442 THE CONTEMPORARY PACIFIC. FALL 1992

primary purpose of this book is toproduce an explanation of the rebel­lion, even if historians and social scien­tists are bound to read it in search ofone. Quodling's main intent is to "setthe record straight" about the role ofhis company in the history of Bougain­ville and Papua New Guinea-for thebenefit of an Australian audience thatmight otherwise be misled by whatQuodling would certainly regard asmischievous left-wing propaganda.Much of the book is taken up with arecitation of well-known facts andfigures, and the appendixes are largelydevoted to the reproduction of variousreports and articles that have at leastexcused, if not exonerated, Bougain­ville Copper Limited from the chargesof exploitation and oppression. In thisrespect Quodling is taking part in adebate where attitudes toward theBougainville rebellion appear to bepolarized between those "leftists" whothink that multinational corporationsare wicked uncles and all their oppo­nents (including Francis Ona) aretherefore heroes, and those "rationa­lists" who think that multinationalcorporations are good citizens and alltheir opponents (including FatherMomis) are therefore villains. Thispolarization does not make a great dealof sense in Papua New Guinea, whereattitudes toward the Bougainvillerebellion have now largely been sepa­rated from attitudes toward themultinational corporation, and wherethe struggle between organization anddisorganization is far more significantthan the battle between capitalists andsocialists. Perhaps Paul Quodling'scorporate and political loyalties inAustralia have largely prevented him

from telling a much more interestingstory about his personal experience ofBougainville and the Melanesian Way.

COLIN FILER

University ofPapua New Guinea

::.

Your Flag's Blocking Our Sun, byHelen Fraser. Crows Nest, NSW: ABC

Enterprises, 1990. ISBN 0-7333-°°35­

9,215 pp, photographs. A$24.99.

Jean-Marie Tjibaou's deserved reputa­tion as a statesman, climaxed by theirony and tragedy of his death at thehands of a disaffected member of hisown Kanak independence movement,ensured his post-mortem cult status. Italso guaranteed a rash of instant publi­cations of the "I knew Jean-Marie"variety. Happily, Helen Fraser's book isnot one such, though Tjibaou's deter­mined, funny, reasonable presencelooms ever larger in her account ofliving and working as an Australianjournalist in New Caledonia from 1982

to 1985. By adopting an explicitly auto­biographical mode, she largely avoidsthe snare of name-dropping, thoughthere are hints enough of privilegedaccess to the highest councils of theFLNKS (Kanak Socialist National Liber­ation Front) and personal friendshipwith its leaders.

Helen Fraser arrived in Noumeaearly in 1982 as correspondent forRadio Australia, the Melbourne Ageand Pacific Islands Monthly. She had aknowledge of French and sympathy forradical causes, but was young, inexper­ienced, and largely unfamiliar with theterritory. I saw her often at the end ofthat year and thought her lonely, naive,

, a. flY ,nfAll' .. . ' "

BOOK REVIEWS

and badly shaken by the unrelentingpersonal hostility that her commenta­ries inspired in some European anti­independence extremists. Two yearslater, though under severe strain duringan often-violent political crisis, she hadtaken the measure of the job, becomefar more assured, and enjoyed residentexpert status among the foreign jour­nalists who flocked to the territory atthis time.

Your Flag's Blocking Our Sun setsFraser's experiences against a backdropof stirring events: the invasion of theTerritorial Assembly by anti-indepen­dence activists in 1982; the killing oftwo gendarmes and a young Kanak in1983; the formation of the FLNKS fol­lowed by the escalating confrontationsof 1984-1985. Election boycott, road­blocks, the siege of the east-coasttownship of Thio, and deaths on bothsides culminated in the horrific murderof ten Kanak at Hienghene. Early in1985 the death of a young Europeanprovoked a weekend orgy of riot anddestruction by anti-independentists inNoumea, which Fraser and her youngson Christopher endured in hourlyterror of attack. While Noumeaburned, the Kanak leader EloiMachoro and his lieutenant were killedby elite gendarme sharpshooters in thebush near La Foa. Not long afterwardthe Frasers quit the political pressure­cooker of Noumea for Australia,where Fraser became the founder andeditor of the respected newsletterPacific Report. In an epilogue shedescribes the assassination and officialfuneral of Tjibaou and YeiweneYeiwene in 1989.

The book is informed by no greatpolitical or social insight, but the tale it

443

tells is gripping and sometimes touch­ing. The author strikes a nice balancebetween affairs of moment and mun­danity. She captures beautifully thesupercharged emotions, the broodingviolence, the uncertainty, the missedopportunities, the frustrated goodwill,the developing culture of crisis, fueledby rumor, punctuated by riot, andorchestrated by briefings and rivaldemonstrations, that became familiarto all who knew New Caledonia duringthe 1980s. Use of an autobiographicalstyle permits her deftly to interweavepublic affairs with a more personaldimension: Christopher's growing-up;a canoe trip from the Isle of Pines toNoumea; hilarity and sorrow sharedwith Kanak women friends; the solem­nity and farce of cricket played byanother culture's rules; journalisticcamaraderie, despite editorial politicaldifferences.

This entertaining book aptly con­veys the physical and political flavor ofcontemporary Noumea. However,there is little mention of the Polyne­sians, predominantly Wallisians, whoconstitute nearly 20 percent of theterritory's population and are a formi­dable element in the anti-indep"ndencearmory. The author's constant recourseto sweeping labels limits the subtlety ofher political analysis, particularly ofanti-independence groups-"theCaldoches," "the right," "the extremeright," even "the Kanaks" (whichshould be "Kanak," since the word isinvariable in number and gender)­despite the fact that she herself waskeenly, and often thankfully, awarethat individuals do not always actaccording to the stereotypes we lumpthem under.

444 THE CONTEMPORARY PACIFIC. FALL 1992

I found few errors, typographical orotherwise, but the following should benoted: Belep comprises not one, buttwo islands (24, 78); "Melanesia 2000,"(not "Melanesian") (64); Paid andCemuhf are separate languages, ratherthan a single language (154); the massa­cre of 5 December 1985 occurred in theHienghene valley, not the Tiendanitevalley (176); "colonnade" pines shouldbe "columnar" (179); Jacques Chiracwas not "President of France" (212).

The Kanak struggle for indepen­dence during the 1980s has spawnednumerous books, many by journalists.Helen Fraser's personal account makesfewer pretensions than most to defini­tiveness and political objectivity, and isall the more convincing for it.

BRONWEN DOUGLASLa Trobe University

Disentangling: Conflict Discourse inPacific Societies, edited by Karen AnnWatson-Gegeo and Geoffrey M.White. Stanford, CA: Stanford Univer­sity Press, 1990. ISBN 0-8°47-1692-7,xiii + 505 pp, figures, appendixes,notes, bibliography, index. Cloth,US$47·50.

This recent publication from StanfordUniversity Press is remarkable for thetight focus and integration of the con­tributions. Each of the ten ethno­graphic papers analyzes a "disentan­gling" activity that occurs within aPacific community, and despite theconsiderable variation between theseactivities the authors' focus on dis­course and context allows considerablescope for comparison. This is further

facilitated by the common theoreticalperspective of the contributions, whichseek to integrate contemporary linguis­tic and psychological anthropology.Indeed, the introductory chapter is forthe most part a detailed comparison ofthe various disentangling events, firstin terms of the shared ethnopsychologi­cal understandings of persons andemotion that frame them, and secondin terms of the social structural forcesthat produce and are reproduced bydisentangling activities, particularly inrelation to power and social hierarchy.The authors of the ethnographic casestudies are also careful to refer to oneanother's papers, and other relevantpublications, to maintain this focus onregional comparison.

The editors explain that they preferthe metaphoric term "disentangling" to"conflict resolution" or "dispute man­agement" because it "points to elementsof local meaning that organize andguide the activities we examine" (35m)."Disentangling", like "straightening"­another metaphor that recurs in thesestudies-is concerned with the processrather than the outcome of these activi­ties. Outcomes are of course consid­ered in these studies, but the mainfocus is on the activities themselves andin particular on the "situated conflicttalk" that occurs at disentanglingevents (4). All but one paper are basedon transcripts of recorded discourse,and eight of the ten ethnographicpapers provide partial transcripts asappendixes. Half provide vernaculartranscriptions with the English transla­tions, while the others give only theEnglish version.

After the introductory chapter thatconstitutes Part 1, Part 2 contains four