Steven Ratuva

Contested Terrain provides a cutting-edge, comprehensive and innovative approach to critically analysing the multidimensional and contested nature of security narratives, justified by different ideological, political, cultural and economic rationales. This is important in a complex and ever-changing situation involving a dynamic interplay between local, regional and global factors. Security narratives are constructed in multiple ways and are used to frame our responses to the challenges and threats to our sense of safety, wellbeing, identity and survival but how the narratives are constructed is a matter of intellectual and political contestation. Using three case studies from the Pacific (Fiji, Tonga and Solomon Islands), Contested Terrain shows the different security challenges facing each country, which result from their unique historical, political and socio-cultural circumstances. Contrary to the view that the Pacific is a generic entity with common security issues, this book argues for more localised and nuanced approaches to security framing and analysis.

Contested Terrain

Tara Ross

Yvonne Crichton-Hill

Arindam Basu

Patrick Vakaoti

Rosemarie Martin-Neuninger

This book provides a comparative analysis of how communities have developed people-based resilience in response to the global impact of COVID-19. The crisis of the capitalist economy due to border closure, downturn in business, loss of jobs and large-scale destruction of people’s well-being has worsened poverty, and inequality worsened the situation of the already marginalized. At the same time, it has provided the opportunity for indigenous and marginalized communities to innovatively strengthen their social and solidarity economies to respond the unprecedented calamity in a self-empowering and sustainable way. The book explores some of the ways in which local communities have mobilized their cultural resources to strengthen their social solidarity and mitigating mechanisms against the continuing global calamity. It looks at how different communities approach social protection as a way of sustaining their well-being outside the parameters of the ailing market economy and how some of these can provide valuable lessons for strengthening resilience for the future.

A Study in Human Resilience and Social Solidarity

COVID-19 and Social Protection

Radomir Compel

Sergio Aguilar

This edited volume provides a critical and comparative discussion of the changing synergy between the military and society in the dramatically transforming global security climate, drawing on examples from the Asian, Pacific, African, Middle Eastern, European and South American regions. The book is interdisciplinary and covers wide-ranging issues relating to civil military relations, democratization, regional security, ethnicity, peace-building and peace keeping, civilian oversight, internal repression, gender, regime change and civil society.

Guns & Roses: Comparative Civil-Military Relations in the Changing Security Environment

Stephanie Lawson

The September 2014 elections in Fiji was one of the most anticipated in the history of the country, coming after eight years of military rule and under a radically new constitution that introduced a system of proportional representative (PR) and without any reserved communal seats. The election was won overwhelmingly by FijiFirst, a party formed by 2006 coup leader Frank Bainimarama. He subsequently embarked on a process of shifting the political configuration of Fijian politics from inter-ethnic to trans-ethnic mobilisation. The shift has not been easy in terms of changing people’s perceptions and may face some challenges in the longer term, despite Bainimarama’s clear victory in the polls. Ethnic consciousness has the capacity to become re?articulated in different forms and to seek new opportunities for expression. This book explores these and other issues surrounding the 2014 Fiji elections in a collection of articles written from varied political, intellectual and ideological positions.

The 2014 Elections in Fiji

The People Have Spoken

Reconceptualising Security in the Pacific

Steven Ratuva

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