The New Pacific Review: Pacific Identitities. Noumea Symposium Proceedings 15-16 July 1999. Vol 1 Number 1.

Abstract

Why a 'New Pacific Review'? And first of all why the Pacific? The answer is obvious. Since the beginning of the 16th century this vast region, thickly sprinkled with multitudes of islands, large and small, even tiny, has been traversed in every direction, and gradually discovered by voyagers, researchers, adventurers or artists fascinated by the diversity and the complexity of the societies which they were discovering,. Their appraisals oscillated between two extremes, idealizations of imaginary paradises or horrified condemnations of barbaric customs which situated these societies at the very beginnings of humanity. And most of these appraisals ended with pessimistic forecasts. Beneath the impact of western civilisation, by the power of its might, the superiority of this wealth and its forms of social organisation, these societies seemed destined to disappear, either physically or culturally, or even both simultaneously. in fact, at the dawn of the 3rd millennium it is noteworthy that this disaster has not happened., this does not mean that Oceanic societies have not been profoundly affected, that the West has not directly interfered in them, right to their very core, in order to bring them into subjection and transform them. But theses societies have not remained passive during this process. Being accustomed to exchange, to mobility, to the borrowing of material goods, rituals and values for centuries they have invented new ways of existing; they have survived. (First paragraph of prologue). Show more