As new nations emerge in the Pacific Islands region, political change is everywhere marked by efforts to reconceptualize identities, histories, and futures. This volume brings together a diverse range of analysis and commentary that aim to challenge simplistic paradigms of "area study".

The "Pacific" has long been a site for debates over disciplinary approaches and the ethics and politics of research within neocolonial and postcolonial contexts. This volume makes a significant contribution to these debates and to the related and ongoing exchanges concerning area studies, the "globalization" of capitalism, and its attendant cultural, social, and political effects. In so doing, the authors link work from the Pacific with theoretical and methodological issues raised in other areas of the globe. This collection of the best from Contemporary Pacific will prove invaluable to scholars, students and all interested in the study of history, culture, and identity in the Pacific and in (post) colonial societies everywhere.