This thesis investigates the systematics, biogeography, and diversification dynamics of a large and ecologically important insect group in SE Asia and the Indo-Pacific region: the ants. This study utilizes a multidisciplinary framework to elucidate the evolutionary history of selected ant clades with the overall aim to shed light on similar ecological and evolutionary processes intervening in ant diversity.

This thesis is an ethnographic study of a rural community in central Vanuatu, many of whom have been engaged as seasonal workers in New Zealand and Australia’s horticultural industries since 2008. Based on sixteen months’ ethnographic fieldwork divided between Lamen Island and Lamen Bay, Epi, I examine why people choose to leave their home to engage in often-difficult work and seasonal absences, in order to build a ‘good house’ and ‘good life’ at home. I suggest that ‘the good house’ is an icon of the Li-Lamenu vision for improved moral and material ‘standards of living’. I reveal how seasonal work engagements emerge in the context of mutually dependent and moralised but often-ambivalent employer-employee relations. Time away is often experienced as the subordination of one’s life and work to the demands of a labour regime, but is submitted to as opening opportunities, or ‘roads’ for value conversions of time into money, and money in into the future of the household, and community development. However, the quest for a good life in the shape of the good house raises tensions and contradictions that householders must negotiate in order to ‘live together well’ with kin and community. The rise of the ‘good house’ is associated with a concomitant decline in ‘respect’ for kin and Chiefs, and the proliferation of ‘broken homes’, and land disputes. Throughout this thesis, I will suggest that the good house concretises the increasing direction of money, time and resources into household-oriented goals. This process of household nucleation is also evident in tensions over changes in ritual performance and expenditure and land tenure patterns. I conclude that these insights contribute to the anthropology of kinship and ritual, as well as wider understandings of temporary migration and development theory and policy.

<p> A number of anthropological studies have been published on societies on the West New Britain mainland but little information is available about Vitu culture and society. The intention of this dissertation is to provide an account of Vitu social structure and particularly to describe and analyse the processes of group formation in the society. Specifically, the study attempts to elucidate the Vitus' claim that while they belong to matrilineal clans, they "follow both sides", inheriting rights from both parents.</p> <p> Anthropologists working in various parts of Melanesia have studied accommodation between two apparently incompatible cultural principles and have published studies of societies where patrilineal and cognatic descent are both organizing principles. This dissertation provides comparative data for these studies but it differs from them because it seeks to explain the relationships between roatrilineal and cognatic descent.</p> <p> After an historical introduction, the study describes matrilineal and cognatic ideologies in Vitu. Matrilineal descent divides Vitus into discrete categories and provides a conceptual frame-work, in terms of which people orient themselves in time and space, calculate social relationships and assess rights to claim membership in particular groups. Cognatic descent allows individuals considerable freedom in joining groups and gaining access to land. Vitus assert rights in matrilineal corporations by stressing cognatic descent from matrilineage·men. </p> <p> Cognatic inheritance of land-rights means that lineage members and lineage descendants share land. Membersof the two categories compete for resources, and tensions are exacerbated by a cultural preference that "the woman follows the man". This preference results in virilocal residence and a pattern of economic cooperation that allows women limited control over their land. These factors weaken the matrilineage and strengthen bonds among cognates. Lineage members cannot expel lineage descendants from their land. Instead they retain land for their lineages through strategic marriages. Each lineage becomes the centre of a limited marriage universe consisting of closely allied lineages exchanging women and land. </p> <p> The traditional political organization of Vitu was related to the patterns of descent and alliance in the society. The islands were divided into hostile, largely endogamous territories, each containing two or more relatively endogamous groups composed of members of closely allied lineages. Local communities consisted of cognaticallyrelated kinsmen who were members of intermarrying lineages. The symbolism of ceremonial exchange in Vitu continues to reflect values of balanced exchange of property and personnel between allied lineages. In the contemporary society, marriage patterns still include clan exogamy and reciprocal exchange of women. But some young people arrange their own marriages, and lineage leaders and elders worry about the future of the matrilineage as a land-holding corporation. </p> <p> The interaction of matrilineal and cognatic descent in the processes of group formation in Vitu contrasts with that in other areas of Melanesia. In the New Guinea Highlands, recruitment to local groups is bilateral, but Highlanders conceptualize local groups as patrilineal clans. In the Highlands, descent and residence patterns tend to be harmonic. So acconunodation between patrilineal and cognatic ideologies occurs in ascendant generations where the distinction between residence and clan membership becomes blurred. In Vitu, the disharmonic descent and residence rules require the distinction between local group, and lineage membership to be preserved. Adjustment between matrilineal and cognatic descent in Vitu occurs only through marriage. </p> <p> The aissertation concludes by stressing the considerable choice available to Vitus in joining social groups. Opportunities for joining a variety of groups may beas great in societies where unilineal descent is a significant factor as in societies where cognatic descent is a major organizing principle.</p> / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

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The South Pacific is a region of incredible biological, cultural and linguistic diversity, reflecting its early settlement by human populations. It has been a region of interest to scholars because of this diversity, as well as its unique geography and settlement history. Current evidence suggests there was an initial settlement of Near Oceania during the Pleistocene by Papuan-speaking foragers, followed by a later Holocene settlement of Remote Oceania by Oceanic-speaking agriculturalists. Previous studies of human biological variation have been used to illuminate the migration history of and population relationships within Oceania. In this study, I analyzed Y-chromosome (NRY) diversity in 842 unrelated males to more fully characterize the phylogeography of paternal genetic lineages in this region, using a large number of regionally informative markers on an intensive sample set from Northern Island Melanesia. This approach facilitated an analysis of NRY haplogroup distributions, an evaluation of the ancestral paternal genetic contribution to the region, and a comparison of regional NRY diversity with that observed at different genetic loci (e.g., mtDNA). This project is part of a collaborative effort by faculty and graduate students from the Temple University Department of Anthropology that focused on characterizing biological variation and genetic structure in Melanesia, and better resolving the phylogeographic specificity of Northern Island Melanesia. Overall, this study generated a higher resolution view of NRY haplogroup variation than detected in previous studies through the use of newly defined and very informative SNP markers. It also showed that there is a very small ancestral East Asian paternal contribution to this area, and a rather large proportion of older Melanesian NRY lineages present there. In addition, this study observed extraordinary NRY diversity within Northern Island Melanesia, as well as genetic structure influenced more by geography than linguistic variation. This structure and diversity was essentially equivalent to that noted for mtDNA data for this region. Finally, this study helped to resolve questions about the placement of the 50f2/c deletion within the larger NRY tree. Overall, this work has refined our understanding of the migration and demographic history of Northern Island Melanesia. / Anthropology

This thesis concentrates on the Kwara'ae people of a peri-urban settlement named Gilbert Camp. Originally from Malaita (hom), they migrate and settle in Honiara, capital city of Solomon Islands. They articulate their condition in relation to two sets of value oppositions. The first opposes hom as their primitive, isolated, and hopeless province of origin; and Honiara as the modern, all-promising, all-fulfilling arrival city. The second juxtaposes hom as the epitome of unity, cooperation, and sameness, where life is easy; and Honiara as the place where diversity, competition, and separation reign, and life is hard. The Kwara'ae people leave hom and settle in Honiara because they value what lacks in the former and can be found in the latter. But in Honiara they despise some of the things they must confront, and miss what they can have at hom but not in Honiara. For these reasons, they repeatedly declare, "Honiara is hard" (Honiara hemi had). However, rather than interpreting their statements about life in town as the symptom of a negative evaluation, I try to capture the extent to which the Kwara'ae people of Gilbert Camp value their urban life in a positive way. The starkest illustration of their commitment to town life is in their daily efforts to deal with the tensions over the meaning and use of their values in the urban context. I analyse these tensions, challenges, and negotiations in a series of ethnographically grounded case studies. In a peri-urban village of a shrinking Pacific economy where there is a general disproportion between income and mouths to feed, a tension between the priorities of kinship and the need to make ends meet is almost inevitable. Secondly, the confusion surrounding the issue of land causes tensions concerning how land must be dealt with. There is also a tension between customary and state law, and between historical and recent forms of Christianity. Kwara'ae people use their creativity and cultural knowledge to find viable solutions to these tensions, which I argue is an illustration of how much they try to live according to their values on the outskirts of Honiara. It follows that the statement "Honiara is hard" indicates the measure of their efforts, of how intensely they want to live in Honiara according to their values, rather than the measure of how much they want to go back hom. This interpretation has important implications for the anthropology of urban Melanesia. Previous urban ethnographies in Solomon Islands emphasised the reproduction of hom values, rather than the creation of a new hom through the manipulation of contemporary cultural logics. Although the former approach coheres with negative evaluations of the urban context, it does not account for why people leave a place where life is "easy", and settle in a place where it is "hard". In contrast, an approach emphasising the hom-making process inherent in daily value negotiations reveals the contingent, unpredictable, and contested construction of the sense of homeliness with which Kwara'ae people are turning Gilbert Camp into their new hom.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 151-167). / viii, 167 leaves, bound 29 cm

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1994 / Pacific Islands Studies

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1983 / Pacific Islands Studies

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