Biodiversity is distributed unevenly across geographic space and the tree of life. A key task of biology is to understand the ecological and evolutionary processes that generate these patterns. I investigate how the structure and geometry of a landscape, for example the sizes and arrangements of islands in an archipelago, affects processes contributing to the generation and conservation of biodiversity patterns. In the first chapter, I integrate two disparate bodies of theory, ecological neutral theory and network theory into a powerful new framework for investigating patterns of biodiversity in a complex landscape. I examine the consequences of network structure, such as size, topology, and connectivity, for diversity patterning across the metacommunity. The second chapter focuses on how the position of a node within a network controls local community (node) diversity. Network statistics, such as node centrality, are found to predict diversity patterns with more central nodes accumulating the most diversity. In the third chapter, I use the theory to evaluate how well fundamental concepts in conservation biology perform when neutral metacommunity processes generate diversity patterns. I find that contemporary diversity patterns are poor predictors of the long-term capacity of a network to support diversity, challenging a host of conservation concepts and applications. In the fourth chapter, I consider biodiversity dynamics in a network with a different model of speciation, where spatial structure is needed for divergence. In this case, speciation hotspots form where the dispersal properties of an organism and the spatial structure of the landscape coincide. In the final chapter I study the biodiversity of a natural structured metacommunity, the ants of the Fijian archipelago. I used a variety of collecting techniques to inventory the ant species occurring across a system of islands in the southwest Pacific. Approximately 50 new species were discovered, and the distributions of the ant species across the islands are firmly established. Radiations are observed in the genera Pheidole, Camponotus, Lordomyrma, Leptogenys, Cerapachys, Strumigenys, Poecilomyrma, and Hypoponera. / text

The overarching aim of this study is to trace evidence of resistant behaviour among subordinate groups in the first forty years of Fiji's colonial history (1874-1914). By rereading archival materials "against the grain", listening to oral history, and engaging postcolonial scholarship, the study intends to disturb accepted ways of understanding Fiji's past. This approach reveals the existence of numerous people, voices, and events which until recently have remained largely on the margins of Fiji's process of historical production. As a chronological survey, the study produces a body of evidence which uncovers a rich array of forms of resistance. The points at which these forms of resistance engaged dominant culture are divided into two broad categories. The first examines several forms of organized resistance such as the Colo War of 1876, the Tuka Movement of 1878 to 1891, the Seaqaqa War of 1894, the Movement for Federation with New Zealand from 1901 to 1903, the Viti Kabani Movement of 1913 to 1917, and the various instances of organised labour protest on Fiji's plantations. The second addresses everyday forms of resistance in the villages and plantations such as tax and land boycotts, violence and retributive justice, avoidance protest, petitioning, and various aspects of women's resistance. In their entirety these aspects of resistance reveal a complex web of relationships between powerful and subordinate groups, and among subordinate groups themselves. These conclusions preclude framing resistance as a totality and advocate instead a conceptualization of resistance as a multi-layered and multi-dimensional reality. In contributing to the reconstruction and revision of Fiji's early colonial history, the study seeks to both clarify and complicate future research in the area.

Family planning initiatives have been critical to development strategies since the 1950s. Family planning has been justified on various grounds including its contribution to poverty alleviation, improved maternal and infant health and the advancement of women's rights and choices. More recently, the discourse of 'women's empowerment' has been used in the advocacy of family planning. This discourse integrates a number of earlier justifications for fertility control promoting family planning as a strategy to enhance women's access to higher standards of living and improved health. It associates family planning with advances in women's rights as individual citizens in 'modern' economies and their greater involvement in paid work. This thesis investigates whether this empowerment discourse is evident in family planning programmes in Fiji and its relationship to the socio-economic development of that country. Critical analyses of the operation of power, development strategies and western assumptions about family size, human rights and economic wellbeing inform this research. In particular, Foucault's concept of 'biopower' is used to analyse narratives about family planning articulated by health practitioners, women's rights activists and officials in the Ministry of Health. The analysis of key informants' statements is complemented by consideration of official statistics, and existing empirical data such as documents and pamphlets. The thesis argues that an empowerment discourse is strongly evident in Fiji with respect to the statements made by key informants and available written sources. It looks critically at the narratives that construct family planning as empowering for women, particularly the tropes of choice, health and full citizenship. Close analysis of these narratives demonstrate that the 'stories' uniformly position women as potentially empowered 'modern' subjects. However, critical analysis of these stories about choice, health and citizenship found that family planning strategies were sometimes disempowering. The generic stories embodied by the empowerment discourse did not allow for the diversity of women's needs; this finding supported critiques of one-size-fits-all development strategies. I demonstrate that while the empowerment discourse provided women with the opportunity to control their fertility, engage in paid work and be empowered, it simultaneously created new challenges and different forms of subordination. This thesis found that the empowerment discourse was an unmistakable example of biopower at work

The transformation period between intrastate civil conflicts has been primarily examined within sporadic case studies. A lack of macro theory in the field of Peacebuilding has led to a predisposition towards policy-friendly academic works. The policy changes and studies that get suggested take advantage of hindsight and are often case specific. Without allowing for the variances in differing post-conflict situations the changes struggle to provide usable theoretical works. This field requires accurate comparative studies, but the dominance of micro theoretical casework has undermined any larger analysis. This thesis proposes a categorical framework for qualitative analysis of post-conflict studies and tests it within a series of conflicts in the Pacific region. Comparing the Bougainville independence conflict, Fijian coups and reoccurring violence in the Solomon Islands, the differences apparent in each case will demonstrate what changes occur for better or worse, reinforcing the need for more incorporative frameworks.

This thesis looks at the causes behind Fiji’s 5 December 2006 coup. It takes a twofold approach, first looking at the background causes which illustrate that Fiji was vulnerable to a further coup after the 2000 coup. The study then moves on to an analysis of the triggering causes. This analyses both the motive; consisting of threats to the military’s interests and failures of the government, and the opportunity, consisting of a deflation in the government’s legitimacy and military cohesion. To test these factors a cross-time comparison of the five instances of high tension between the Fijian military and Government is presented in an effort to identify how the coup differed from those disputes that preceded it. These periods of tension are: the 2004 reappointment of Bainimarama; the Unity Bill dispute; the January 2006 coup threat; the 2006 election; and the December 2006 Coup. From this analysis it was found that threats to the military’s interests were key in generating the motive for intervention, but that governmental failures were not a significant factor; while they motivated the military to be a vocal actor, they did not garner the motive for intervention. The opportunity was only found to occur when there was both a deflation in the Government’s legitimacy and strong military cohesion. For Fiji’s 2006 coup the motivating factors were the threats to the military’s interests, from the scheduled Supreme Court ruling on the role of the military, the rivalry with the fully-armed Tactical Response Unit of the Police, and crucially the pending criminal charges against Bainimarama. This coincided with the opportunity for intervention from a drop in the Government’s legitimacy as a result of a crisis in the multi-party Cabinet and the Government’s growing ethnic bias, along with strong cohesion in the military.

The oral histories utilized by this research reveal the experiences of those who suffered leprosy in five South Pacific nations, Fiji, New Caledonia, Samoa, Tonga and Vanuatu. This thesis explores how leprosy and its stigma impacted on the lives of these people, some of whom suffered decades of isolation at various leprosaria including the case of one New Caledonian resident for nearly seventy years. The testimonies of their experiences of diagnosis, removal into isolation, medical treatment and eventual discharge back to their homes implicitly contain descriptions of attitudes of stigma in their communities. This research reveals that where there is openness and knowledge about the minimal risk of leprosy contagion, as occurred in Fiji and Vanuatu from the 1950s, less stigma is attached to the disease. Nevertheless even in these countries, prior to the 1950s and availability of any effective medication, the fear and horror of the physical effects of leprosy was such that the victims were either cast out or chose to move away from their homes. This segregation led to groups of leprosy sufferers banding together to help care for each other. Once the policy of isolation in leprosaria was implemented, advanced cases of leprosy benefited from the better medical facilities and found opportunities for friendships and camaraderie. However, where the conditions at leprosaria were miserable and movements of the residents visibly restricted by fences, as occurred in Samoa and Tonga, there was heightened leprosy stigma. Perceptions of stigma varied from person to person and region to region. Higher levels of stigma were evident in New Caledonia, where leprosaria had been situated at former prison sites and strict isolation enforced, and in Tonga, where the removal of all leprosy sufferers had from the earliest days been associated with biblical strictures asserting that leprosy was a curse and the sufferers unclean. Following the availability of sulphone treatment in the South Pacific in the1950s and the improved medication in the 1980s, leprosy need no longer be physically disfiguring or disabling. Assisted by the generous donations gathered by the Pacific Leprosy Foundation in New Zealand to the medical services at the central leprosy hospital in Fiji, and by direct assistance to leprosy sufferers in the Pacific, the disadvantages that were imposed by leprosy in the past are disappearing and as one contributor to the project said ‘the time of darkness’ is ending.

This study presents an analysis of the interactions observed among the West Polynesia islands of Fiji, Tonga and Samoa, using concepts of regional systems and trade networks. The connections between these island groups in the period between the 1770s and the 1870s are examined in extensive detail. In particular, this analysis takes the theoretical framework of the world-systems approach of Chase-Dunn and Hall and applies a method involving networks of exchange to this region. These networks include the information network, the bulk products network, the political/ military network and the network of prestige valuables. Archival data show the operation and content of these networks and demonstrate that with the influx of European products in the early colonial period, there was an efflorescence of long-distance exchange in this region. This analysis of networks linking the island groups suggest that Fiji, Tonga and Samoa should be viewed as a regional unit instead of three distinct societies for many subjects of investigation.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1999 / Pacific Islands Studies

Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / This thesis presents a postcolonial critique of development and academic discourses in the context of the South Pacific. Focusing on Fiji’s aid industry, I challenge the apparent inevitabilities underpinning an increasingly narrow and parochial donor ‘good governance’ agenda in the region. I also confront geography’s sojourns in, and on, the ‘Third World’ laying bare a number of epistemological and methodological inconsistencies. Having exposed various definitional rigidities produced by these discourses, I emphasise the decentred and nuanced meanings and ways of envisioning ‘development’ enabled by postcolonial sensibilities. The thesis has three primary aims. First, to highlight the constraining and enabling aspects of discourses. I emphasise the productive features of development discourse; its framing attributes, fragility and transformative potential, drawing on the activities and intentions of NGOs and donor organisations operating in Fiji. Second, I draw attention to the way ‘identities’ form and shape aid relations in the country. Again, utilising examples from Fiji’s aid industry, I foreground the centrality of ‘traditions’, religion, gender and ethnicity in ‘development’ and critique their virtual silence in donor policies and programmes in the region. Finally, I ‘unpack’ the way academia intervenes in development settings. Here I suggest that any reflection on the relevance of research will inevitably involve taking methodology seriously and posing fundamental questions about why we are there in the first place. Advocating more than a methodological revisionism, I argue that ‘doing development differently’ will involve reorienting development relations and embarking on a far-reaching mission to subvert development’s self-evidence while proposing and supporting collaborative efforts that explore negotiated and newly emerging cultural forms.

The relevance of the sustainable development approach for land conservation in tropical hill regions is often assumed, but is seldom evaluated against local realities. This study analyses the causes of land degradation and unsustainability in the seasonally fire-prone region of Navosa, Viti Levu, Fiji Islands. A complex and multi-layered set of connections exists between livelihood strategies and the environment in this region where fire is used as a tool. Traditional institutions governing land management have been undermined, however, and the sustainability of the vanua (or land-people nexus) is threatened. Despite their reliance on fire, local participants reported uncontrolled burning (caused by a minority of villagers) and deforestation leading to land degradation, lower productivity and damage to fisheries. Degradation was increasing parallel with escalating human and animal populations, despite relatively equitable, resilient and livelihood-enhancing cultural institutions. Non-indigenous models of resource use, imposed by colonial and neocolonial authorities, have exacerbated land degradation and compromised indigenous resource management. Traditional tenure and leadership are impeded, leading to inequities in access to land as populations increase, and leaving local leaders unable to enact conservation. An intrusive market-based economic system encourages increased resource exploitation with little regard for environmental sustainability. A traditional model of agroarboriculture and indigenous development in the form of still-observable (but largely disused) irrigated terraces suggests the relevance of a sustainable alternative based on indigenous knowledge. To achieve sustainable development in Navosa, the emphasis should be on socio-environmental amelioration rather than on economic development (which exacerbates degradation), and to this end, local participants expressed a desire for particular conservation strategies.