Place,peace and security in Solomon Islands

Introduction

For many people living in Solomon Islands, one’s ‘place’ is central to a sense of peace and security. A view of security in Solomon Islands is holistic. Security encompasses the concern to maintain (or restore) relationships which lie at the heart of indigenous constructions of peace and justice. A view of security also encompasses the relations and mechanisms which concern preserving local environments and livelihoods for current and future generations. In such understandings, conceptualisations of security are not compartmentalised into categories – physical, economic, environmental, political and so on – rather, they are interdependent dimensions embedded in a system of relations (Vaai, 2019). This article examines the relationship between place and peace and security in Solomon Islands through employing a case study of a particular place: the Gela Group of Islands. Following Massey (2005: 130), I employ the spatial concept of ‘place’ ‘not as points or areas on maps, but as integrations of space and time’ to examine how emplaced histories, events, practices, and institutions produce peace and security.

Solomon Islands is made up of almost 1000 islands and is located in the South-Western Pacific Ocean. Approximately 80% of the estimated population of 680,000 people live in rural settlements (Solomon Islands Government, 2019; World Bank, 2018). Place-based social and political order is centred around customary-held land and kinship groups, kastom, ¹ approximately 80 languages, and Christian identities (Blust 2013: 108; White, 2007). Solomon Islands is categorised as post-conflict for the nation experienced low-level civil conflict between 1998 and 2003, while significant conflict challenges remain. Conflict has been driven by, among other factors, historical patterns of internal migration, natural resource (mis)management and distribution, and significant dissatisfaction felt among citizens towards the ill-fitting model of the centralised postcolonial state (Bennett, 2002; Braithwaite et al., 2010; Dinnen and Allen, 2018: 134). These conflict challenges dominate discourses of (in)security produced about Solomon Islands in much scholarly and policy literature, while ongoing forms of external intervention continue to influence understandings of what security is. Meanwhile, within the places which make up Solomon Islands – both rural and urban locales – narratives of peace and security operate in a different space (Grenfell, 2018: 243). Here, place-based narratives of conflict and peace are tied to different knowledges, practices, processes and institutions which have emerged from different local and external sites, and which have now become embedded in place through historical interaction.

Dominant narratives of insecurity, and in particular problems attributed to the Solomon Islands state, have served to obfuscate the active processes and relations orientated towards forms of everyday peacebuilding (see Brigg, 2018). What occurs ‘on the ground’ in place is spatially and temporally detached in security discourses given that the state continues to be the ‘key reference point’ for analysis (Vogel, 2018: 433). This article draws upon the spatial critique of dominant approaches in peace and security thinking (Björkdahl and Buckley-Zistel, 2016) through an examination of how peacebuilding occurs ‘in place’ in Solomon Islands. There is methodological value in acknowledging the ‘intuitive obviousness’ of space (Massey, 2005: 26) so as to ‘examine the question of where peace and peacebuilding occur’ (Vogel, 2018: 433; original emphasis). Therefore, in this article, I employ ‘place’ as a relational scale (Sayre, 2009) to examine how emplaced institutions, practice and processes produce peace and security in the Solomon Islands context.

I examine the scale of place in both its ‘epistemological’ and ‘ontological’ moments (Sayre, 2005: 180–181; 2009). Place, in its ‘epistemological moment’, is the scale of what is being observed (Sayre, 2005: 180). Understanding place in this sense allows us to move beyond critiques associated with ‘the local’. As noted in the hybridity scholarship, this includes the problem with reifying scalar categories, reproducing a local–international dichotomy and romanticising indigeneity (Allen and Dinnen, 2017; Brown, 2018, 39; Hameiri and Jones, 2018; Kent et al., 2018: 5–7). Rather than separating out the local, national and international into ‘scalar containers’ (Björkdahl and Buckley-Zistel 2016: 4), in employing place as an observational scale it is possible to identify processes which have emerged from different sites. This means analysing the forms of power emerging from the ‘very local’ to the ‘supranational’ (Dinnen and Allen, 2018: 136–137), as they interact in place. Place as an observational scale acknowledges the reality that the state is not the ‘principal security agent’ (Wilson and Bakker, 2016: 290) against which one can measure levels of security/insecurity (Brigg, 2018; Brown, 2017: 26; Vogel, 2018: 433). This also enables us to shift our analytical lens to the ways in which state power manifests and interacts within particular locales (Mitchell, 2006). At the same time, place is an ontological construct, as people are actively engaged in constructing place (Love, 2016; Stasch, 2010). Sayre (2005: 180–181; 2009) argues it is important to reconcile the observational or ‘epistemological moment’ of scale with its ‘ontological moment’. This entails examining how ‘ideological ideas connected with place’ serve to ‘enable, shape and restrict’ different actors (Vogel, 2018: 432–433).

To examine the relationship between place and peace and security in Solomon Islands this article draws upon two main sources. First, I examine the extensive ethnographic literature which has theorised the relationship between place-making and social and political order in the Melanesian region. ² This scholarship has long drawn upon spatial and temporal tropes to understand and articulate difference in the region (Rodman, 1992). Rich ethnographic studies highlight the complexity involved in considering questions of peace and security, cautioning us against simplistic analysis (Millar, 2018). Second, I draw upon findings from fieldwork conducted in the Gela Group of Islands over three periods between 2014 and 2015. This fieldwork utilised a grounded method to conduct unstructured interviews with a range of actors to examine political, social, economic and spiritual forms of order, as well as local understandings of, and aspirations for, peaceful political community and the nation-state. The first two sections of this article draw upon these sources to demonstrate the relationship between place and peace and security. The final section discusses the challenges these place-based perspectives pose to common spatial assumptions about how peace happens.

Place in Melanesian ethnography

The Melanesian region has been home to numerous ethnographic studies of Melanesian ‘places’ with approximate boundaries often defined by islands and/or vernacular language groups. Ethnographic studies have explored place-based ontologies as they underpin their research subjects – subjects such as cosmological and religious beliefs, indigenous leadership practices, and ultimately land relations (for examples from Solomon Islands, see Keesing, 1989; Scott, 2000; White, 2007, 2013). Ethnographic studies situated in place are often in conversation with broader themes relevant to understanding factors influencing peace and conflict including the consequences of colonialism and ways modernity has manifested, the existence of different logics of justice, and the nature of the state (see Eriksen, 2013; Hviding, 2011; McDougall, 2015, 2016). While anthropological literature is careful not to make generalisations about entire islands, countries or the region itself, from this rich body of literature there has emerged theorising about ‘place’ (see Bolton, 2003; Jolly, 1999; Kempf et al., 2014; Rodman, 1992; Stasch, 2010).

First, this literature demonstrates how conceptions of security are firmly embedded in ‘history-making’; that is, in acts of reconstructing the past (White, 1991). As Ballard (2014: 105) explains, place is largely constructed through ‘vernacular histories’ and collective memories embedded in the landscape and seascape. Tradition and custom are at the forefront of place-based discourse; however, through history-making they are continually remade in ‘light of present motivations and intentions’ (Ballard, 2014: 108; see also Keesing, 1989). Far from being arenas of tradition, rural and urban settlements constitute an interface where contemporary ‘relationships and interactions meet’ (Kempf et al., 2014: 8). As an important process of interaction, acts of storytelling about the past are important in remaking place-based identities. Place-based identities are viewed as key to maintaining social order, for governing relations over customary land and resources, and ultimately for securing the future. The relationship between past and present, Ballard (2014: 109) suggests, is ‘firmly grounded in a sense of the future. Different temporalities, or cultural presumptions about temporal process, hinge as much on the variously imagined ends of history as they do its origins.’ Acts of retelling and ‘owning’ historical narratives are also a form of considerable power: ‘who knows’ correlates with ‘who holds power’. Therefore, the politics of the past is the politics of what is being said and what is being silenced (Ballard, 2014: 96; Scott, 2000). History is security; questioning or disputing a history is a form of conflict. Understanding people’s sense of security begins with people’s sense of the past in relation to the present and in relation to aspirations for continuity into the future.

Second, largely unseen forms of power embedded in landscapes and seascapes significantly shape people’s lives. Powerful cosmological or spiritual forms of power are embedded in place through people’s spiritual relationship with land. Ethnographic studies of Melanesia have gone beyond defined forms of human-centred political authority to seek to understand how relationships with the non-human – with ancestors and with God – influence attitudes, behaviours and actions. Spiritual ‘health’ is core to how security is maintained or restored. For example, the powerful role of the non-human is revealed in increasingly reported instances of sorcery-related violence. As Forsyth and Eves (2015: 5) explain, ‘(c)rime and insecurity arise because people react to deaths, sickness and misfortune by seeking to punish, expel, cure or get revenge on those identified as being the sorcerer or witch responsible’. Furthermore, as Boege (2019) observes, practices which seek to restore peace have deeply spiritual dimensions. Indigenous reconciliations vary from place to place; however, they often involve exchanging a mixture of traditional and monetised gifts so as to right wrongs between different (mostly kinship) groups. This is a key justice mechanism which operates within the region and not only has material dimensions, but also focuses on spiritual healing between groups to avoid further conflict with unseen worlds.

While profound forms of unseen power are located in people’s spiritual relationship with land, these spiritualities are also enmeshed in the forms which Christianity takes. Christian churches are often the strongest and most legitimate externally emergent emplaced institution in people’s lives, with networks across islands, states and beyond. Churches are hugely influential in the maintaining or disrupting of social and political order (Tomlinson and McDougall, 2013), and are often the most significant local institution which organises daily life, giving ‘rhythm’ to social order (Love, 2016). The legitimacy and political role of churches is derived from the ways in which churches have become indigenised and emplaced in the region (White, 2007: 4). Indigenous spirituality associated with place, its origins and the relationship between the human and non-human, as well as indigenised Christianity, tend to be ignored or derided by state-based rule of law and developmental approaches to security (Ellis and Ter Haar, 2004: 34). Yet ensuring ‘spiritual security’ is significant in how ‘security’ itself is enacted. ‘Spiritual security’ influences the ways in which decisions are made and is a significant influence upon the political energies put into maintaining peaceful relations. Land is security and land is spiritual.

Third, place not only organises knowledge about the world people inhabit, but also organises social relations (Bolton, 2003: 70; see also Strathern, 1994: 27). Social relations, in particular kinship relations, are fundamental to a sense of security. Kinship systems remain the strongest institution across the region because they are at the centre of the ways in which one’s security is maintained. In combination with land, kinship is defined as a key to providing safety and to preventing poverty (Wallace, 2009: 528). This is perhaps more pronounced for those who are from more than one place or for those who reside elsewhere, such as in urban areas (McDougall, 2016: 189). While kinship is at the core of what Kempf et al. (2014: 14) describe as ‘multiplicities of belonging’, they are not bounded by a place, as migration, marriage and other practices such as adoption have produced kinship ties which stretch across islands, countries, the region and beyond. Kinship systems are a primary means of connecting people horizontally across the nation-state and facilitating various kinds of relationships. Social relations are the most important for facilitating the way that security is negotiated, or peace is restored, regardless of the nature of the process, mechanism or institution which is operating, whether it be state-based, indigenous or an enmeshment of both.

While kinship systems are a fundamental aspect of collective security, they are also cited as a cause of various forms of conflict. Kinship is viewed as the major cause of corruption occurring within state institutions, as the economic security of the group is prioritised over the ‘good’ of the nation (Forsyth, 2009: 3; McLeod, 2008; Wood, 2016). This points to the need to think differently about how people view governance and to find different ways to work with these dynamics (Brigg, 2009: 159). Kinship is also understood in relation to insecurity through what is colloquially – and problematically – referred to as ‘tribal violence’ (see Brown, 2008). Inter-group violent conflict over land, resources or other social transgressions is a significant source of conflict in the region (Firth, 2018). However, dominant external representations of kinship as the cause of either corruption or violence – or both – can serve to overshadow the way in which identity and difference are in themselves a form of connection and networking, and, as a result, everyday or indigenous peacebuilding. The small-scale nature and diversity of identities present in the region do not necessarily result in disconnection; rather, connection is often forged through difference and comparison – that is, through being of another place (McDougall, 2016: 192). Dialogical exchanges over difference are often a relational and ethical way of finding common ground (see Vaai and Nabobo-Baba, 2017). Kinship can therefore be seen as an enabling dynamic which allows different kinds of people – including those who may be strangers – to establish ways in which they are able to relate to each other quickly, ethically and meaningfully in order to negotiate their security and for establishing empathy which extends these protections to others.

Fourth, discourses and constructions of the ‘ideal’ of place, particularly of the ‘village’ or ‘community’, are acts of constructing a distinct vision of peace and security. Stasch (2010: 43) explains: ‘A village form, as a concrete spatial phenomenon, is not self-evident or natural but is an incarnation of specific values, ideas, narratives, feelings, political and moral projects, and visions of what social life should be.’ Across the region, there are localised political projects occurring on various scales, which seek to define political community and to ensure security for the groups of people living within it. These political movements can be seen as a form of ‘place-making’ (Kempf et al., 2014; Massey, 2005; Pierce et al., 2011; Tsing, 2000: 228), and in Solomon Islands include the formation of ‘non-state’ chiefly organisations, village governments, church committees, various community-based organisations, women’s groups and youth groups, all of which aim to ‘take control’ of governance and security arrangements (Allen et al., 2013: 70; Dinnen and Allen, 2016; 79; see also Hegarty, 2009). This also includes larger-scale island-wide movements seeking to formalise governance arrangements separate from (but sometimes in reference to or relationship with) the state (Alasia, 2007: 183; Allen, 2017; Brigg et al., 2015; Hviding, 2011; White, 2013). However, the boundaries of place are not fixed and shift according to context and priorities (Escobar, 2001: 140). What is at stake in any given circumstance determines ‘scale-making’ of place (Were, 2015). For example, when resources are involved, the boundaries of who and what are included and excluded will shift (Bainton, 2009; McDougall, 2016: 155; Strathern, 1996). These spatial shifts in how boundaries are constructed in any given circumstance illustrate the ways in which conflicts manifest, and who is included or excluded at any given moment in collective security-making. Therefore, the idea of place – in the form of a village or community – is an articulation of ideals in relation to ensuring peace and livelihoods.

Place is security: Gela, Solomon Islands

The Gela Group of Islands (hereafter ‘Gela’ and also spelt ‘Nggela’) consists of four main and several small islands located in the Central Islands Province. Gela histories and identities are implicated in the subtle and explicit forms which social and political organisation takes. Through different historical processes, the formation of an island-group-wide identity has emerged. Gela was a site of early missionary bases, and the island of Tulagi, based within the group, was the first capital of the British Solomon Islands Protectorate (1893–1978), before the capital was moved to Honiara after the Second World War. Due to the proximity of early foreign bases, there were significant missionary and colonial attempts to introduce mechanisms of indirect rule (Akin, 2013) which have had lasting effects on current political structures. ‘Gela’ also refers to the people of the place and to the name of the main language spoken. There are approximately 60 main villages, and kinship structures transcend hamlets and villages as different kema and vike groups – roughly translating as ‘tribe’ or ‘clans’ – exist across the island group (Foale and Macintyre, 2000; Sulu, 2010). The presence of one major Christian denomination, the Anglican Church, is another site of collective identity as 99% of the population is Anglican (Gagahe, 2006 cited in Sulu, 2010: 60). Drawing upon fieldwork conducted in Boli District, located in the largest island, Gela Sule (or Big Gela), I examine the key spatial and temporal characteristics outlined in the previous section – reconstructing history as a means of securing land and resources; place-based cosmological knowledge and forms of spirituality which underpin a sense of security; kinship networks as fundamental to place-making; and place as the site of a collective identity-making and efforts to construct localised versions of peace.

As with many other Melanesian locales, a sense of future security lies in the past (Ballard, 2014: 108). History stories, oral stories often relating to the origins of people and land and passed down through generations, are viewed as fundamental to securing land. During fieldwork, an origin story was told to me by an old man in the neighbouring village to where I was staying. This was an origin story which involved a detailed description of the interaction of human and non-human elements to describe how present-day people came to be of their place. On the way back to the village, the girl assigned by the village as a guide retold the story to me with some gusto. Late that night, I received a visit from a husband and wife from next door who were concerned that I had been told dangerous knowledge. They asked: ‘Are you going to write this down, because if you do, that could make big problems for us. It is interesting to talk about this story, but to repeat it is dangerous. These stories can be dangerous.’ After everyone was satisfied that I would not repeat their history story, the couple told the story again. What emerged was that this story was an important means for establishing legitimate connection to ancestors and to the land for the people of that place, and as means of protecting them from the perceived threat of outside claims to land.

Within the district, disputes arising from contested claims over land – or as ‘problems between histories’ (Allen et al., 2013: 18) – are now adjudicated by the Boli House of Chiefs. This district-wide chiefly body has recently been established to hear land disputes and other relevant cases. The court function is a hybrid of elements taken from indigenous leadership practices and customs while incorporating democratic (for men at least) modes of representations from within the district, while drawing upon mechanisms from the now-defunct state-based court system (see Allen et al., 2013; Evans et al., 2011). The Boli House of Chiefs has reportedly led to a decrease in land disputes and cut the conflict between places as well as acting as a deterrent to those who would otherwise make questionable claims to land. On the relationship between the state court system and the chiefly court system, one member of the House commented: ‘You use history stories to make decisions . . . history stories are the same in each (court) hearing.’ This chief believes it does not matter which court the evidence is heard in – that is, the ‘state’ courts or ‘non-state’ courts – as the history story itself is the same. In both these examples – acts of retelling origin stories and history stories as evidence of claims to land – are both forms of security. As the Boli House of Chiefs member explained:

What is very important for our lives in Gela . . . is land. If there is no land, then man will die, it is life. So, if we don’t process cases well, then we will have trouble too. If you show favouritism in a case, you are favouring a life, and you are killing a life.

Land is security, and it is governed through the ways in which the history of land and its people is retold in everyday spaces, as well as the ways in which these stories are governed through place-based hybrid institutions. ³

A second and related example is the ongoing socio-political movements aimed at reproducing place-based identities which lend legitimacy to institutions such as the chiefly court as well as village chiefs. These movements also reinforce social norms which attempt to govern the behaviours and relations which are believed to create ‘social harmony’ or stability in place. This is encapsulated in the Solomon Islands Pijin term Gela kalsa – that is, ‘culture’ and ‘identity’. ⁴ It is explained that ‘Kalsa is the basket in which all other things sit.’ Kalsa is reinforced by history-making, through reinterpreting the past as a form of control which fosters a sense of security. Kalsa is also promoted by the indigenised form which Christianity takes, for the Gospel, it is said, ‘sits in’ kalsa. Leaders of the Anglican church have been instrumental in forming the Gela Vale Vaukolu or the island-wide Gela House of Chiefs. In its original iteration, the Anglican missionaries began an annual meeting for indigenous leaders from 1887 called a vaukolu, a word derived from the vernacular term for both ‘meeting’ and ‘woven together’ (Sulu, 2010: 151). The vaukolu introduced mechanisms such as fines for controlling adultery and trespass of pigs. The vaukolu has been described as the first ‘native parliament’ in Solomon Islands (Bennett, 1987: 210; Whiteman, 1983: 143) and was soon taken over by the British Solomon Islands Protectorate, in attempts to codify ‘custom law’ (Hilliard, 1974: 112). Throughout the colonial period, political resistance movements continued. For example, the Chair and Rule movement petitioned the colonial government for better labour conditions and services and sought recognition from the colonial state of ‘cultural values’ (Bennett, 1987: 263; Hilliard, 1974: 113–114; Whiteman, 1983: 209–210). These movements have continued after independence, and have become particularly salient since 2003.

In the past decades, dissatisfaction with the independent Solomon Islands state has increased, first due to the civil conflict, and then later due to the unwillingness of national elites or international interveners to pay attention to sub-national governance (Braithwaite et al., 2010: 78–79; McDougall, 2016: 221). This has contributed to the ‘revival’ of the vaukolu. While the vaukolu remains a chiefly organisation, Anglican church leaders have been instrumental in using church networks in order to keep it in operation while financial support has come from constituency funding provided by the Member of Parliament (discussed further below). The island-wide vaukolu now consists of a western-style bureaucratic structure which frames Melanesian-styled dialogue processes. During fieldwork interviews this was described as the ‘parliament for Gela’ with aims to ‘provide for the welfare of the people generally, and in terms of whatever disputes are happening’. Its aims are focused on enacting Gela definitions of security which centre around place-based histories and identities, as illustrated by comments such as: ‘I don’t know what the future will be like(,) whether development will be positive in a sense that the community and the people will maintain culture and peace, or whether kalsa and kastom will be lost.’

A third example is the way history-making, cosmological beliefs, social relations and ‘constructing community’ come together in an instance of a conflict over logging. The Solomon Islands forestry industry, or ‘logging’ as it is colloquially and accurately known, is a destructive force within the country – socially, environmentally and politically. Logging is deeply entwined in national politics, politics which is characterised by a problematic relationship between political elites and the extractive industries (Allen, 2011; Bennett, 2002; Foukona and Timmer, 2016; Kabutaulaka, 2006). State institutions and actors have little ability or willingness to regulate foreign extractive industries, and communities are in many cases incapable of resisting them. The community in which I was based in Gela has maintained an agreement on the ban on all logging based on environmental grounds with the aim to maintain the communal water source and ensure a sustainable supply of timber. The logging dispute arose when a ‘local broker’ from another village in the district led loggers over the community boundary. ‘Local brokers’ or ‘match makers’ are ‘individuals from the local community who are contracted by investors to arrange and negotiate the plans, settlements and deals for access to natural resources’ (Foukona and Timmer, 2016, 121). When the loggers illegally crossed the boundary, men, women and children went to the site to protest peacefully. However, tensions soon rose and the dispute escalated into violent confrontation between some community members and the foreign loggers (from Asian backgrounds) and their security guards (men from other islands). The violence was quickly brought under control by chiefs, church leaders, and male and female elders. Village elders (including prominent women) encouraged community members to remain calm. The church cancelled its events – including the annual saint’s day feast which had been in planning for months. A series of community meetings was held to provide people with a safe avenue to express their frustrations and work collectively towards addressing the conflict which had emerged without further violence.

The reaction to this dispute is revealing in terms of how people defined insecurity, not only in terms of physical safety, environmental and economic security, but also in spiritual terms. The belief was that the process going forward should centre around restoring relationships between the ‘broker’ and his family so as to restore peace and order. In the lead up to the dispute, and with knowledge that foreign loggers had entered the district, the chiefs and elders of the community had gone into the bush to place two sadas on each side of the boundary of the community. A sada is a Gela word meaning ‘women’s skirt’ and is a custom practice which consists of marking a taboo site or a boundary which not to be crossed. It symbolises crossing or stepping over a woman’s legs, which is a common taboo in Melanesia and often employed by women to stop fighting (Paina, 2000: 55). Before the dispute occurred, five provincial police officers were invited to witness the laying of each sada, and a total amount of SBD$10,000 (approximately US$1200) was set by chiefs for breaking the taboo. As the majority of these police officers were from Gela they are said to have understood the legitimacy of the sada and allegedly went to inform the logging company.

During the aftermath of the violence, the narrative which emerged was not around the injustice of the illegal logging which had taken place, nor the lack of further police intervention. What people found both astounding and troubling was that the broker was a Gela man who was willing to break this cultural and spiritual taboo. In response to this significant anger of the community, speaking in a radio interview the broker replied that the chiefs had not used a traditional grass skirt, but a modern cloth skirt. He did not believe a cloth skirt had real spiritual power attached to it. When asked why police were not asked to intervene, community members perceived that the police saw the dispute as an issue of kastom not of whiteman law given that the majority of police were also from Gela and understood the purpose of the sada. Relatives working in various government ministries in the capital came back to the village to discuss what had happened and helped to verify their legal position in terms of land boundaries and their claims vis-à-vis the ‘legal’ timber rights hearing process which had previously occurred. However, while the legalities were discussed, community meetings revolved around how to mediate the case through the Boli House of Chiefs, and how to work towards a traditional-hybrid reconciliation (involving the pre-determined and hefty compensation payment) with the broker. This was understood as key to restoring longer-term security – both in terms of relations with kinship groups in neighbouring places and in terms of building collective understanding around management of resources.

Emplaced security in Solomon Islands?

The case study above illustrates the power embedded in emplaced forms of peace and conflict management, mitigation and resolution. Both conceptually and empirically, ‘place’ – as a historical and spatial interface (Massey, 2005) – presents a challenge to the dominant ways in which (in)security continues to be understood. Since 2003, there have been growing critiques of statebuilding and development intervention in Solomon Islands in the scholarship (see, for example, Allen and Dinnen, 2015; Braithwaite et al., 2010; Brigg, 2009, 2018; Dinnen, 2007, 2008; Fry and Kabutaulaka, 2008; Kabutaulaka, 2008; see also Boege et al., 2008), as well as critiques of the securitisation of development aid (Hameiri, 2008). Despite both scholarly critiques and significant intervention failures, similar state-centric logics continue to underpin understandings of what security is. As Eriksen (2011: 243) explains, ‘any gap between (the state) idea and reality is seen as an argument for changing social reality, rather than for changing the concepts through which reality is interpreted’. In Solomon Islands, addressing the complex array of historical and emergent conflict drivers will be a slow process and cannot be expected to be achieved by external actors (Dinnen and Allen, 2018: 136). However, a key problem is that the sum total of the different development and security interventions which have kept the capital Honiara bustling over the past 15 years or so (Curth-Bibb, 2019) has had the effect of producing a dominant narrative of insecurity which largely excludes understandings, feelings and articulations of the emplaced forms of peace and security which continue to be impactful in people’s lives.

How peace and security happen is obscured by the way dominant security narratives are reproduced. Within the national level, Solomon Islander public servants, civil society and church leaders become co-opted into dominant narratives, or into the modern, statist and developmentalist ‘space’ as this is where interventions occur and where resources are allocated. Grenfell (2018: 243) describes this space as ‘secular, empty, commodifiable, transferable, unifiable and homogenous’ and one which ‘tends to be sharply delineated’ from the prevalent forms of social and political order which are operating in place. When existent forms of social and political order are considered, this often takes the form of platitudes such as the need for ‘cultural sensitivity’ or fostering ‘local ownership’ or being ‘contextually relevant’. This merely constitutes an attempt to rearrange Solomon Islands realities to fit within existing frameworks (Eriksen, 2011). Overall, what is not recognisable as ‘security’ – customary land, kinship and other social relations, spiritual order and so on – is implied to be a challenge or problem, as something which is temporally behind ‘developed’ locales (Massey, 2005: 82). Influential forms of order become abstracted into a representation of ‘the local’ and, in turn, become spatially disconnected from what is considered important in ensuring ‘strong security’.

There is a powerful spatial imaginary attached to globally sanctioned security narratives, particularly those which see the ‘national scale as the key locus of political power’ (Dinnen and Allen, 2018: 136). Here, security is understood as a public good, spatially imagined as located ‘above’ society and then delivered ‘below’ to local peripheries. This amounts to what Ferguson and Gupta (2002: 983) describe as the ‘enormously consequential’ assumed ‘topography of power’. Yet these common spatial assumptions quickly unravel when considering how external institutions and practices have become absorbed into place-based forms of order throughout the colonial and postcolonial periods (see Akin, 2013). For example, this is evident in the Gela case study where the chiefs and elders aimed to prevent conflict and protect land and resources by inviting police witnesses to lend their legitimacy to their place-based customary practice of employing the sada taboo. The legitimacy of state institutions is contingent on relations which facilitate interaction with place-based institutions, processes and practices. The place/scale of Gela therefore demonstrates the ways in which forms of state power interact within processes, processes which have emerged from both place-based and external sites. In the process of interaction, state forms of power are rendered less recognisable than in their ideal forms.

Spatial assumptions underpinning the state model are not only problematic in analysing the forms of power which produce peace and security; in Solomon Islands the current spatialisation of the state is also the key cause of the insecurity the nation faces. There is considerable dissatisfaction felt among citizens with the model of the centralised state (McDougall, 2016: 213, 221), and this is now the primary driver of conflict in the island nation. The Solomon Islands Truth and Reconciliation Commission (2012), which was held to investigate the causes and consequences of the civil conflict, found that there is anger at the nature of the state, often expressed in terms of the failures of decentralisation policy. Dinnen and Allen (2016: 83) note the coincidence in the timing of the abolition of the third tier of government – the only form of government located in many places in the Solomon Islands – with the outbreak of violence in 1998. Currently, state power is being ‘reordered’ through the reallocation of public funds to Members of Parliament (Allen and Dinnen, 2017: 7; Dinnen and Allen, 2018: 135). There is no legislation governing these funds and little information is given to constituency members on how they are spent (Wiltshire and Batley, 2018). During fieldwork in Gela, I sat in the provincial treasurer’s office at the Central Islands Provincial Government while he got out his calculator, did some sums, shook his head, then reported that the total of constituency development funding was six times higher than their entire provincial government budget, a figure also cited by Craig and Porter (2014: 23). These unsuccessful and successful attempts at spatial ‘reordering’ of state resources is a rejection of the model of the state as ‘above’ and ‘encompassing’ of society (Ferguson and Gupta, 2002: 982) in Solomon Islands. However, current alternatives are themselves fraught with risks associated with creating new winners and losers. This is evidenced in the growing unrest directed at the government such as that which occurred at the 2019 national elections (Ride, 2019).

In Gela, the recent iteration of both the district and island-wide houses of chiefs have emerged, in part, in response to the pragmatic view of state power as it currently manifests. These limitations include not only the inability of the state to provide security, but also its lack of legitimacy in governing the emplaced forms of security which people understand as crucial to their wellbeing. The vaukolu as well as a myriad of other place-based institutions and processes aimed at maintaining or restoring peace are tied to fundamentally emplaced ontologies. The logging dispute described above was viewed by people in Gela with an air of resignation, as an inevitable result of Solomon Islands political life. However, returning to stability and discussion of the potential ways to bring about conflict resolution were determinedly seen as the mandate of Gela people coming together, respecting culture and identity, and defining a process to work towards righting wrongs and restoring peaceful relations. In Gela, people are seeking a different kind of citizenry – a relationship between the state and their place. In this perspective, state institutions are viewed as one of many other existing institutions, practices and processes. The disconnect in conceptions of peace and security between the place and the centre indicates the need for a different spatial understanding of peace and security and a willingness to address complex questions about the nature of the relationship between different place-based collectivities and the state.

Conclusion

Narratives produced about the conflict problems facing Solomon Islands are largely based upon an ideal that the state provides – or rather is failing to provide – security. Conversely, place-based aspirations for peace and security tend to reference customary land, ancestors, God, kinship and social relations, and culture and identity. These place-based aspirations also constitute their own form of idealism. As the case study from Gela has demonstrated, the knowledge and practice through which relative peace is maintained or restored does not exist in separate spatial ‘containers’ (Björkdahl and Buckley-Zistel, 2016: 4) but rather is situated in relations, including relations with state and other external actors. These relations remain largely unseen because of the categories of ‘social reality’ through which peace and security are commonly assessed (Eriksen, 2011: 243). By examining peace and security in ‘place’ – as an interface where different historical trajectories have merged (Massey, 2005) – it is possible to understand how people create their own peace and security outcomes. A view of peace and security from place indicates that people are agents of their own security (and insecurity) and form part of the complex webs of relations through which peace and security are produced (Brigg, 2016).

In a final comment on spatiality in Solomon Islands, place-based constructions of peace and security continue to remain largely unseen as a result of the problematic and pervasive spatial and temporal imaginaries which continue to ‘frame and contain’ the South Pacific region (Fry, 1997; Wallace, 2009: 525). Ferguson and Gupta (2002: 981) have asked: ‘Through what images, metaphors, and representational practices does the state come to be understood as a concrete, overarching, spatially encompassing reality?’ Taken-for-granted spatial representations of the state, and of security, continue to fit within an external view of small islands, small villages, small populations, small economies, and so on, which are disconnected both spatially and temporally from the modern world. This is an imaginary of space and time which has been widely critiqued by Pacific Islanders and others, mostly notably by Epeli Hau’ofa (1994; see also Vaai, 2019). While the image of a ‘place’ can conjure romantic associations – of vibrant cultures surviving despite the power of the modern world – in conversations about security and state, the image of a village or community is more likely to conjure images of slowness and backwardness, of being non-technical and non-technological, difficult to govern over or deliver to, and even as culturally violent (Brown, 2008). As Massey (2005: 82) has argued, this amounts to a pervasive temporal image of what has not yet ‘caught up’ to the rest of us.

‘Catching up’ often evokes a national and urban imagination within which what people attach to peace and security – history, identity, cosmology, spirituality and kin – is overlooked or abstracted and rearranged to fit within existing frameworks. It is a version of ‘catching up’ that largely privileges the centralised state institutions and national economies (Gegeo and Watson-Gegeo, 2002: 378), ignoring the powerful social, relational and spiritual values which ensure a sense of peace. Therefore, acknowledging the spatial and temporal biases which continue to influence security paradigms may open up ways to work strategically with the relations which do exist, and which can bring about greater peace and security. In Solomon Islands, thinking about the relations between people in place and the reality of the state is a far more productive frame in which to form strategies for the prevention and resolution of conflict and violence, as well as strategies to maintain and improve livelihoods. Framing peace and security in terms of a relationship between different collectivities and the state in Solomon Islands acknowledges the very real constraints the nation faces, while responds to the fundamental spiritual and relational worlds of people who live in places.