Table Of ContentFamily Violence and Social Change
in the Pacific Islands
The Pacific Islands have some of the highest rates of family violence in the world. Addressing
the contemporary mutations of Pacific Island families and the shifting understandings of
violence in the context of rapid social change, this book investigates the conflict dynamics
generated by these transformations.
The contributors draw from detailed case studies in a range of Pacific territories to
examine family violence in relation to the social, economic, and political situation of native
populations as well as individual, collective, and institutional responses to the development
of violence within and upon the family. They focus on vernacular understandings,
conflicting social norms, the emergence of different types of violent patterns, the impact
of violence on individuals and communities, and local attempts at mitigating or combating
it. Combining ethnographic expertise with engaged scholarship, this volume offers a vivid
account of ongoing social change in Pacific Island societies and a crucial contribution to the
understanding of family violence as a social process, cultural construct, and political issue.
This book will appeal to scholars with interests in the sociology of violence and the family,
Pacific studies, development studies, and the social and cultural anthropology of Oceania.
Loïs Bastide is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of French Polynesia,
where he is a member of the Équipe d’accueil Sociétés Traditionnelles Contemporaines
en Océanie (EASTCO) research team. He is also Associate Researcher at the Maison des
Sciences de l’Homme du Pacifique (MSH-P) and at the Institute of Sociological Research at
the University of Geneva, Switzerland. His research interests include transnational migrations
in Southeast Asia, the management of pandemics, public health crises, natural disasters, and
violence in the family. He is currently coordinating a wide-ranging research programme on
social change in French Polynesia at the MSH-P. He is the author of Habiter le transnational:
Espace, travail et migration entre Java, Kuala Lumpur et Singapour (ENS, 2015).
Denis Regnier is Head of Humanities and Social Sciences and Assistant Professor at
the University of Global Health Equity, Rwanda. He holds a PhD in social anthropology
from the London School of Economics and has previously taught at the University of
French Polynesia, where he is a member of the Équipe d’accueil Sociétés Traditionnelles
Contemporaines en Océanie (EASTCO) and Associate Researcher at the Maison des
Sciences de l’Homme du Pacifique (MSH-P). His research interests include the legacies
of slavery in the Indian Ocean, the development of social essentialism in Madagascar, and
social and public health issues in Africa and the South Pacific. He is the author of Slavery and
Essentialism in Highland Madagascar: Ethnography, History, Cognition (Routledge, 2020).
Routledge Studies in Family Sociology
This series presents the latest research on the sociology of the family, with particu-
lar attention to family dynamics, changing family forms and the impact of events
in the life-course and societal transformation on family practices.
Titles in the series
Father Involvement and Gender Equality in the United States
Contemporary Norms and Barriers
Richard J. Petts
Family Violence and Social Change in the Pacific Islands
Edited by Loïs Bastide & Denis Regnier
Family Violence and Social
Change in the Pacific Islands
Edited by
Loïs Bastide & Denis Regnier
First published 2023
by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa business
© 2023 selection and editorial matter, Loïs Bastide & Denis Regnier;
individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Loïs Bastide & Denis Regnier to be identified as authors of the
editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been
asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
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Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN: 978-0-367-70506-0 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-70507-7 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-14666-7 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003146667
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Contents
List of contributors ix
Acknowledgements xiii
Introduction: family, violence, and social change in
the Pacific Islands 1
LOÏS BASTIDE AND DENIS REGNIER
1 Settler violence, family, and whānau violence in
Aotearoa New Zealand 20
TRACEY MCINTOSH
2 Placing the children: fostering native Hawaiian children
in an American state 37
JUDITH SCHACHTER
3 Transferred children and the production of family violence
in French Polynesia: social change and the adaptations
of fa’a’amura’a 52
LOÏS BASTIDE
4 Familialism and gender violence in New Caledonia families 67
CHRISTINE SALOMON
5 Naming violence: forms of economic violence in highland
Papua New Guinea 82
RICHARD EVES
6 Culture-based counselling at the domestic violence shelter
of the Sisters of the Anglican Church of Melanesia
in the Solomon Islands 95
XANDRA MIGUEL-LORENZO
viii Contents
7 Women-only households in Port Vila, Vanuatu: sites of
social resistance 110
DANIELA KRAEMER
8 From structural violence to family violence: insights into
perpetrators’ experiences in French Polynesia today 124
MARIE SALAÜN, MIROSE PAIA, AND JACQUES VERNAUDON
9 ‘This is not Vaelens!’: naming and reacting to physical abuse
in a Vanuatu school 138
ALICE SERVY
10 Quarrels, corporal punishment, and magical attacks:
what is ‘family violence’ in Kiriwina? 151
LOUISE PROTAR
11 Contexts and levels of community violence in
highlands Papua New Guinea 165
PAMELA J. STEWART AND ANDREW J. STRATHERN
Postface – analysing violence: lessons from a collective
reflection 178
MICHEL WIEVIORKA
Index 183
Contributors
Loïs Bastide is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of French Poly-
nesia, where he is a member of the Équipe d’accueil Sociétés Traditionnelles
Contemporaines en Océanie (EASTCO) research team. He is also Associate
Researcher at the Maison des Sciences de l’Homme du Pacifique (MSH-P) and
at the Institute of Sociological Research at the University of Geneva, Switzer-
land. His research interests include transnational migrations in Southeast Asia,
the management of pandemics, public health crises, natural disasters, and vio-
lence in the family. He is currently coordinating a wide-ranging research pro-
gramme on social change in French Polynesia at the MSH-P. He is the author
of Habiter le transnational: Espace, travail et migration entre Java, Kuala
Lumpur et Singapour (ENS, 2015).
Richard Eves is Emeritus Professor with the Department of Pacific Affairs,
Australian National University, Australia. His work deals with contempo-
rary issues in Melanesia, with a particular focus on gender, violence, and the
AIDS epidemic. He recently completed research on the Do No Harm project,
which examined the relationship between women’s economic empowerment
and violence against women in the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea,
and the project was funded by the Australian government through the Depart-
ment of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s Pacific Women Shaping Pacific Devel-
opment Programme. He is currently completing an ethnography of
contemporary Christianity in Papua New Guinea with a particular focus on
the influence of Pentecostalism in New Ireland. He is a co-editor of Making
Sense of AIDS: Culture, Sexuality, and Power in Melanesia (University of
Hawai’i Press, 2008) and Talking it Through: Responses to Sorcery and
Witchcraft Beliefs and Practices in Melanesia (Australian National Univer-
sity, 2015).
Daniela Kraemer is Post-Doctoral Research Fellow in Anthropology at The Uni-
versity of New Mexico, USA, and Instructor in Anthropology at Wilfrid Lau-
rier University, Canada. Her research explores urbanity and social
transformation, particularly in Port Vila, the rapidly growing capital city of
Vanuatu. She is currently working on a monograph examining the reterritorial-
izing practices of marginalized unemployed young men in urban Vanuatu.
