The concept of hybridity highlights complex processes of interaction and transformation between different institutional and social forms, and normative systems. It has been used in numerous ways to generate important analytical and methodological insights into peacebuilding and development. Its most recent application in the social sciences has also attracted powerful critiques that have highlighted its limitations and challenged its continuing usage. This book examines whether the value of hybridity as a concept can continue to be harnessed, and how its shortcomings might be mitigated or overcome. It does so in an interdisciplinary way, as hybridity has been used as a benchmark across multiple disciplines and areas of practical engagement over the past decade - including peacebuilding, state-building, justice reform, security, development studies, anthropology, and economics. This book encourages a dialogue about the uses and critiques of hybridity from a variety of perspectives and vantage points, including deeply ethnographic works, high-level theory, and applied policy work. The authors conclude that there is continued value in the concept of hybridity, but argue that this value can only be realised if the concept is engaged with in a reflexive and critical way. This book was originally published as a special issue of the online journal Third World Thematics.

This book provides a rigorous and cross-disciplinary analysis of this Melanesian nation at a critical juncture in its post-colonial and post-conflict history, with contributions from leading scholars of Solomon Islands. The notion of 'transition' as used to describe the recent drawdown of the decade-long Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI) provides a departure point for considering other transformations - social, political and economic -under way in the archipelagic nation. Organised around a central tension between change and continuity, two of the book's key themes are the contested narratives of changing state-society relations and the changing social relations around land and natural resources engendered by ongoing processes of globalisation and urbanisation. Drawing heuristically on RAMSI's genesis in the 'state- building moment' that dominated international relations during the first decade of this century, the book also examines the critical distinction between 'state-building' and 'state formation' in the Solomon Islands context. It engages with global scholarly and policy debates on issues such as peacebuilding, state-building, legal pluralism, hybrid governance, globalisation, urbanisation and the governance of natural resources. These themes resonate well beyond Solomon Islands and Melanesia, and the book will be of interest to a wide range of students, scholars and development practitioners. This book was previously published as a special issue of The Journal of Pacific History.

This book provides a rigorous and cross-disciplinary analysis of this Melanesian nation at a critical juncture in its post-colonial and post-conflict history, with contributions from leading scholars of Solomon Islands. The notion of 'transition' as used to describe the recent drawdown of the decade-long Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI) provides a departure point for considering other transformations - social, political and economic -under way in the archipelagic nation. Organised around a central tension between change and continuity, two of the book's key themes are the contested narratives of changing state-society relations and the changing social relations around land and natural resources engendered by ongoing processes of globalisation and urbanisation. Drawing heuristically on RAMSI's genesis in the 'state- building moment' that dominated international relations during the first decade of this century, the book also examines the critical distinction between 'state-building' and 'state formation' in the Solomon Islands context. It engages with global scholarly and policy debates on issues such as peacebuilding, state-building, legal pluralism, hybrid governance, globalisation, urbanisation and the governance of natural resources. These themes resonate well beyond Solomon Islands and Melanesia, and the book will be of interest to a wide range of students, scholars and development practitioners. This book was previously published as a special issue of The Journal of Pacific History.

This open access book brings together insights into Pacific policing, conceptualising policing broadly as order maintenance involving the actions of multiple local, regional and international actors with sometimes competing and conflicting agendas. A complex and multifaceted endeavour, scholarship on this topic is relatively scarce and widely dispersed across diverse sources. It examines how Pacific policing is shaped by changing state-society relations in different national contexts and ongoing processes of globalisation. Particular attention is given to the plural character of Pacific policing, profound challenges of gender equity, changing dynamics of crime, and the prominence of transnational policing in resource and capacity constrained domestic environments. The authors draw on examples from across the Pacific islands to provide a nuanced and contextualised account of policing in this socially diverse and rapidly transforming region.

The concept of hybridity highlights complex processes of interaction and transformation between different institutional and social forms, and normative systems. It has been used in numerous ways to generate important analytical and methodological insights into peacebuilding and development. Its most recent application in the social sciences has also attracted powerful critiques that have highlighted its limitations and challenged its continuing usage. This book examines whether the value of hybridity as a concept can continue to be harnessed, and how its shortcomings might be mitigated or overcome. It does so in an interdisciplinary way, as hybridity has been used as a benchmark across multiple disciplines and areas of practical engagement over the past decade - including peacebuilding, state-building, justice reform, security, development studies, anthropology, and economics. This book encourages a dialogue about the uses and critiques of hybridity from a variety of perspectives and vantage points, including deeply ethnographic works, high-level theory, and applied policy work. The authors conclude that there is continued value in the concept of hybridity, but argue that this value can only be realised if the concept is engaged with in a reflexive and critical way. This book was originally published as a special issue of the online journal Third World Thematics.

Twenty-five years after independence, Papua New Guinea is beset by social, economic, and political problems: poverty and inequality, a young and expanding population, a stagnant economy, corruption, and rising crime. The state has not only failed to contain these problems but has become progressively implicated in their persistence. Escalating levels of violence and lawlessness are seen by many as the most serious challenge facing the young country. This book examines these problems of order in light of Papua New Guinea's remarkable social diversity and the impact of rapid and pervasive processes of change. Three original and strategic case studies involving urban gangs, mining security, and election violence form the core of the work. Each case study looks at particular forms of conflict, and the responses these engender, across different socioeconomic contexts and geographic locations. Empirical data are analyzed through a common framework that employs material, cultural and institutional perspectives, allowing readers to view the three cases through different theoretical prisms, identify linkages between them, and, in the process, build a larger picture of the post-colonial social order. Law and Order in a Weak State charts not only the problems of crime and lawlessness in Papua New Guinea but also the possibilities for constructive, pragmatic solutions. It will be of great interest to scholars, aid and policy officials, and others concerned with understanding the social complexities and challenges of contemporary Papua New Guinea.

This collection of studies from commentators, academics and activists from throughout the region examines the diverse meanings of violence in Melanesia. It shows that the nature and level of violence varies widely across different Melanesian contexts, with some of those contexts experiencing extraordinary levels of violence. Through the reports the meaning of the categories used in Western law is challenged. Forms of oppression that were more important in the West centuries ago are still important in Melanesia, and while the cultural patterns of violence are local and plural, there are also global currents and paradoxes of political economies and restorative justice. This is not just a book for Melanesianists, but for all who are concerned about violence and healing it.