Place, peace and security in Solomon Islands
| Date | 01 December 2020 |
| Published date | 01 December 2020 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0010836720954477 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0010836720954477
Cooperation and Conflict
2020, Vol. 55(4) 442 –460
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/0010836720954477
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Place, peace and security in
Solomon Islands
Kate Higgins
Abstract
This article examines the relationship between place and peace and security in Solomon Islands.
Place is understood not only as a geographical location, but as a social, material and symbolic
arena where constructions of what constitutes peace and security are continually remade. Place-
based constructions of peace and security challenge pervasive spatial assumptions which underpin
dominate security discourses about post-conflict Solomon Islands, assumptions which view
security as a public good delivered by centralised state institutions to the peripheries. Employing
a case study of one particular place, the Gela Group of Islands, this article describes place-
based practices, processes, institutions and ideals of peace in contrast to a state ideal of security
and argues that far from existing in separate spaces, both place-based and state-based forms of
security are in constant interaction and shape each other over time. This article suggests that
a way forward in increasing peace and security outcomes in Solomon Islands is to focus on the
relationship between place-based forms of security and the state. Doing so acknowledges the
political, relational and spiritual worlds of people of place, worlds which fundamentally shape
peace and livelihood outcomes, and which require a different understanding of the spatial make-
up of the state.
Keywords
Governance, heterogeneity, intervention, Pacific Islands, peacebuilding, state formation
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 con-
structions 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
Corresponding author:
Kate Higgins, Melbourne, Australia.
Email: khiggins@c-r.org
954477CAC0010.1177/0010836720954477Cooperation and ConflictHiggins
research-article2020
Article
Higgins 443
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 peo-
ple 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 dissatis-
faction 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 con-
flict challenges dominate discourses of (in)security produced about Solomon Islands in
much scholarly and policy literature, while ongoing forms of external intervention con-
tinue 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 institu-
tions 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 orien-
tated 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 scholar-
ship, this includes the problem with reifying scalar categories, reproducing a local–inter-
national 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
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