Ron Crocombe

Higher education in the pacific islands: Spheres of influence, trends and developments

Abstract The proportion of highly educated manpower remains low throughout the Pacific Islands although it is higher in Polynesia and Micronesia than it is in Melanesia. This article provides an overview of the development of higher education across the Pacific, it identifies major periods of growth, international spheres of influence, emerging trends and recent patterns of development. In conclusion, the growing importance of national as opposed to regional initiatives is emphasised.

Pacific science in the 21st century

Abstract ‘Science’ is often implied to be something emanating from Western Europe or its derivatives. But the people of the 24 nations and territories of the Pacific Islands also want their unique scientific knowledge recognized and perpetuated. Politically the islands are divided into 24 nations and territories, and culturally their people speak about 1200 different languages—each with some differences of culture. This is much the greatest cultural fragmentation on earth. Each culture has, over thousands of years, experimented and discovered some unique principles and evolved some unique techniques. For example, some principles of Pacific navigation (for many centuries the worlds most advanced) and techniques of vessel construction, are unknown elsewhere—even today. Some pharmaceutical remedies are unique, some items of marine and plant science are not known to ‘Western science’ and so on. It is to these that the term ‘Pacific science’ refers. This essay explores the potentials for Pacific science in the future, and for Pacific contributions to global knowledge.

Nepotism in the Cook Islands

Sir Albert Henry, Premier of the Cook Islands, is frequently accused of nepotism and it was a significant issue in the 1978 elections. Sir Albert claims that the criticisms are unfounded and that such of his relatives who are in advantageous positions gained them solely on merit. It is always difficult to prove that a particular person’s chances of getting a job or loan or other advantage were improved by being related to the Premier, so it seemed necessary to document the facts as fully,

Symposium on the South Pacific

a widespread residue of judicial and political forms left over from the European colonial period and a more recent but very substantial flow of American media, values and consumer goods. Articles in this symposium illustrate the sometimes painful adjustments caused by conflict between competing aspects of these systems. The first article deals with resistance to the ruthless dominance of an Asian

Book Reviews : Ancient Polynesian Society, Irving Goldman, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1970. pp. 625:

principal orientation’. Expectations are maintained with the turning of the pages, when one reads that ’the search for knowledge of human behaviour is motivated by the human urge for prediction and control of the events that occur in the human environment’. There is obviously room here for the provocative expression of’ statements about human behaviour. challenging theories and even. perhaps, novel prescriptions for social control. Perhaps it is just as well that disappointment comes early in the book; it allows for