This is a unique look at the country of Bougainville, its people, their history, and their move toward peace told from the perspectives of the people involved both within and outside of the process. The book traces the peace movement from November 20, 1997, when unarmed monitors from New Zealand, Australia, Vanuatu, and Fiji arrived in Bougainville with the agreement of the Papua New Guinea government and most of the political factions on Bougainville. Their task was to establish a secure atmosphere in which Bougainvilleans could forge their own peaceful solution to the conflict. The individual viewpoints show how the fragile road toward a peaceful outcome was constructed.

Regan examines the ideal conditions for light international intervention and analyzes the remarkably successful Bougainville peace process, which ended in apparently intractable, violent, and deeply divisive separatist conflict that for much of the period from 1988 to 1997 destabilized both Papua New Guinea and the wider Pacific islands region.

One of the most beautiful island groups of the Pacific, Bougainville has a remarkable history. Tragically, it is as the site of devastating civil conflict that Bougainville is perhaps best known. In exploring the rich environmental, cultural and social heritage of Bougainville before the conflict, this collection provides an insight into the long-term causes of the crisis. In doing so, it surveys such topics as Bougainville’s prehistory and traditional cultures, the impact of German and Australian colonialism, the attempts by disparate local cultures to find a common identity, the assertion of political autonomy in the face of coercion to integrate with Papua New Guinea, and contemporary efforts to resolve conflict and plan a viable future. A landmark collaboration between expert commentators on Bougainville and Bougainvilleans themselves, this volume provides a comprehensive picture for those seeking to understand Bougainville’s history and future directions. Bougainville before the conflict was published in association with the State, Society and Governance in Melanesia Project, which is supported by The Australian National University and the Commonwealth of Australia.

This volume examines the dynamics of socio-political order in post-colonial states across the Pacific Islands region and West Africa in order to elaborate on the processes and practices of peace formation. Drawing on field research and engaging with post-liberal conceptualisations of peacebuilding, this book investigates the interaction of a variety of actors and institutions involved in the provision of peace, security and justice in post-colonial states. The chapters analyse how different types of actors and institutions involved in peace formation engage in and are interpenetrated by a host of relations in the local arena, making 'the local' contested ground on which different discourses and praxes of peace, security and justice coexist and overlap. In the course of interactions, new and different forms of socio-political order emerge which are far from being captured through the familiar notions of a liberal peace and a Weberian ideal-type state. Rather, this volume investigates how (dis)order emerges as a result of interdependence among agents, thus laying open the fundamentally relational character of peace formation. This innovative relational, liminal and integrative understanding of peace formation has far-reaching consequences for internationally supported peacebuilding. This book will be of much interest to students of statebuilding, peace studies, security studies, governance, development and IR.

Hybridity on the Ground in Peacebuilding and Development engages with the possibilities and pitfalls of the increasingly popular notion of hybridity. The hybridity concept has been embraced by scholars and practitioners in response to the social and institutional complexities of peacebuilding and development practice. In particular, the concept appears well-suited to making sense of the mutually constitutive outcomes of processes of interaction between diverse norms, institutions, actors and discourses in the context of contemporary peacebuilding and development engagements. At the same time, it has been criticised from a variety of perspectives for overlooking critical questions of history, power and scale. The authors in this interdisciplinary collection draw on their in‑depth knowledge of peacebuilding and development contexts in different parts of Asia, the Pacific and Africa to examine the messy and dynamic realities of hybridity ‘on the ground’. By critically exploring the power dynamics, and the diverse actors, ideas, practices and sites that shape hybrid peacebuilding and development across time and space, this book offers fresh insights to hybridity debates that will be of interest to both scholars and practitioners. ‘Hybridity has become an influential idea in peacebuilding and this volume will undoubtedly become the most influential collection on the idea. Nuance and sophistication characterises this engagement with hybridity.’ — Professor John Braithwaite

If ordering outside Australasia (ie from UK, Europe, Nth and Sth America and Africa) please contact Zed Books (UK) directly: www.zedbooks.co.uk.Pat Howley tells the extraordinary story of how, in the 1990s, in the crisis of civil war, the people of the island of Bougainville returned to their traditional peace making and conflict resolution processes as the western court system collapsed. Prominent are the ordinary people who experienced the crisis - the victims, the freedom fighters, and the women who took a leading part in the peace process. Howley writes mostly through their eyes, in their words.Howley, Executive Director of the PEACE Foundation Melanesia, was with them through most of the war. He oversaw a marriage of Western learning on restorative justice and win-win mediation with custom law. The success was so extraordinary that the processes set up are now being used in most village communities as the norm for conflict resolution, even for serious matters such as murder. Howley analyses the effectiveness of this marriage and how it can be used in the future when Bougainville achieves autonomy. He also discusses the devastation to Bougainville's culture and identity caused by the giant copper mine which dominated the PNG economy, and how the islanders are coping with the residue of trauma from the civil war."A landmark study of reconciliation and restorative justice in action, profound and inspiring in its holistic view of justice ... Bougainville shows the world how indigenous people can reclaim their justice system ... This book shows how a people's peace can prevail over a war that was a product of colonisation."Professor John Braithwaite, Australian National University