Unsung land, aspiring nation : journeys in Bougainville / Gordon Peake.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Peake, Gordon P. (Gordon Patrick), 1973- author.

Series:

Pacific Series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Political participation--Papua New Guinea--Bougainville Province.

Political participation.

Bougainville Province (Papua New Guinea)--Politics and government.

Bougainville Province (Papua New Guinea).

Peake, Gordon P. (Gordon Patrick), 1973-.

Peake, Gordon P.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (178 pages)

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Canberra, ACT : ANU Press, [2022]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

In 2016, Gordon Peake answers a job advertisement for a role with the government of the Autonomous Region of Bougainville, a collection of islands on the eastern fringe of Papua New Guinea looking to strike out as a country of its own. In his day job he sees at first hand the challenges of trying to stand up new government systems. Away from the office he travels with former rebels, follows an anthropologist's ghost and visits landmarks from the region's conflict. In 2019, he witnesses joy and euphoria as the people of Bougainville vote in a referendum on their future. Out of these encounters emerges an unforgettable portrait of this potential nation-in-waiting. Blending narrative history, travelogue and personal reminiscences, Unsung Land, Aspiring Nation is an engaging memoir as well as an insightful meditation on the realities of nation-making and international development.

Contents:

Intro

Abbreviations and other shortened forms

Acknowledgements

Foreword

Introduction

Part One

1. Aid comes to my aid

2. Arrival

3. Make-work and workshops

4. Bookanville

5. Have licence, lack engine

6. A trip to Port Moresby

Part Two

7. The road to Arawa

8. Town of ghosts

9. Buka's bestseller

10. Beatrice's Bougainville

11. Plan A

12. Plan B and whiskey to the rescue

13. Institutions new and old, seen and unseen

Part Three

14. Odd jobs, family trips and a friend worth fighting for

15. Referendum days

16. The stone pillars

17. The result of all this

Epilogue

Glossary.

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 cc https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9781760465445

1760465445

OCLC:

1356978817