Social Change in the Pacific Problems Old, Problems New, Problems Borrowed

Decades of research in and about the Pacific Islands do not necessarily make it possible to provide complete coverage of all the issues relevant to a volume of this kind. The vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean, the largest single feature on the earth's surface, is daunting enough. Island variety adds to the complexity, since while New Guinea covers approximately 309,000 square miles, the average island is less than 25 square miles, and an island like Funafuti, the capital and population center of Tuvalu, has a land area of less than a single square mile (Rapaport 1999).