Islands, Islanders and the World: The Colonial and Post-colonial Experience of Eastern Fiji

by Tim Bayliss-Smith , Richard Bedford , Harold Brookfield , Marc Latham

• ISBN13: 9780521030083
• ISBN10: 0521030080
• Edition: Revised
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-11-02
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Fiji is a country whose recent political instability can be directly traced to its distinctive colonial and post-colonial experience. For one particular region of Fiji the authors examine the environmental, social and economic aspects of this experience, at scales ranging from national and regional to island, village and household. Discussions in Third World geography, regional economics and development planning have been full of rhetoric about 'underdevelopment', 'centre-periphery relations' and 'dependency', but seldom are the actual processes which give rise to these phenomena examined in detail. In this book the authors explore in depth the interrelations between the island landscape, the cultural geography of the islanders and the intrusive values and opportunities of the market economy. Some important lessons are to be learnt from the gap between what might be predicted from abstract theories of development and what is actually happening in the real world of politicians, planners, farmers and fishermen.

Table of Contents

List of illustrations

List of tables

Foreword: the MAB Programme and the Eastern Fiji Project G. Glaser

Editorial Note

On the study of islands, people and events

The island landscape

Capitalism and colonialism in the periphery

Physical and economic externalities and their impact

Vulnerability in a changing society

Pampered periphery?

Villages of adaptation: Batiki and Kabara

Adaptation or stagnation? the case of Koro

Villages of change: Taveuni and Lakeba

Regional development for an island periphery

Island studies and geography

Appendix: publications of the UNESCO/UNFPA Easter Fiji Project

References

Index

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