Traditional architecture in the Pacific

Architecture of the Pacific covers a region of more than third of the earth’s surface. The sparse Pacific population spreads over some 30 000 islands, which graduate in size from small atolls to the largest island, Australia, a continent. Pacific architecture can be studied as four cultural units: Micronesia, Polynesia, Melanesia, and Australasia (Australia and New Zealand). While many of the islands of Micronesia lie above the Equator, the remaining Pacific islands are in the southern hemisphere. With the exception of Australia, most of the islands have a warm and humid tropical climate with high rainfalls and lush vegetation. Some islands lie in the cyclonic and earthquake belts. Two distinct racial groups settled the region. The indigenous people, the Micronesians, Melanesians, Polynesians, Australian Aborigines and New Zealand Maoris, migrated from Asia thousands of years ago. The second group, the recent immigrants, were Europeans, who occupied the region during the last two centuries, and pockets of Asians brought in by colonial administrations as labourers during the early twentieth century.

Biopolitics meets Terrapolitics: Political Ontologies and Governance in Settler-Colonial Australia

Crises persist in Australian Indigenous affairs because current policy approaches do not address the intersection of Indigenous and European political worlds. This paper responds to this challenge by providing a heuristic device for delineating Settler and Indigenous Australian political ontologies and considering their interaction. It first evokes Settler and Aboriginal ontologies as respectively biopolitical (focused through life) and terrapolitical (focused through land). These ideal types help to identify important differences that inform current governance challenges. The paper discusses the entwinement of these traditions as a story of biopolitical dominance wherein Aboriginal people are governed as an “included-exclusion” within the Australian political community. Despite the overall pattern of dominance, this same entwinement offers possibilities for exchange between biopolitics and terrapolitics, and hence for breaking the recurrent crises of Indigenous affairs.

(FAB01_091) Book reviews

Leon Battista Alberti, 'On the Art of Building in Ten Books' Translated by Joseph Rykwert, Neil Leach and Robert Tavemor L. A. Zhadova (ed.), 'Tatlin' (Budapest 1984). English translation Helen Ross, 'Just For Living, Aboriginal Perceptions of Housing in North West Australia' Tony Fry, 'Design History Australia: A Source Text in Methods and Resources' Phillip Cox and David Moore, 'The Australian Functional Tradition' Lenore Coltheart and Don Fraser (eds.), 'Lamdmarks in Public Works, Engineers and Their Works in New South Wales 1884-1914' Peter Bridges and Don MacDonald, 'James Barnet, Colonial Architect' Don Watson and Judith McKay, 'A Directory of Queensland Architects to 1940' Russell Walden, 'Voices of Silence: New Zealand's Chapel of Futuna' Jeremy Salmond, 'Old New Zealand Houses 1800-1940' Victoria Middleton, 'The Legend of Green Valley' Dyranda Prevost and Ann Rado, 'Living Places' Mark Jackson and Mark Stiles (directors), 'Universal Provider' Lars Lerup, 'Planned Assaults'