Social Change in Melanesia : Development and History , by Paul Sillitoe

shaped by it. Human beings, Ingold muses, are to be found around the edges of nature, not at its core. He proposes the term “anthropocircumferentialism” to denote this position, which may not gain currency for the mere unutterability of it. On a final note, we may observe that the English of some of the Nordic authors is patchy in places, indicating the proofreading may not have been entirely up to standard.

Another problem with the book is the model of social change that is presented.Sillitoe notes that there are three aspects to social change: technological innovation, social consequences, and indigenous rationalizations.While these in themselves are not problematic, what is troublesome about how Sillitoe deploys them, is that he argues that one leads directly to the other.In other words, technology changes society which changes ideology.Nowhere in the book is there a more dialectical approach to understanding the relationships among technology, social process, and ideology.Fortunately, this model is only present in the beginning of the book, and is not overtly reinforced in the latter chapters.
A final complaint I had with this book was the recommended reading list at the end of each chapter.This in itself was a good idea, but I felt that many of the readings could have reflected more recent writings on Melanesia in addition to the older classic ethnographies and monographs.Introductory level students are probably not going to want to tackle an entire book and especially one that was written in the 1970s if they want to read more about Melanesia today.Consequently, there should have been an inclusion of journal articles written in the 1990s.As it is now, the bulk of the recommended readings are books published primarily from the 1960s to 1980s.Additionally, there are numerous government (Melanesian) sources listed that may be difficult to obtain without the use of an interlibrary loan system.
I need to stress that in spite of all the criticisms I have just made, I would still recommend this book as an introduction to New Guinea, Melanesia, or Oceania.In the beginning of the book, Sillitoe juxtaposes a typical chronological account of the arrival of Europeans in Melanesia with an account that he collected from the Wola people he has worked among in Southern Highlands Province, Papua New Guinea.These two chapters do an excellent job of problematizing the way that histories get written and whose version of history becomes official.The fourth chapter begins with a discussion of technological change looking at the impact of steel tools among the Siane, who formerly had an economy based on stone tool technology.This chapter then moves into some of the problematic material mentioned above on modernization theory.The fifth chapter tackles the issue of land rights and community for the Tolai people of New Britain.Modern planners' and development agencies' attempts to nucleate communally held lands is a key focus of this chapter.Surprisingly, the protests of the mid-1990s led by students at the University of Papua New Guinea over land registration were not covered in this chapter.
The sixth chapter looks at big men and entrepreneurship.The area of coverage is the eastern highlands of Papua New Guinea.Sillitoe uses Finney's (1973) analysis of highlanders, especially "big men," as predisposed for success in capitalist markets.This is the only chapter that raises gender issues, a topical area lacking throughout the rest of the book's coverage of contemporary issues.The seventh chapter examines the development of social stratification and inequality in the central highlands of Papua New Guinea.Unfortunately, much of this chapter felt like an echo of the previous chapter as many of the examples referred to highlands big men.The next two chapters deal with the exploitation of natural resources, specifically mining and forestry.The mining chapter focuses on the Bougainville people, while the forestry chapter looks at the West Sepik area.All of the current issues relating to resource development are dealt with in these two chapters: issues of ownership, insurrections by disappointed locals, compensation, local knowledge of resources, environmental destruction, and the interplay of multinational corporations, the state, and local peoples.With the on-going development of the extractive resources industry, there is much in these chapters to compare and contrast with other areas of Melanesia.
Chapter 10 is on migration and urbanization in Papua New Guinea.The paradoxes of people living in tribal societies in their home villages, and in urban settings with their incipient class-like nature, is wonderfully detailed.The chapter also explores the processes of labor migration and the development of the wantok system in an ethnically pluralized society.The next chapter looks at the general development of cargo cults in Melanesia and uses as its case study, the John Frum movement in Vanuatu.Sillitoe does an excellent job in presenting the history of research on cargo cults and ties them to the millennial politics that the John Frum movement engendered in Vanuatu.Throughout all of these chapters, Sillitoe offers an insightful analysis of many of the tensions facing the people of Melanesia.Rapid technological and economic developments and incredible social transformations pose numerous challenges for Melanesians and Sillitoe relates the often creative means that the people use to meet these challenges.The book is a wonderful resource for instructors wishing to give beginning students of Melanesia insights into the complex issues that permeate this region.

Reviewed by Andrew D. McNitt, Department of Political Science; Eastern Illinois University
As strange as it may seem, agricultural policy has long been a topic of concern to students of interest group politics.Adam Sheingate's book, The Rise of the Agricultural Welfare State, is one of the latest and most complete efforts in this area.Professor Sheingate examines the development of agricultural policy in the United States, Japan and France (the Common Market's leading agricultural producer).He focuses on the development of government programs designed to support farm income through a combination of restrictions on production, marketing agreements and subsidies, which he calls the "agricultural welfare state." Sheingate argues that differences in the political and governmental systems of these countries influenced the extent to which the agricultural welfare state has become a permanent feature of public policy.Specifically, in Japan and France a single dominant agricultural interest group was able to monopolize the relationship between farmers and their respective agricultural ministries.
In Japan, the Nokyo, an association of agricultural cooperatives that not only processes and markets food, but also provides credit and carries out a number of government funded development projects, is the dominant organization.In France the FNSEA (Federation National des syndicates d'Exploitants de Agricoles) is in a similar, but weaker position.In both countries these agricultural interest groups proved critically important in domestic politics because of the over representation of rural areas in the national parliaments and the more closed nature of policy making in a parliamentary (as opposed to a presidential) system.In both Japan and the France the close relationship between the dominant agricultural interest group and the agricultural ministry lead to the emergence of a neo-corporatist policymaking subsystem as government functions were turned over to the respective interest groups.In the United States, on the other hand, the Farm Bureau tried, but failed to establish itself as the dominant agricultural interest group.Conflicts over agricultural policy in the 1950s between the Republican party and the Farm Bureau on one side and the Democratic party and the National Farmers Union on the other lead to a rupture of the ties between the agricultural extension service and the Farm Bureau.This combined with the greater permeability of the American political system and the lack of policy agreement between the president and Congress over agricultural policy promoted a more pluralistic policy making subsystem.In the 1960s, a system where large number of separate commodity groups replaced the general farm organizations as the principal representatives of agricultural interests, and in the 1970s, consumer and environmental interests intervened.
The consequences of these national differences in the agricultural policymaking, according to Sheingate, was that when it became economically beneficial for the larger community to cut agricultural subsidies in these there countries in the 1990s, that it was the US which was the most successful in reducing the size of the agricultural welfare state.The US was more successful because the very permeability of the policymaking system, which had earlier allowed agricultural interests to successfully petition for subsidies, also allowed urban, environmental and Chapter 12 examines missionization and the missions' role in promoting social change in Melanesia.Many of the examples from this chapter are about the Methodist missionary George Brown and document his interactions with people in the Duke of York Islands and the rest of the Bismarck Archipelago.At the same time, Sillitoe ably details the role that other Pacific Islanders played in spreading Christian religion and the indigenous spread of Christianity, too.The remainder of the chapter looks at the role of the missions in establishing health and education services in the areas around which they operated, and the development of a Melanesian spirituality.The following chapter describes the problems of nation-state development in the region, although most of the examples are specific to Papua New Guinea.Corruption, elections, and law and order issues highlight this chapter.The final chapter in the book explores the relationship between custom and identity.The Kwaio of the Solomon Islands are the focus of the chapter.

Finney
Men and Business.Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.Rostow, Walter W. 1960.The Process of Economic Growth.Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press.The Rise of the Agricultural Welfare State, Adam D. Sheingate.Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press (2001), xii, 279 pp.