Engaging With Strangers - Love and Violence in the Rural Solomon Islands

The civil conflict in Solomon Islands (1998-2003) is often blamed on the failure of the nation-state to encompass culturally diverse and politically fragmented communities. Writing of Ranongga Island, the author tracks engagements with strangers across many realms of life-pre-colonial warfare, Christian conversion, logging and conservation, even post-conflict state building. She describes startling reversals in which strangers become attached to local places, even as kinspeople are estranged from one another and from their homes. Against stereotypes of rural insularity, she argues that a distinctive cosmopolitan openness to others is evident in the rural Solomons in times of war and peace.

List of contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgements

Notes on Language, Orthography, and Names

Maps

Introduction: On Being a Stranger in a Hospitable Land

Chapter 1. Ethnicity, Insularity, and Hospitality

Chapter 2. Ranongga's Shifting Ground

Chapter 3. Incorporating others in violent times

Chapter 4. Bringing the Gospel Ashore

Chapter 5. No love? Dilemmas of Possession

Chapter 6. Estranging Kin: Contests over Tribal Ownership

Chapter 7. Losing passports: Mobility, Urbanization, Ethnicity

Conclusion: Amity and Enmity in an Unreliable State

Bibliography

Index

About the author

Debra McDougall is Senior Lecturer in Anthropology at the University of Melbourne. She co-edited Christian Politics in Oceania with Matt Tomlinson (Berghahn, 2013) and has published chapters and articles on religion, politics, and sociality.

Product details

• Authors: Debra McDougall, McDougall Debra
• Publisher: BERGHAHN BOOKS, INC
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 29.02.2020
• EAN: 9781789207613
• ISBN: 978-1-78920-761-3
• No. of pages: 308
• Series: ASAO Studies in Pacific Anthropology; Asao Studies in Pacific Anthro
• Subjects: Social sciences, law, business > Social sciences (general); Ethnic Studies, HISTORY / Social History, Social & cultural history, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Anthropology / Cultural & Social, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Violence in Society, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Sociology / Rural, Social & cultural anthropology, ethnography, Rural communities, Social and cultural history, Social and cultural anthropology, Violence in society, Violence and abuse in society, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Cultural & Ethnic Studies / General, Rural communities / rural life