Tony Crook

Low-lying Pacific island nations are experiencing the frontline of sea-level rises and climate change and are responding creatively and making-sense in their own vernacular terms. Pacific Climate Cultures aims to bring Oceanic philosophies to the frontline of social science theorization. It explores the home-grown ways that 'climate change' becomes absorbed into the combined effects of globalization and into a living nexus of relations amongst human and non-humans, spirits and elements. Contributors to this edited volume explore diverse examples of living climate change—from floods and cyclones, through song and navigation, to new forms of art, community initiatives and cultural appropriations—and demonstrate their international relevance in understanding climate change. A Prelude by His Highness Tui Atua Efi and Afterword by Anne Salmond frame an Introduction by Tony Crook & Peter Rudiak-Gould and nine chapters by contributors including John Connell, Elfriede Hermann & Wolfgang Kempf and Cecilie Rubow. Endorsement from Professor Margaret Jolly, Australian National University: This exciting volume offers innovative insights on climate cultures across Oceania. It critically interrogates Western environmental sciences which fail to fully appreciate Oceanic knowledges and practices. It reveals how climate science can be both ‘a weapon of the weak’ and ‘an act of symbolic violence of the powerful’. A compelling series of studies in the Cook islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Papua New Guinea and Samoa suggest not diverse cultural constructions of ‘natural facts’ but processes of knowledge exchange and at best a respectful reciprocity in confronting present challenges and disturbing future scenarios. ’Home-grown’ Pacific discourses and ways of living emphasise the interconnections of all life on earth and in our cosmos; they do not differentiate between the natural and the moral, between environmental and cultural transformations. These studies evoke the creative agency of Oceanic peoples, too often seen as on the vanguard of victimhood in global representations of climate change, and offer distinctive visions for all humanity in these troubling times.

Winner of the Royal Town Planning Institute award for research excellenceThis critical examination of the development and implementation of planning gain is timely given recent changes to the economic and policy environment. The book looks both at the British context as well as experience in other developed economies and takes stock of how the policy has evolved. It examines the rationale for planning gain, how it has delivered substantial funds for infrastructure and affordable housing and, in the light of this, how it might continue to play a role in the funding of these. It also draws on overseas experience, for example on impact fees and public sector land assembly. It looks at lessons from the past for future policy, both for Britain and for countries overseas. Mechanisms to tap development value are also a global phenomenon in developed market economies - whether through formal taxation or negotiated contributions. As fiscal austerity becomes an increasingly challenging issue, ‘planning gain’ has grown in importance as a potential source of funding for infrastructure and new affordable housing, with many countries keen to examine, learn from, and adapt the experience of others. a critical commentary of planning gain as a policytimely post credit crunch analysisaddresses recent planning policy changes

This book explores the origins, extent and implications of this revival in the fortunes of private landlordism. It presents an in-depth, scholarly analysis of private landlords, the rationales for and ways in which governments have sought to revitalise investment in residential lettings, and their success in doing so. It also assesses the extent to which landlordism has been transformed in recent years and the lessons for policy that can be learned from this experience. The book draws on the extensive research into private landlords conducted by the authors over the past two decades. This includes projects funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the predecessor departments to the Department for Communities and Local Government, Scottish Homes, and the Economic and Social Research Council. It fills a major gap in the literature about an important actor in housing provision and the built environment. Most of the recent work on private landlords has been published as research reports and there is a lack of book length scholarly study aimed at an academic rather than a policy audience.

What is the nature of knowledge? Anthropology imagines it possible to divide or separate social and analytical relations, whereby knowledge travels between persons as a thing. And yet, Bolivip imagines knowledge as the bodily resources or parts of a person that can be extended or combined with others. This methodological exchange is modelled on a moment from Bolivip - an exchange of skin whereby knowledge is returned in respect of prior nurture and care given, and two people become encompassed by one skin. The Min area of Papua New Guinea has proven to be one of the most enigmatic cultures in anthropological experience. But rather than accept this resistance to analysis as a problem of Melanesian secrecy, this volume suggests that archaic notions of anthropological knowledge have been the problem all along. Taking up the 'Min problem' head on, this study suggests a novel solution to the impasse. The argument works through alternating chapters: an imagistic ethnography of Bolivip describes how arboreal and horticultural metaphors motivate the growth of persons and plants by circulating bodily resources through others. Knowledge here comes from those who contribute to conception, and is withheld until a person is capable of bearing it. These images are used to provide new readings of classic Melanesianist texts - Mead, Bateson and Fortune - substituting theoretical ideas for intimate relations; Weiner and Strathern's own experiments with anthropology modelled on Melanesia; and Barth's reading of secrecy amongst the Min. The book provides an valuable insight into our own assumptions about knowledge and the world by means of insights into the aesthetics of a Papua New Guinean lifeworld.