Engaging With Strangers : Love and Violence in the Rural Solomon Islands

Mcdougall, Debra

ISBN 10: 1785330209 / ISBN 13: 9781785330209

Published by Berghahn Books, 2016

About this Item

Seller Inventory # 24548681-n

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Engaging With Strangers : Love and Violence in the Rural Solomon Islands
• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Publication Date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1785330209
• ISBN 13: 9781785330209
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

The civil conflict in Solomon Islands (1998-2003) is often blamed on the failure of the nation-state to encompass culturally diverse and politically fragmented communities. Writing of Ranongga Island, the author tracks engagements with strangers across many realms of life―pre-colonial warfare, Christian conversion, logging and conservation, even post-conflict state building. She describes startling reversals in which strangers become attached to local places, even as kinspeople are estranged from one another and from their homes. Against stereotypes of rural insularity, she argues that a distinctive cosmopolitan openness to others is evident in the rural Solomons in times of war and peace.

About the Author

Debra McDougall is Senior Lecturer in Anthropology at the University of Melbourne. She co-edited Christian Politics in Oceania with Matt Tomlinson (Berghahn, 2013) and has published chapters and articles on religion, politics, and sociality.