history today.

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Frontmatter
i

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Contents
v

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Acknowledgments
vii

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Introduction: Te Declension of History
1
Miranda Johnson
Part One: Genealogies of the Future
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1. Horizons and Rifts in Conversations about Climate Change in Oceania
17
Margaret Jolly
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2. Genetic Drift: Pacific Pasts and Futures
49
Matt Matsuda
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3. Inside Us the Unborn: Genealogies, Futures, Metaphors, and the Opposite of Zombies
69
Alice Te Punga Somerville
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4. A Different Historiography for “A Handful of Chickpeas Flung over the Sea”: Approaching the Federated States of Micronesia’s Deeper Past
81
David Hanlon
Part Two: Transit Futures
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5. “Time Is on Our Side”: Shipping and the Coming of Flight in the Pacific
107
Frances Steel
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6. Imagined Futures in the Past: Empire, Place, Race, and Nation in the Mapping of Oceania
131
Bronwen Douglas
Part Tree: Asian Pacifics
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7. Imperial Futures and India’s Pacifics: Space, Temporality, and the Textures of Empire
157
Tony Ballantyne
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8. Unbound Space: Migration, Aspiration, and the Making of Time in the Cantonese Pacific
178
Henry Yu
Part Four: Weedy Historicities
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9. “Return of the Native”: Two Routes Back for a “Dying Race ”
207
Barbara Brookes
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10. Education for the Future: University of Hawai‘i Sociology, Assimilationist Historicity, and the Making of Settler Colonial Culture
224
Christine Manganaro
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11. “A Lasting Benefit for a New Race”? Rev. J. F. H. Wohlers and Racial Amalgamation in Southern New Zealand
239
Michael J. Stevens
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12. On the Beach in the Marquesas: Weedy Historicities and Prosthetic Futures
263
Warwick Anderson
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Afterword: Pacific Futurities
280
Chris Ballard
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Contributors
295
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Index
299

Publishing information

Pages and Images/Illustrations in book

eBook published on:

May 6, 2019

eBook ISBN:

9780824877422

Pages and Images/Illustrations in book

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780824877422

eBook ISBN: 9780824877422

Audience(s) for this book

For an expert adult audience, including professional development and academic research

Pacific Futures

Overview

About this book

Author / Editor information

Reviews

Topics

Table of contents

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Te Declension of History

1. Horizons and Rifts in Conversations about Climate Change in Oceania

2. Genetic Drift: Pacific Pasts and Futures

3. Inside Us the Unborn: Genealogies, Futures, Metaphors, and the Opposite of Zombies

4. A Different Historiography for “A Handful of Chickpeas Flung over the Sea”: Approaching the Federated States of Micronesia’s Deeper Past

5. “Time Is on Our Side”: Shipping and the Coming of Flight in the Pacific

6. Imagined Futures in the Past: Empire, Place, Race, and Nation in the Mapping of Oceania

7. Imperial Futures and India’s Pacifics: Space, Temporality, and the Textures of Empire

8. Unbound Space: Migration, Aspiration, and the Making of Time in the Cantonese Pacific

9. “Return of the Native”: Two Routes Back for a “Dying Race ”

10. Education for the Future: University of Hawai‘i Sociology, Assimilationist Historicity, and the Making of Settler Colonial Culture

11. “A Lasting Benefit for a New Race”? Rev. J. F. H. Wohlers and Racial Amalgamation in Southern New Zealand

12. On the Beach in the Marquesas: Weedy Historicities and Prosthetic Futures

Afterword: Pacific Futurities

Contributors

Index

Bibliographic data