New book from Dr Melissa Demian

We are pleased to announce the release of Dr Melissa Demian’s new book In Memory of Times to Come: Ironies of History in Southeastern Papua New Guinea.

Drawing on twenty years of research, this book examines the historical perspective of a Pacific people who saw “globalization” come and go. Suau people encountered the leading edge of missionization and colonialism in Papua New Guinea and were active participants in the Second World War. In Memory of Times to Come offers a nuanced account of how people assess their own experience of change over the course of a critical century. It asks two key questions: What does it mean to claim that global connections are in the past rather than the present or the future, and what does it mean to claim that one has lost one’s culture, but not because anyone else took it away or destroyed it?

Orders of this book can be placed directly through Berghahn Books.