|
NUCLEAR ACTIVITIES AND THE PACIFIC ISLANDERS
TWO TALES: THE MARSHALLS AND FRENCH POLYNESIA
Jon Van Dyke, Kirk R. Smith and Suliana Siwatibau
The men and women who have grown up on the thousands of islands across the Pacific Ocean have been for the most part isolated from the conveniences and controversies of the modern age by
the vast stretches of water that separate them from crowded cities of the continents. But they have not been spared direct contact with the nuclear controversy.
Pacific Islanders have experienced first-hand suffering from nuclear testing. They have been passive recipients of nuclear fallout, have developed health problems, and have lost several
of their atols because of the many tests conducted by the United States, France, and the United Kingdom in their region. Because they frequently saw events unfold in a manner at variance with what they thought they
had been told would happen, and because they have not seen any direct benefit for them from the nuclear testing, they have not developed a deep suspicion of things nuclear.
INFORMAL ENTERPRISES AND THE DUAL ECONOMY
Johnny Forster
A model of colonial and past-colonial entrepreneurship and economic development in small nations is presented which, although intended as a general model, has been
developed specifically in relation to the island Pacific. This model is essentially within the framework of the orthodox dual economy or informal-formal sector approaches,
although itis argued that the present models rely too heavily on the use of aggregate empirical analysis. Consequently this paper represents an attempts to reconstruct the
theory of the dual economy starting from the smallest production until: the informal enterprise.
AUSTRALIA AND ASEAN IN THE 1980s: SOME OUTSIDE VIEWS ON SOME OF THE PROBLEMS
Iosefa Maiava
Despite the loss of Vietnam and the subsequent withdrawl of direct involvement in the region, the Australian governments have never surrendered their interests in South
East Asia. In fact, the 1970s were characterised by numerous efforts at fostering close ties with Asian neighbours. The Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN),
in particular, has been referred to in Canberra simply as the ‘central feature of (Australia’s ) regional policy’ (Peacock 1979: 12). This comment, at the level of
rhetoric at least, seems to have been a guiding principle in the conduct of Australia’s affairs in the Asia-Pacific region. So it was that in 1974, Australia became the first
country ton establish formal dialogue with ASEAN, soliciting for itself a lot of goodwill from the group.
RECENT FINANCIAL DEVELOPMENT IN FIJI
Dudley G. Luckett
For some twenty-five years following its postwar emergence as a sub-discipline, the field of development economics virtually ignored the role of money and finance in the
development process. Influenced, perhaps overly, by the Keynesian Revolution of the times, it was believed widely that ‘money supply is easily and almost costlessly
created, and if finance had any significant role to have been developed long ago. In addition, the historical experience of that financial institutions were ‘demand-following’
, meaning that such institutions would arise spontaneously in response to a demand for financial services in the real sector of the economy (Patrick 1966)
This view has undergone rapid change in the past few years. While no one, of course, would argue that the creation of money and the creation of income are equivalent
activities, increasingly it is accepted by development economiststhat money and financial markets play a significant and well-defined role in the complex process of economic development.
A TRADITIONAL HAWAIIAN EXPRESSION
RE-EXAMINED
John Charlot
Traditional Polynesian literature regularly uses words and senses of words that are no longer current. An understanding of them is naturally important for literally and
linguistic studies. When oral informants are lacking, the meanings or senses of words must be induced from parallels and cognates.
COMMENTARY:
A TRADITIONAL HAWAIIAN EXPRESSION
RE-EXAMINED
Epeli Hau’ofa, Konai Thaman, and Albert Wendt
John Charlot’s comment that the sense of the term Manawa, as breath is ‘no longer current’ may be true only for Hawaiian. Other Polynesian languages, such as Tongan
and Samoan, have several meanings for the term.
In Tongan and Samoan the word Manava is used in several ways. As Charlot noted manava means breath or to breath. He did not note, however, that manava, on the
other hand, means belly, stomach or womb. Thus the difference in meaning is in the intonation of the word and not in its written form.
Manava may also be broken into Mana and Va. Mana is a concept common to all Polynesian cultures and means power, essence of power, or creative essence.
|
