Introduction: Dependence in Oceania

Abstract

It is nearly half a century from the wave of decolonisation and national independence that swept across the Pacific in the 1970s and early 1980s. Yet despite this, as across the rest of the world, issues of what can be considered appropriate dependence and independence are far from settled. From the achievement of political independence across much of Oceania onwards, debate raged as to whether or not ‘real’ independence had come with it. And alongside this ran a related controversy as to whether or not Oceanic societies had a greater tendency to valorise interpersonal interdependence than their former Western colonisers, and if this essential cultural difference really did exist, whether it was to be valorised and protected or to be denigrated and overcome. In the Introduction to this special issue, I argue, along with many of the papers in this collection, that although these two discussions are often treated separately, they are interlinked and that arguments over the appropriateness of (in)dependence in public debate and in academic discussion need to be seen in the context of global controversies on this subject.