Pacific

Previous archaeological studies in the village of Nukuleka, Tongatapu, Kingdom of Tonga proposed it as a founder colony for Polynesia. Additional excavation and survey were undertaken in 2007 to evaluate this status further and to gain new insight into the nature of the occupation and its role in the subsequent peopling of west Polynesia. A review of this project and its findings are presented. Decorated ceramics of western Lapita style, the presence of tan paste ceramics foreign to Tonga, and new radiocarbon dates support Nukuleka as a site of first landfall in the interval 2850 to 2900 cal BP. The ceramic assemblage is distinct from west and central Fiji, and an independent origin for Fijian and Polynesian colonizers is argued. The settlement quickly expanded on the Nukuleka Peninsula to 20 ha or more in size, forming a central place for the eastern Lapita province in Tonga, Samoa and the Lau islands of Fiji. Nukuleka, we believe, provides insight into the cultural if not biological base from which ancestral Polynesian society emerged.

Over the past decade, and especially over the past few years, political corruption, fraud and violence in the Philippines have reached such alarming levels that many Filipinos have grown despondent, even cynical, about their country's political system. Exploring the suitability of the concepts of ‘predatory state’ and ‘patrimonial oligarchic state’ to the Philippines, I find that the regime rather than the state is the more appropriate unit of analysis. I argue that the predatory regime, controlled by a rapacious elite, that held sway during the years of the dictator Marcos, has made a comeback in the Philippines. Under the governments of President Joseph Estrada and Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, traditional clientelism has given way to pervasive corruption, a systematic plunder of government resources and the rapid corrosion of public institutions into tools for predation. Instead of just being a throwback to the ‘old corruption’ of the Marcos era, however, the current predatory regime represents a ‘new corruption’ adapted to the ways of economic and political liberalization. While not as authoritarian as Marcos' regime, it has growing authoritarian tendencies: centralization of power in the executive; heightened repression; rigged elections; a much weakened rule of law; numerous political appointees in the bureaucracy; and increased influence of the military. A shift to naked authoritarianism, however, cannot be ruled out. As forces for democratic reform are much too weak, the predatory regime may be around for some time or it could give way, at best, to a more traditional clientelist electoral regime. Prospects for democratic consolidation in the Philippines in the near future appear bleak.

This paper assesses the historical development of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). During its 40 year history, ASEAN has achieved limited success in influencing the normative environment of Southeast Asia. ASEAN has helped shape institutional development in the Asia Pacific, particularly since the 1990s. It remains at the center of Asia Pacific regionalism. However, ASEAN's diverse membership and its need to maintain the fundamental principle of non-intervention limit its ability to reform. ASEAN's future is closely tied to its role in facilitating the emergence of China as a global power.

Este artículo tiene como objetivo analizar las diferentes relaciones de mestizaje que ocurrieron en las tierras del Pacífico durante los primeros dos siglos de ocupación europea. La investigación revela que, contrario a lo que un amplio sector de la historiografía ha sostenido, la conquista no fue unilateral y compacta, sino que se trató de un proceso discontinuo y heterogéneo que permitió el surgimiento de nuevos grupos como los mestizos. Estos participaron activamente en las guerras contra los indios cuando eran educados en el mundo colonial, pero también atacaron a los conquistadores cuando fueron criados dentro de las sociedades indígenas. Utilizando diferentes fuentes de la época, se analiza el proceso de mestizaje no sólo desde su faceta biológica, sino también cultural. Así se podrá comprender cómo a ambos lados de la línea fronteriza colonial se vivió un intenso proceso de mestizaje.

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The objective of this article is to analyze the different relations of miscegenation that occurred in the Pacific territory of the New Kingdom of Granada during the first two centuries of European occupation. The study reveals that, contrary to what a broad sector of historiography has sustained, the Conquest was not unilateral and compact, but rather a discontinuous and heterogeneous process that permitted the rise of new groups such as the Mestizos. When these groups were educated in the colonial world, they participated actively in the wars against the Indians, but when they were brought up within the indigenous societies, they also knew how to attack the Conquistadors. The study uses different sources to analyze the process of miscegenation not only from the biological perspective, but from the cultural perspective as well. It is thus possible to understand how an intense process of racial-mixing known as mestizaje took place on both sides of the colonial boundary line.

This paper is a preliminary report on a sociolinguistic field survey. It records the beliefs which 834 permanent residents of Suva, Fiji had about their own language and literacy skills in 1988-89. The interview subjects were selected from five census enumeration districts with populations ranging from 430 to 1200, and chosen for having a roughly equal ethnic composition of Fijians and Indo-Fijians. Bilingual interviewers (linguistics students) invited and assisted subjects to complete an extensive questionnaire, and offer unstructured comments. The collated and analysed outcome gives a complex and sometimes surprising picture of urban language change.

The tourism Industry is directly linked with the environment, as tourists mainly travel to natural and green environment destinations. This study has made an attempt to demonstrate the application of Geospatial Approach in evaluation of Master Planning for Sonamarg Resort most visited tourist place of Kashmir valley. Master Plan (MP) for Tourist Resort of Sonamarg was evaluated using topographical settings (Slope, Aspects and Elevation) natural drainage and land use land cover map. Evaluation of Master plan for Sonamarg tourist resort was carried out in two ways i.e., zone vise (A, B, C and D) and slope vise. High resolution Google Earth satellite images of IKONOS were used to analyze current land use land cover in Sonamarg, which are classified into 7 classes. ASTER DEM was used to prepare the slope, elevation and drainage maps. RETScreen Expert was used to get the climate data from NASA to correlate it with the Tourist inflow months. Results indicated that “Zone A” may exhibit con...

The colonisation of the Pacific islands represents one of the major achievements of early human societies and has attracted much attention from archaeologists and historical linguists. Determining the pattern and chronology of colonisation remains a challenge, as new discoveries continue to push back dates of earliest settlement. The length and direction of the colonising voyages
has also led to lively debate seeking to trace languages and artefactual techniques and traditions to presumed places of origin. Seafaring simulation models provide one way of resolving these controversies.One of the most remote of these island groups, the Marianas, is shown here to have been settled not from Taiwan or the Philippines, as has been argued in Antiquity by Hung et al. (2011) and Winter et al. (2012), but from New Guinea or Island Southeast Asia to the south. It represents an incredible feat of early navigation over an ocean distance of some 2000km.

This paper was prepared to both document Vanuatu's efforts to elevate gender rights in the land reform process of the 2000s, as well as to identify future areas for policy engagement in advancing women's access to productive resources both in Vanuatu and in the global arena.

This article reviews the 25-year progress made in implementing the ‘Beijing Platform for Action’ and the challenges that remain towards achieving gender equality in the Asia-Pacific region. Adopted in 1995 at the Fourth World Conference on Women, the ‘Beijing Platform for Action’ has been hailed as the most progressive policy blueprint for gender equality and women’s empowerment. In November 2019, over 600 participants from 54 countries, comprising representatives from Governments, international organisations and civil society organisations attended the Asia-Pacific Ministerial Conference on the Beijing+25 Review in Bangkok. The delegations reviewed the “achievements, challenges and priority areas for realizing gender equality and women’s empowerment” (UNESCAP, 2019a:1) in Asia-Pacific. For 25 years, since the adoption of the ‘Beijing Platform for Action’, Asia-Pacific has witnessed significant progress in girls’ education and women’s health. Unprecedented progress has been made in and reducing maternal deaths and enhancing women’s representation in national parliaments and local governments in several countries. However, there are some enduring challenges, including women’s economic empowerment and political participation, and violence against women. Whilst women play a pivotal role in protecting the environment and natural resources, they have been underrepresented in environment-related decision making and negotiations. Accordingly, the key actions outlined by the ‘Asia-Pacific Declaration on Advancing Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment: Beijing+25 Review’ cover a wide range of issues, from women’s economic empowerment, political participation, to women’s full and effective participation in environment conservation, climate action and peace building process.

Pesticides are the chemicals used to control the crop harms by killing the pests causing various diseases in crop plants, thereby playing vital role in yield and crop production. The ingredients of these chemical pesticides are not only lethal to target arthropods but also for human beings. Therefore, the aim of present study was to find out the perception about the impacts of various pesticide usage on the health of cotton growing farmers in rural areas of District Muzaffargarh, Pakistan. Three villages were selected purposively and 130 farmers were approached to perform a questionnaire via face to face interview. Our findings revealed that a major proportion of the respondents (56.9%) were agreed that pesticides cause illness in cotton growing farmers. The results showed the perceptions of respondents that pesticides were responsible to cause various diseases to a great extent in farmers, like increase in headache (48.5%), fatigue (40.0%), insomnia (45.4%), dizziness (37.7%), hand...

High economic growth rates, the revolution in telecommunications and the end of the Cold War have brought about rapid and profound changes to the domestic as well as regional environments of Northeast Asian governments. The maritime sphere, where increasingly militarized state boundaries delineate political authority and economic activities link increasingly interdependent communities therein, bears high significance for the study of regional cooperation. This paper looks at how the maritime sphere of Northeast Asia is represented in common political and academic discourses of international relations. It finds that maritime affairs are firmly cast in the language of national security, and that empirical evidence against perceived threats and related security imperatives is often neglected if not completely ignored. The paper argues that the maritime space, due to its special character, has become the stage on which the consequences of modernity appear particularly strong. The relentless quest to develop and control the ocean clashes with the notion of the sea as a space of global trade and communication flow. At the same time, the ocean as an entity itself is excluded from the discourse because it is irreconcilable with the conception of the international system of sovereign territorial units. As a result, the maritime sphere is seen as a dividing element between nations rather than a connecting element, and salient environmental problems of the maritime space remain low on political and academic agendas. This is also a consequence of mainstream methods of political science that continue to reproduce discourses of territorial division and fail to offer alternative approaches suitable for the study of contemporary Northeast Asia.

This paper discusses the expansion of Oceania through a Marshallese indigenous lens as a focal point. It explains that decolonizing methodologies allows reclaiming of space for mental liberation and reassurement of constitutional rights. It highlights similar occurrences of decolonization practices meeting resistance in the 21st century all while strengthening the human right argument that no human deserves any less than their fellow human brothers and sisters. It argues that an indigenous imagery can only be viewed through an indigenous lens where the researches’ level of purity is retained and unfiltered. It nevertheless argues that Marshallese ethnolinguistics reveal the same cultural practices in America, Judeo-Christianity, and Oceania thus dictating the reality that we are the same not withstanding one stays here and one there. It further explains the importance in these similarities and how Marshallese spirituality predates introduced American Judeo-Christianity despite the latter attempting to marginalize them. It concludes by stating that Marshallese contributions on the global stage are rooted in that culture of love (IaKwe) which is echoed by the customs revealing the significance of Marshallese validation academically, spiritually, economically, & socially to prevent institutionalized discrimination. This paper ends stating that the agency to know one’s self and how one should fit in the world, is a human right in itself and Marshallese are entitled to this sense of self worth through knowing thy self by thy self where real thinking takes place in one’s own mind as we all live our own lives.

Abstract: The avifauna of the Galapagos Islands is characterized by a small number of endemic species, including the 13 species of Darwin's finches. The introduced fly parasite Philornis downsi reduces nestling survival and growth rate of altricial birds, and can cause mortality and ...

Drawing on the insights of the constructivist school approach, this article joins the debate on the effects of rising China in Asia. The existing scholarship devoted to no-material aspects of China’s rise focused either on China’s ‘soft power’ initiatives or their reception by certain audiences. In this article, rising China and its governance model, are construed as a form of productive power, one that is expected to bring about not only shifts in material relations and perceptions but also transformations in the national identities of countries in the region. This article focuses on South Korea and Thailand, two countries with fundamentally different political systems but a similar pattern of recent interactions with China. It analyzes the policymaking elites’ discourse and public attitudes and explores the productive effects of China’s rise on national identities in the two countries. This article argues that the impact of China’s rise on elites’ discourse has been largely neglig...

The colonisation of the Mariana Islands in Western Micronesia is likely to represent an early ocean dispersal of more than 2000 km. Establishing the date of human arrival in the archipelago is important for modelling Neolithic expansion in Island Southeast Asia and the Pacific, ...