Abstract
Whereas it has become fashionable in recent years to consider most Melanesian states as ‘weak’ or ‘failed states’, the time now seems ripe — 30 years after their independence — to review these states’ ideological use of the invocation of culture and local traditions, or kastom, in a context marked by profound social, political and economic upheavals, coups d’état (two in Fiji, one in the Solomon Islands), a civil war (Bougainville) and Australia’s neo-colonial re-engagement in the region. In many respects, the way in which the Melanesian elites have turned culture into a political symbol is strikingly reminiscent of the quasi-sacralisation of the Maori culture in the bi-cultural framework set up by the New Zealand state, albeit in a very different context. It may be enlightening to compare the two cases and to examine relations between state policies and culturalist ideology in a former colonial country, New Zealand and in the island states that the erstwhile colonisers are now declaring bankrupt.
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© 2007 Alain Babadzan
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Babadzan, A. (2007). Culturalism, Neo-liberalism and the State: The Rise and Fall of Neotraditionalist Ideologies in the South Pacific. In: Rata, E., Openshaw, R., Friedman, J. (eds) Public Policy and Ethnicity. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230625303_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230625303_4
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-28105-3
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-62530-3
eBook Packages: Palgrave Social & Cultural Studies CollectionSocial Sciences (R0)