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" This volume] is not just timely, but it resides in a field where
interest is growing strongly. For any University course teaching
China's foreign relations, it would comprise a highly recommended
source - in particular for any component dealing with China's
relations with the developing world." . Roderic Alley, Senior
Fellow, Centre for Strategic Studies, Victoria University of
Wellington
It is important to see China's activities in the Pacific
Islands, not just in terms of a specific set of interests, but in
the context of Beijing's recent efforts to develop a comprehensive
and global foreign policy. China's policy towards Oceania is part
of a much larger outreach to the developing world, a major work in
progress that involves similar initiatives in Asia, Africa, Latin
America, and the Middle East. This groundbreaking study of China's
"soft power" initiatives in these countries offers, for the first
time, the diverse perspectives of scholars and diplomats from
Oceania, North American, China and Japan. It explores such issues
as regional competition for diplomatic and economic ties between
Taiwan and China, the role of overseas Chinese in developing these
relationships and various analyses of the benefits and drawbacks of
China's growing presence in Oceania. In addition, the reader
obtains a rare review of the Japanese response to China's role in
Oceania, presented by Japan's leading scholar of the Pacific
region."
On 21 March 2017, Associate Professor Teresia Kieuea Teaiwa passed
away at the age of forty-eight. News of Teaiwa's death precipitated
an extraordinary outpouring of grief unmatched in the Pacific
studies community since Epeli Hau'ofa's passing in 2009. Mourners
referenced Teaiwa's nurturing interactions with numerous students
and colleagues, her innovative program building at Victoria
University of Wellington, her inspiring presence at numerous
conferences around the globe, her feminist and political activism,
her poetry, her Banaban/I-Kiribati/Fiji Islander and African
American heritage, and her extraordinary ability to connect and
communicate with people of all backgrounds. This volume features a
selection of Teaiwa's scholarly and creative contributions captured
in print over a professional career cut short at the height of her
productivity. The collection honors her legacy in various scholarly
fields, including Pacific studies, Indigenous studies, literary
studies, security studies, and gender studies, and on topics
ranging from militarism and tourism to politics and pedagogy. It
also includes examples of Teaiwa's poems. Many of these
contributions have had significant and lasting impacts. Teaiwa's
"bikinis and other s/pacific notions," published in The
Contemporary Pacific in 1995, could be regarded as her breakthrough
piece, attracting considerable attention at the time and still
cited regularly today. With its innovative two-column format and
reflective commentary, "Lo(o)sing the Edge," part of a special
issue of The Contemporary Pacific in 2001, had similar impact.
Teaiwa's writings about what she dubbed "militourism," and more
recent work on militarization and gender, continue to be very
influential. Perhaps her most significant contribution was to
Pacific studies itself, an emerging interdisciplinary field of
study with distinctive goals and characteristics. In several
important journal articles and book chapters reproduced here,
Teaiwa helped define the essential elements of Pacific studies and
proposed teaching and learning strategies appropriate for the
field. Sweat and Salt Water includes fifteen of Teaiwa's most
influential pieces and four poems organized into three categories:
Pacific Studies, Militarism and Gender, and Native Reflections. A
foreword by Sean Mallon, Teaiwa's spouse, is followed by a short
introduction by the volume's editors. A comprehensive bibliography
of Teaiwa's published work is also included.
Coral and Concrete, Greg Dvorak's cross-cultural history of
Kwajalein Atoll, Marshall Islands, explores intersections of
environment, identity, empire, and memory in the largest inhabited
coral atoll on earth. Approaching the multiple "atollscapes" of
Kwajalein's past and present as Marshallese ancestral land,
Japanese colonial outpost, Pacific War battlefield, American
weapons-testing base, and an enduring home for many, Dvorak delves
into personal narratives and collective mythologies from
contradictory vantage points. He navigates the tensions between
"little stories" of ordinary human actors and "big stories" of
global politics - drawing upon the "little" metaphor of the coral
organisms that colonize and build atolls, and the "big" metaphor of
the all-encompassing concrete that buries and co-opts the
past.Building upon the growing body of literature about militarism
and decolonization in Oceania, this book advocates a layered,
nuanced approach that emphasizes the multiplicity and
contradictions of Pacific Islands histories as an antidote to
American hegemony and globalization within and beyond the region.
It also brings Japanese, Korean, Okinawan, and American
perspectives into conversation with Micronesians' recollections of
colonialism and war. This transnational history - built upon a
combination of reflective personal narrative, ethnography, cultural
studies, and postcolonial studies - thus resituates Kwajalein Atoll
as a pivotal site where Islanders have not only thrived for
thousands of years, but also mediated between East and West,
shaping crucial world events. Based on multi-sited ethnographic and
archival research, as well as Dvorak's own experiences growing up
between Kwajalein, the United States, and Japan, Coral and Concrete
integrates narrative and imagery with semiotic analysis of
photographs, maps, films, and music, traversing colonial tropical
fantasies, tales of victory and defeat, missile testing, fisheries,
war-bereavement rituals, and landowner resistance movements, from
the twentieth century through the present day. Representing history
as a perennial struggle between coral and concrete, the book offers
an Oceanian paradigm for decolonization, resistance, solidarity,
and optimism that should appeal to all readers far beyond the
Marshall Islands.
On 21 March 2017, Associate Professor Teresia Kieuea Teaiwa passed
away at the age of forty-eight. News of Teaiwa's death precipitated
an extraordinary outpouring of grief unmatched in the Pacific
studies community since Epeli Hau'ofa's passing in 2009. Mourners
referenced Teaiwa's nurturing interactions with numerous students
and colleagues, her innovative program building at Victoria
University of Wellington, her inspiring presence at numerous
conferences around the globe, her feminist and political activism,
her poetry, her Banaban/I-Kiribati/Fiji Islander and African
American heritage, and her extraordinary ability to connect and
communicate with people of all backgrounds. This volume features a
selection of Teaiwa's scholarly and creative contributions captured
in print over a professional career cut short at the height of her
productivity. The collection honors her legacy in various scholarly
fields, including Pacific studies, Indigenous studies, literary
studies, security studies, and gender studies, and on topics
ranging from militarism and tourism to politics and pedagogy. It
also includes examples of Teaiwa's poems. Many of these
contributions have had significant and lasting impacts. Teaiwa's
"bikinis and other s/pacific notions," published in The
Contemporary Pacific in 1995, could be regarded as her breakthrough
piece, attracting considerable attention at the time and still
cited regularly today. With its innovative two-column format and
reflective commentary, "Lo(o)sing the Edge," part of a special
issue of The Contemporary Pacific in 2001, had similar impact.
Teaiwa's writings about what she dubbed "militourism," and more
recent work on militarization and gender, continue to be very
influential. Perhaps her most significant contribution was to
Pacific studies itself, an emerging interdisciplinary field of
study with distinctive goals and characteristics. In several
important journal articles and book chapters reproduced here,
Teaiwa helped define the essential elements of Pacific studies and
proposed teaching and learning strategies appropriate for the
field. Sweat and Salt Water includes fifteen of Teaiwa's most
influential pieces and four poems organized into three categories:
Pacific Studies, Militarism and Gender, and Native Reflections. A
foreword by Sean Mallon, Teaiwa's spouse, is followed by a short
introduction by the volume's editors. A comprehensive bibliography
of Teaiwa's published work is also included.
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