Nitidulidae (Coleoptera: Cucujoidea) of Vanuatu

A checklist to the Nitidulidae of Vanuatu is provided based on a combination of historical museum specimens and recent field expeditions. A dichotomous key to the described species recorded from the country is provided. Specific data per island is given where available; in addition, broader distributions are outlined for each described taxon. Several undescribed taxa are listed but not described until further work can be done in the region. A discussion of the movement of invasive Nitidulidae throughout Vanuatu is also included with an emphasis on the relationship between increases in human movement and commerce and the number of invasive species present. This discussion is extended to other islands in Vanuatu that have not yet been sampled in an attempt to predict the presence of invasive species.     

The Politics of Tradition: Toward a Generic Culture in Vanuatu

The paper examines the role of the elite in generating constructions of tradition in present-day Vanuatu. While stopping short of postulating a ‘conspiracy theory’ interpretation, the paper does argue that the proto-bureaucratic 'class' is attempting to gain control over a symbolic code derived from traditional practices (kastom) so as to promote social cohesion and establish a civil polity. The negative case of kava, a symbol of traditional culture which was significantly not included in this corpus is discussed at length.     

Biosymbols: Symbols in Life and Mind

The strong continuity thesis postulates that the properties of mind are an enriched version of the properties of life, and thus that life and mind differ in degree and not kind. A philosophical problem for this view is the ostensive discontinuity between humans and other animals in virtue of our use of symbols—particularly the presumption that the symbolic nature of human cognition bears no relation to the basic properties of life. In this paper, we make the case that a genuine account of strong continuity requires the identification of some sort of correlate of symbol-use in basic life properties. Our strategy is three-fold: 1) we argue that examples of proto-symbolism in simple living systems would be consistent with an evolutionary trajectory that ultimately produced symbolic cognition in humans; 2) we introduce Gordon Tomkins’ biological notion of ‘symbol’ as something that represents to the organism a feature of its environment that is significant to its survival; and 3) we employ this biological understanding of symbol-use to suggest that the symbolic nature of human cognition can be understood as an enriched version of the basic symbolic properties of life, thus preserving life-mind continuity in this context.     

Provincialising Lakatoro: Orienting sociality through a state institution in Vanuatu

Focusing on Lakatoro, a provincial centre in Vanuatu, this article explores the ways in which a state institution may allow kastom‐based sociality to proceed for the local population. Rather than considering kastom and the state as necessarily separate, it is demonstrated that the institutions of the state can provide the objective forms needed for kastom to exist in urban space. The article discusses three ways in which this happened—through a staff handbook, daily prayer meetings, and a court case—arguing that ‘the province’s’ polyvalence provided a means by which Lakatoro could be experienced as a place. And that this, in turn, provided a way in which the local population could understand the town to be imbued with appropriate sociality, as measured by kastom.     

National Identity and the Problem of Kastom in Vanuatu

Vanuatu's transformation into a predominantly Christian country entailed the loss of much traditional culture and the devaluation of the pre-contact era. In the 1970s the growing independence movement used kastom as a rallying cry to evoke a distinctive non-European national identity. In promoting unity and solidarity, the movement's leaders promulgated kastom on a safe ideological plane, avoiding any definition or differentiation of the concept, whereas the populace attempted to interpret kastom pragmatically. This led to confusion and difficulties because kastom is so ambiguous; its capacity to unite at one level is offset a t others by its political utility in defining difference and in marking boundaries. For Christians, a major problem has been to reconcile the new positive view of kastom with long- entrenched negative attitudes. For the nation-builders, the challenge has been to uphold the virtues of kustorn-within-Christianity while avoiding as much as possible its inclusion in legal codes or in structures and strategies associated with Vanuatu's functioning as a Pacific republic.     

Moving Houses: Residential Mobility and the Mobility of Residences in Longana, Vanuatu

A key to understanding the mobility of residence patterns in Oceania can be found in the movement of houses themselves. In this article I explore the processual dynamic of residence over a 12-year period in Longana and document the high frequency with which people moved houses and households while maintaining a strong preference for virilocality. For example, more than 80% of the buildings changed households, underwent major physical changes, or both between 1978 and 1982. The reasons why houses change hands and move about relate to the domestic cycle and highlight competition between the requirements of renovation and plans to construct new buildings. Further, the impermanence of local building materials gives rise to a contradiction between rootedness and transience that defines the meaning of place. Finally, houses serve as symbols of kinship that articulate land and people and that express a link between matrilineal and patrifilial groups.     

Leftamap Kastom: The Political History of Tradition on Tanna,Vanuatu

The history of evaluation and definition of kastom on Tanna exemplifies its utility in attempts to reformulate social groups by reworking group charter myths, and its manipulation in political events by rival organizations seeking a customary legitimacy. On Tanna, where political prestige and authority depend heavily on the control and communication of knowledge, kastom knowledge as political capital enjoys enhanced status following the rehabilitation of kastom at the national level. Pro-kastom groups on Tanna, such as the John Frum cultists, have benefited from this positive evaluation of kastom, but some anomalies and sources of conflict remain in the fusion of kastom with Christianity and modernism. People argue over their respective domains and the fields of their application. Alternate definitions and uses of kastom invoke disunity and political competition at the local level, in contrast to national emphases on kastom as symbol of political unity and shared identity.     

Symbols and Terminology in Biometry

The many biologists whose work requires statistical science must be concerned for sound management and interpretation of quantitative data. Biometricians also need increased care for literacy and clarity in speech and writing, with precise phrasing for every numerical statement. This paper illustrates common confusions that arise from inexact terminology, or from words and symbols used without adequate definition. Careless statements on quantitative relations, or on probabilities, may be ambiguous; bad practices seriously pollute scientific journals and obstruct transmission of information. Such faults can affect daily life for a modern citizen. Pedantry is unwanted, and to be dogmatic about corrective measures would be stupid. This paper suggests that biologists and biometricians should examine the practicability of a system yet to be devised for standardizing use of symbols and the generally accepted terminology for the methods, techniques, and processes of statistical analysis. The outcome should influence all that we biometricians say and do — as authors, as consultants, and as referees for journals.     

Unity in diversity: Lessons from macaque societies

The macaque radiation is as old as the hominin radiation, approximately 7 million years. After Homo, Macaca has the widest geographical range among primates, and both of these genera are present in tropical and temperate regions as well. Whereas the single extant representative of the genus Homo diverged through processes of cultural diversification, extant species of macaques emerged through processes of evolutionary diversification. Macaque societies are characterized by profound unity and great diversity, and can best be described as variations on the same theme. To understand macaque variation and adaptation, we must take into account the processes that insure the persistence of their societies across generations and environments.     

Moving Histories: An Analysis of the Dynamics of Place in North Ambrym,Vanuatu

Recent writing on the ethnogeography of Vanuatu has identified mobility and primordial connection as two counterpoised aspects of connection to place that have a long history in the archipelago. These themes are taken up in this paper in the specific case of north Ambrym, an island community in north‐central Vanuatu in which the accidental geography of active volcanoes has fostered an equally active interest in making connections outside the island. In the post‐contact period, Ambrymese were more mobile than many of their neighbours, as they recruited vigorously in a labour trade taking them to distant destinations and facilitating a fragmentation of the local population, already decimated by introduced disease. In addition, conversion of a large proportion of the population to Christianity brought local movement. The named domains, with their primordial connections to ancient sites replete with cosmo‐mythic significance, were reconstituted as villages of one denomination or another, containing members of many different origin sites. Cash‐cropping became characteristic of coastal, Christian settlements whose residents saw themselves as opposed to their ‘heathen’ neighbours. For the bush‐folk, kastom was both symbolic of their identification with the past and their justification for exclusive access to its popular manifestations in the artefact trade, in the present. In the pre‐Independence 1970s, local politics and pressure on productive resources including kastom, forced a radical re‐emphasis on primordial connection at the expense of the more ‘rhizomatic’ attachments inside and outside domains, the boundaries of districts and even the island itself that had been, until then, more characteristic of Ambrymese place‐making.