Labour in the South Pacific.

Abstract

INTRODUCTIONJacqueline Leckie and Doug Munro1. PREAMBLE Jacqueline LeckieLabour and work is such an essential aspect of people's lives, yet in the Pacific, it has escaped attention as a focus of academic interest. This anomaly is even more striking when we consider that so many Pacific Islanders' lives have been shaped by conditions of labour, particularly through processes of colonial and capitalist expansion into the region. The neglect has been even greater in understanding the meaning of this to Pacific Islanders and their participation and shaping of the labour process in Pacific societies.Some of these gaps in Pacific social sciences were raised by two of the editors, Clive Moore and Jacqueline Leckie, when they attended a conference in 1986 sponsored by the Centre for South-East Asian Studies at James Cook University of North Queensland. One of the issues discussed was the problem of offering programmes in the social sciences which would be relevant to students in the Pacific Islands. From this, it emerged that a common difficulty faced was establishing communications between those academic institutions within the Pacific Islands, those offering similar courses elsewhere and other institutions, such as trade unions, which might find such knowledge of relevance. Moore and Leckie, who were both teaching in the Pacific at that time, were asked to organise a project which might involve co-operation between two far-flung universities, the University of Papua New Guinea and the University of the South Pacific. The result was a decision to bring together a volume which would both survey and penetrate in some depth aspects of labour history in the South Pacific. Later Doug Munro joined the editorial team and he shared the conviction that this volume should not just meet student and academic interests but take a crucial step towards reconstructing the history of the labouring lives of Pacific Islanders. It was partly with this aim, that a section of this book explores aspects of the institutional history of labour, including trade unions, in the Pacific. Originally we had anticipated that some Pacific Islands trade unionists, such as the Henry Moses from Papua New Guinea would contribute a chapter but regrettably he passed away in late 1987. Another prominent labour leader who had given his support to the writing of labour history in the Pacific was the late Dr Timoci Bavadra of Fiji.Ironically, part of the inspiration for this volume was to try to break down the lack of communication in Pacific studies, yet the gestation of this volume provides in itself documentation of the geographically dispersed interest in the Pacific and the mobility of many of its contributors.Pacific history continues to suffer from monograph myopia, the apt phrase coined by Kerry Howe, to describe the abundance of detailed studies of particular themes, regions and time-periods but the dearth of broad-ranging overviews, and the lack of comparisons with other areas of colonisation. During the 1960s and 1970s labour history was thinly developed within Pacific historiography: it was not a 'people's history' and was seldom compared with labour history from other areas of the world.