This book is a collection of articles on narrative in Pacific cultures. The essays follow mostly a sociolinguistic and ethnographic approach and discuss a range of Pacific societies. The book consists of thirteen chapters divided into three parts: the first part focuses on the structure of selected narratives, analyzed mostly in a Labovian framework; the second part discusses the functions of stories in context; the third part explores social change and the historical dimension. The articles problematize the links between social identity and storytelling. A common theme is the relationship between the individual (as narrative agent or storyteller) and the dividual (as member of a lineage or ethnic group).
In part 1, Dorothea Hoffmann analyzes North Australian Dreamtime stories and argues that they foreground spatiality as opposed to temporality, thereby challenging Labov's narrative principles. Martin Paviour-Smith describes the features of an oral narrative from Vanuatu that describes the experience of cyclone Ivy. He identifies discourse traits that de-emphasize individual agency in favour of a collective approach.
In part 2, Emerson Lopez Odango explores the role of narrative in the construction and dissemination of knowledge by analyzing epistemic markers in ecological storytelling, showing the links created between the storytellers as ‘knowers' and their natural environment. Julie Barbour discusses the Neverver community in Vanuatu where speakers use ‘small stories' to construct identities through a particular use of person reference, which allows them to ‘locate’ individuals in a kin-based network without using personal names. Finally, Rachel Hendery, Peter Muhlhausler, & Joshua Nash look at characteristics of the Pitkern-Norf'k dialect in Polynesia in relation to storytelling practices involving ‘truth’ and ‘lying’.
In part 3, Kaliko Baker discusses narratives of Kanaka Maoli in Hawaii. Baker explains how historical-social identity is constructed in traditional narrative through the telling of a protagonist's quest, and how this technique is adapted in stories printed in newspapers. Murray Garde explores the dun narratives of Vanuatu, which blend mythology and didacticism. Garde explains how tellers of dun strategically modify the narrative in relation to ideological factors, especially with regard to matters of land and ownership.
Clive Moore shows how stories of Australian South Sea Islanders stress the violent nature of early labour migration. The stories' approach to this nineteenth-century historical event contrasts with ‘mainstream’ historical accounts, which present the migration as more voluntary and is, therefore, an example of oppositional narrative. Brij Lal takes a historical perspective on the Fijian Girmit—the Indian indenture. He describes a number of phases in the narratives produced about girmit, by those whose ancestors had experienced it as well as by ‘authorities'. He suggests that recent manifestations take a more optimistic view of the phenomenon, focusing on individual experiences rather than on impersonal characteristics of a mass event.
The adaptability of narrative to changing sociocultural contexts is also acknowledged by Emma Kruse Va'ai in her article on Samoan narratives. Hanne Birk combines literary narratology with ethnographic elements to analyze how postcolonial identity is constructed in two indigenous novels in Australia and New Zealand, Patricia Grace's Potiki and Bruce Pascoe's Earth. She demonstrates how traditional concepts of storytelling are integrated in the structure of the novels. Kevin Miller considers musicology in his account of the Ramayana epic, which both unites and distinguishes Indo-Fijians in different parts of the world. Atienza de Frutos & Coello de la Rosa consider the articulations of masculinity in Guam Chamorro narratives, noting that representations of the male body act as a unifying and constant factor of cultural identity in the face of social change.
