In Pacific societies, local knowledge, which has been accumulated over thousands of years and is irreplaceable, is rapidly disappearing. With the extinction of languages, the ability to observe and interpret the world from varying perspectives is also being lost. At the same time, an enormous body of knowledge about nature, plants and animals is vanishing. However, in parallel with this, the people of the Pacific are confronted with new modes of knowledge and newly introduced technologies through imported educational systems, missions of various denominations, and the media. They do not passively assimilate this knowledge but adopt, adapt, and apply it in a syncretistic way.These changes will have permanent effects on the individual lives of people in the region and their knowledge about themselves and their surrounding 'world'. This stimulating book tracks the course of these developments and offers revealing insights into the complexity of Pacific peoples' responses to the process of globalization.

In this book, David Lindenfeld proposes a new dimension to the study of world history. Here, he explores the global expansion of Christianity since 1500 from the perspectives of the indigenous people who were affected by it, and helped change it, giving them active agency. Integrating the study of religion into world history, his volume surveys indigenous experience in colonial Latin America, Native North America, Africa and the African diaspora, the Middle East, India, East Asia, and the Pacific. Lindenfeld demonstrates how religion is closely interwoven with political, economic, and social history. Wide-ranging in scope, and offering a synoptic perspective of our interconnected world, Lindenfeld combines in-depth analysis of individual regions with comprehensive global coverage. He also provides a new vocabulary, with a spectrum ranging from resistance to acceptance and commitment to Christianity, that articulates the range and complexity of the indigenous conversion experience. Lindenfeld's cross-cultural reflections provide a compelling alternative to the Western narrative of progressive development.

The studies offered in this volume contribute to a Global Labor History freed from Eurocentrism and methodological nationalism. Using literature from diverse regions, epochs and disciplines, the book provides arguments and conceptual tools for a different interpretation of history – a labor history which integrates the history of slavery and indentured labor, and which pays serious attention to diverging yet interconnected developments in different parts of the world. The following questions are central: ▪ What is the nature of the world working class, on which Global Labor History focuses? How can we define and demarcate that class, and which factors determine its composition? ▪ Which forms of collective action did this working class develop in the course of time, and what is the logic in that development? ▪ What can we learn from adjacent disciplines? Which insights from anthropologists, sociologists and other social scientists are useful in the development of Global Labor History?

An Unruly World explores the diverse conundrums thrown up by seemingly unruly globalization. Examining how fast transnational capitalism is re-making the rules of the game, in a wide variety of different places, domains, and sectors, the authors focus on a wide range of issues: from analysis of 'soft capitalism', and the post-Cold War organizational drives of international trade unions, to the clamour of states to reinvent welfare policy, and the efforts of citizen groups to challenge trade and financial regimes. An Unruly World argues that we are not living in a world bereft of rules and rulers; the rules governing the global economy today are more strictly enforced by international organizations and rhetoric than ever before.

This unique work looks at the relationship between psychopathology and world politics. What happens when the brain/mind ceases to function properly? How does this impinge on world affairs? What is to be done, for example, when a leader ceases to act in a seemingly sane fashion and yet still commands the loyalty of those who maintain him or her in office? What is to be done when a leader''s advisers seem rational but are clearly not? Indeed, what is to be done when a whole society goes insane? This is to raise more questions than a single work can adequately answer. In lieu of a comprehensive account, which would be beyond the scope of one study, what this book does is first describe psychopathology in general terms and its relationship to world affairs. It then looks at denial in particular and at OC speaking the truthOCO as a potentially therapeutic antidote, especially in relation to nuclear weapons. It follows this by looking at delusion in general and at what being OC in touchOCO with reality might entail with regard to a so-called OC failed stateOCO. With topics ranging from Hitler''s mental health to the continuing threat of nuclear Armageddon, this book is a valuable contribution to the field of international politics and modern psychology, and will hopefully lead to a better understanding of contemporary world affairs and the global issue of conflict resolution.

What distinguishes humans from nonhuman 'others'? And how do these distinctions shape human sociality and the ways that humans relate to their others? Human Nature and Social Life brings together a collection of articles by prominent anthropologists to address these questions. The articles show how the fundamentally social nature of humans results in an extension of sociality to virtual, semiotic-material and nonhuman spheres, with humans therefore becoming part of 'extended socialities'. However, as the book's contributors demonstrate, human distinctness significantly bears upon these extended socialities, and the manner in which humans partake in them. Taking an ethnographic approach to its subject, this book demonstrates the continued value of studying the specificities of the human condition, and sets itself as a counterweight to current refutations of human exceptionalism.

This book explores how dreams, remembered upon awakening, are turned into social action in a European society. Supported by ethnographic research of modern Iceland and examples from the historical literature, the book argues that the social meaning ascribed to the Icelandic dream has been a continuous part of Icelandic everyday life for a thousand years and is still being adapted today. (Series: European Studies in Culture and Policy - Vol. 12)

The many different localities of the Pacific region have a long history of transformation, under both pre- and post-colonial conditions. More recently, rates of local transformation have increased tremendously under post-colonial regimes. The forces of globalization, which rapidly distribute commodities, images, and political and moral concepts across the region, have presented Pacific populations with an unprecedented need and opportunity to fashion new and expanded understandings of their cultural and individual identities. This volume, the first in a new series, examines the forces of globalization at different levels, as they manifest themselves and operate across cultural, cognitive and biographical dimensions of human life in the Pacific. While posing familiar questions, it offers new answers through the integration of cultural and psychological methods. The contributors draw on practice theory, cognitive science and the anthropology of space and place while exploring the key analytical rubrics of human agency, memory and landscape.

This book aims to reflect on the experiential side of writing political lives in the Pacific region. The collection touches on aspects of the life writing art that are particularly pertinent to political figures: public perception and ideology; identifying important political successes and policy initiatives; grappling with issues like corruption and age-old political science questions about leadership and ‘dirty hands’. These are general themes but they take on a particular significance in the Pacific context and so the contributions explore these themes in relation to patterns of colonisation and the memory of independence; issues elliptically captured by terms like ‘culture’ and ‘tradition’; the nature of ‘self’ presented in Pacific life writing; and the tendency for many of these texts to be written by ‘outsiders’, or at least the increasingly contested nature of what that term means.