Many have written about the way in which a "family romance" connects embodied daily life with the imagined community of the nation, and naturalizes the nation so that it appears not as a novel, fragile contingent creation, but as something ancient, robust and real. This book goes beyond such metaphoric associations of families and nations by looking at the central significance of planning families to promoting state development. It also considers the way that state power is accommodated and resisted, complicit with and contested by other powers grounded in relations of kinship, ethnicity,...

The combined forces of mission evangelism and colonial intervention have transformed the everyday family life of Pacific peoples. The dramatic changes that affected the political and economic autonomy of indigenous people in the region also had significant effects on domestic life. This book, originally published in 1989, examines the ways in which this happened. Using the insights of history and anthropology, chapters cover a wide range of geographical range, extending from Hawaii to Australia. The authors examine changes in medicine and health, religious beliefs, architecture and...

First Published in 1997. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.