Description
Book Synopsis On March 11, 2011, a tsunami warning was issued for Tonga in Polynesia. On the low and small island of Kotu, people were unperturbed in the face of impending catastrophe. The book starts out from the puzzle of peoples’ responses and reactions to this warning as well as their attitudes to a gradual rise of sea level and questions why people seemed so unconcerned about this and the accompanying loss of land. The book is an ethnography of the relationship between people and their environment based on fieldwork over three decades.
Trade Review “The book is well-argued, clearly written, and a timely contribution to an important theme (socio-cultural aspects of environmental change, including climate change, in the Pacific). I have yet to see a monograph approach the theme with the same ethnographic depth as this book.” • Tom Bratrud, University of South-Eastern Norway
Table of Contents List of Figures
Acknowledgements
Introduction: An Environmental Puzzle
Chapter 1. Moving to the Beat of a Marine Environment
Chapter 2. Daily Motions of Merging and Separation
Chapter 3. Lunar Motions of Growth and Regeneration
Chapter 4. Creating Tableaux of Moving Beauty
Chapter 5. Nurturing Flows Between Hands That Let Go
Conclusion: Calamity, Sacrifice and Blessing in a Changing World
Appendix: Words of a World in Motion
Glossary
References
Index
