Book and Media Reviews

Book and Media Reviews The Contemporary Pacic, Volume 28, Number 2, 491–529 © 2016 by University of Hawai‘i Press 491 514 the contemporary pacific • 28:2 (2016) mayhem in the Pacific demands the Federated States of Micronesia, investigation into the media-politics- and the Republic of Palau, one should conflict nexus in the Pacific context. come into this book understanding Don’t Spoil My Beautiful Face seeks the Marshallese context from which to fill this gap. Johnson is writing. shailendra singh The book is roughly divided into University of the South Pacific two sections: the first half is a cri- tique of development, donors, and *** corruption, while the second half is a more in-depth exploration of specific Idyllic No More: Pacific Island Cli- dilemmas and possibilities. Johnson mate, Corruption and Development certainly has plenty of examples of Dilemmas, by Giff Johnson. Create- governmental malfeasance to choose space Independent Publishing Plat- from. A favorite example, which he form, 2015. isbn 978-1-5122-3558-6; repeats numerous times, is that of 154 pages, photographs, suggestions travel by national leaders and other, for further reading. Paper, us$7.50. lower-level bureaucrats, necessitated by big-donor meetings in such metrop- Ieremia Tabai, the first president of olises as Sydney, Suva, Washington Kiribati, once quipped, “The Pacific DC, and, with the push for global is paradise for those who don’t have climate initiatives, various cities in the to live here.” In his book Idyllic No European Union. And there is enough More: Pacific Island Climate, Corrup- blame to go around, from the admin- tion and Development Dilemmas, Giff istrative functionary who takes full Johnson seems intent on proving Tabai advantage of donor-sponsored travel right. For those who are familiar with and therefore has little time to actually Johnson, who has served as the editor perform her job duties to the West- of the Marshall Islands Journal for ern donor states or to the agencies more than thirty years and has lived in themselves, some of whom Johnson the Republic of the Marshall Islands calls out for meeting so frequently (RMI) even longer, his approach to that achieving any actual benchmark the issues of development and corrup- of progress during the shorter and tion should come as no surprise; many shorter periods in which there are of the arguments he makes here have no meetings scheduled borders on been fine-tuned from his numerous Kafkaesque absurdity. signed and unsigned editorials in the A glaring issue with Johnson’s Journal. Most of Johnson’s examples book, however, is that it is, argu- also come from his direct experience ably, not a book. Rather, as Johnson in the Marshalls; other regions of explains, he has collected a series of Oceania are perhaps implied, but with blog postings that he originally wrote the exception of a brief mention of for the Pacific Institute for Public the Fiji government’s crackdown on Policy, a nonprofit think tank based free speech and a few references to the in Port Vila, Vanuatu, between 2013 politico-economic similarities between and 2015. While the blogs have been the Republic of the Marshall Islands, edited and grouped according to book and media reviews 515 theme (corresponding more or less to Johnson had also provided a conclud- each “chapter”), there is little notion ing chapter to tie up these various of chronology—that is, whether they threads facing contemporary Pacific are presented in the order they were Island states, and what their prospects originally written—and as a result are, especially in light of the ending of there is quite a bit of repetition of the economic assistance sections of the ideas, themes, and passages, notably in Compact of Free Association between the first half of the book. Additionally, the United States and the Republic of Johnson refers to events that happened the Marshall Islands and Federated “this year.” However, without any States of Micronesia in 2023. The temporal context (or date of publica- reader would also have benefited from tion of the original blog posting), we some basic structural pieces that are can only guess as to when he is refer- missing, including references and an ring. Moreover, the first three chapters index. There is a list of well-known are rather jumbled and at times often essays, books, and blogs by a handful rehash the same arguments. Johnson of authors on similar issues, almost all makes no effort to draw distinctions set in Micronesia, but these are helpful between the concepts of corruption, only to those least familiar with any development, and good governance, literature on the region. and it is left to the reader to discern One could also take issue with those differences for herself. To be the book’s title, implying as it does sure, what is missing here, and for that Pacific Island societies were once the book as a whole, is a workable somehow idyllic. But the question summary analysis of what the main then becomes a matter of when that issues and topics in relation to Pacific might have been the case, and what Island corruption and development has happened since then. There are, are and how they can most usefully be in fact, a number of uncomfortable accessed by the nonspecialist reader. implications embedded in the title, The second half of the book, made but since Johnson does not explore up of five shorter chapters, is much these assumptions, the reader is left to better organized and clearer in scope, ponder whether he means that entities covering issues (in order) of Pacific like the Marshalls were idyllic, or at fisheries; climate change; noncommu- least better governed, under pre-inde- nicable diseases; nuclear testing in the pendence administrations (such as the Marshall Islands; and out-migration Americans, Japanese, or Germans)— to the United States. I would especially or, perhaps more problematically, recommend those interested in the that the Pacific Islands are no longer sustainability of the Pacific Islands in idyllic because they are now governed terms of food security and economic by Islanders themselves, albeit (at opportunity to read the fourth chap- least in the case of the Republic of ter, on Pacific fisheries, as it serves as the Marshall Islands, the Federated the best primer on the subject for a States of Micronesia, and Palau) in popular readership that is currently a neocolonial relationship with the available. Again, however, it would United States. have been helpful to the reader if That being said, individual blogs/ 516 the contemporary pacific • 28:2 (2016) essays work on their own merits, vides a set of grounded examples of and it is refreshing to see someone what appears to be a well-established exercise the freedom of the press in dysfunction in Pacific Island govern- Oceania in a way that serves to hold ments writ large. Perhaps in future public officials and elected leaders editions he might consider connect- accountable. Johnson’s editorials are ing his opinions and observations to consistently even tempered, and at the larger conversations about corruption same time he is unafraid of violat- and governance in Oceania that are ing the unwritten rule in close-knit already ongoing and very necessary. Island societies that one should not david w kupferman criticize those in positions of power. University of Hawai‘i, Some of the more perilous ground that West O‘ahu Johnson admirably covers includes the hypocrisy of RMI government *** leaders criticizing the opening of the first mosque in the country in light of The Polynesian Iconoclasm: Reli- the nation’s explicit religious freedom gious Revolution and the Seasonality laws; the building tension between of Power, by Jeffrey Sissons. asao political leaders’ discourse on climate Studies in Pacific Anthropology 5. change as imminent and immediately New York: Berghahn Books, 2014. observable and the most recent science isbn 978-1-78238-413-7, viii + 160 that has concluded that many Pacific pages, map, notes, bibliography, Island atolls, notably those in the index. Cloth, us$85.00. Marshalls, have actually increased in size over the past half-century; and the New accounts of Polynesian relations political maneuverings of Kwajalein with colonizers in the early contact Senator Tony de Brum, who, as an period seem theoretically indebted to international representative for both Marshall Sahlins’s elegant reconstruc- climate change and the RMI lawsuit tion of the 1779 murder of Captain filed against the nine nuclear powers Cook in Hawai‘i, Islands of History in recent years, Johnson suggests has (1985). Sahlins interpreted Hawaiian been emblematic of the current RMI views of Cook’s arrival in Kealakekua administration’s use of international Bay as in conjuncture with how the grandstanding to excuse a lack of British saw their hosts in order to action on domestic issues. In this way, illustrate a broader theoretical argu- the book makes for some refreshing ment against Whig history, that is, reading. history as a narrative of progress and And while this will not be confused from the viewpoint of the victors (see with an academic book, it makes for a The Whig Interpretation of History, worthwhile companion to more theo- by Herbert Butterfield [1965]). In retical and analytical works on these Sahlins’s well-known argument, Cook same issues, of which Peter Larmour’s came ashore during Makahiki, the Interpreting Corruption: Culture and local new year’s celebration of the rise Politics in the Pacific Islands (2012) of the Pleiades that heralds the annual comes to mind. Johnson’s book pro- return of Lono, the ancestor-spirit who .

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