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6. Global Boundaries in the Microcosm
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chapter 6 Global Boundaries in the Microcosm Boundaries are an essential component of a recognizable and coherent identity. Whether the borders in question are territorial, ideological, religious, economic, social, cultural, or amalgams thereof, their erosion or dissolution is likely to be traumatic. —Ken Jowitt, “The New World Disorder” Islands are always fragments torn, the ends of the route, the shores of anxiety; the harmony of the world dissolves in their con¤ned spaces, as do certainties of the soul, with the breaching of borders. —Joël Bonnemaison, “The Metaphor of the Tree and the Canoe” Writing about the new world disorder that has succeeded the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the end of global East–West bipolarity, Ken Jowitt stresses the fragility of those familiar borders and identities that germinated during the Cold War. Particularly for the Third World, geographical boundaries, ideological identities, and directions of foreign aid were a by-product of the struggle between the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. Wars over would-be annexation in the Persian Gulf and ethnic borders in the former Yugoslavia show how unsettling the dissipation of these old frames of reference and demarcations (capitalist West versus communist East, with a putatively nonaligned South in between) has already been. It would be aggrandizing folly to suggest a parallel between the impact of the end of the Condominium in the New Hebrides and the end of the Cold War upon the Third World at large. Or would it? Although there is indisputably no comparison between the stakes involved in the two cases (except, of course, for the people of Vanuatu themselves), the process of dismantling entrenched mental boundaries is really not so very different. In both cases competing ideologies and mind-sets superimposed by rival great powers tended to split apart smaller and weaker peoples who were caught in the middle. In both cases, donors used development assistance 184 as an inducement to create and solidify alliances to further their respective national interests. No matter that the master puppeteers were American and Soviet in the one case and French and British in the other; nor that the global struggle pitted capitalism against communism while the Melanesian contest was between condocolonialism and independence. It is more signi¤cant that in both cases the grand patrons managed to avoid¤ghting each other directly, leaving the spilling of blood (mercifully limited in Vanuatu) to civil wars and internecine con¶icts among their clients. To nations coping with the uncertainties of boundary collapse— whether of ideologies, territories, or identities—Vanuatu may serve as a beacon. Though facing past legacies and problems still in the making, Vanuatu has emerged from its one secessionist crisis with surprisingly few scars. Ever since, it has been moving, however cumbersomely, toward transcending the institutional and psychological effects of the Condominium . Unfortunately, as in so many other nations long subject to European rule, decolonization in Vanuatu has consisted essentially of nationalizing and adapting those institutions inherited from the overlords . Rarely have decolonized nations had the luxury of deciding from scratch which institutional forms and policies are truly necessary or appropriate for them. One prime example of institutional inertia in Vanuatu is the lack of a full-blown language policy. The government needs to take into account the perils facing the vernacular tongues and the ambiguity of having a national language (Bislama) of¤cially ignored in the schools. There is also the unchallenged persistent hegemony of two European languages in the educational system. Another sector demanding institutional decolonization is the legal system. Citizens deserve a relevant and autochthonous system of criminal justice to replace the currently incongruous one which applies emphatically non-Melanesian rules and principles of jurisprudence to ni-Vanuatu defendants. For all its religious referents, Vanuatu (and in this it differs little from most developing nations) has not yet exploited its independence as an opportunity for consummate re-creation. “[I]n a turbulent, dislocating , traumatic Genesis environment the dissolution of existing boundaries and identities can generate a corresponding potential for the appearance of genuinely new ways of life.”1 Though the boundaries dividing ni-Vanuatu have not totally disappeared, and a new Melanesian Eden is far from realization, the goal of forging a progressive and indigenous polity, one that is truly Melanesian in its institutions as well as its discourse, can still be attained. Global Boundaries 185 [44.203.58.132] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 16:22 GMT) The legacy of condocolonialism may be clearly seen in...