Contents: Jurg Wassmann, Introduction -- Part One: Constituting Historical Knowledge -- Jonathan Friedman, Knowing Oceania or Oceanian Knowing: Identifying Actors and Activating Identities in Turbulent Times -- Bronwen Douglas, Inventing Natives/Negotiating Local Identities: Postcolonial Readings of Colonial Texts on Island Melanesia -- Ben Burt, Writing Local History in Solomon Islands -- Gunter Senft, ‘Noble Savages' and ‘the Islands of Love': Trobriand Islanders in ‘Popular Publications' -- Part Two: Ways of Constructing Identities -- Nigel Stephenson, Contrasting Transcripts: Constructing Images and Identities in Mediations among the Wam People of Papua New Guinea -- Berit Gustafsson, The Identity Construction of Ethnic and Social Groups in Contemporary Papua New Guinea -- Gerhard Schneider, Re-Inventing Identities: Re-Defining Cultural Concepts in the Struggle between Villagers in Munda, Roviana Lagoon, New Georgia Is., Solomon Islands for the Control of Land -- Phillippe Peltier, ‘Alas! And on we go' -- Ton Otto, Resource Management in Lavongai and Tigak Islands: Changing Practices, Changing Identities -- Thomas K. Fitzgerald, Metaphors, Media and Social Change: Second-Generation Cook Islanders in New Zealand -- Jens Pinholt, Identity Construction as a Cooperative Object: Anthropological Film-Making with the Vaiakau and Fenualoa Peoples, Reef Islands, Temotu Province, Solomon Islands -- Part Three: Australia after Mabo -- Robert Tonkinson, National Identity: Australia After Mabo -- Ad Borsboom, Knowing the Country: Mabo, Native Title and ‘Traditional' Law in Aboriginal Australia -- Barbara Glowczewski-Barker, ‘All One but Different': Aboriginality: National Identity versus Local Diversification in Australia -- John Morton, Essentially Black, Essentially Australian, Essentially Opposed: Australian Anthropology and its Uses of Aboriginal Identity -- Part Four: Questioning Western Democracy? -- Toon van Meijl, Culture and Democracy among the Maori -- Serge Tcherkezoff, Is Aristocracy Good for Democracy? A Contemporary Debate in Western Samoa