UHM Center for Pacific Islands Studies | CPIS

Tarcisius Kabutaulaka

 

Tarcisius Kabutaulaka

Associate Professor
PhD Australian National University (2001)

Moore Hall 220
tkabutau@hawaii.edu
(808) 956-2659

Tarcisius Kabutaulaka is a political scientist with a PhD from the Australian National University and undergraduate and MA degrees from the University of the South Pacific (USP). He joined the Center for Pacific Islands Studies in 2009 and served as director from August 2018 to July 2021. Prior to that, he worked for six years as a Research Fellow at the East-West Center’s Pacific Islands Development Program. Before moving to Hawai’i in 2003, he taught history and political science at USP. Over the years, Kabutaulaka has also done consultancy work for governments, regional and international organizations and NGOs in the Pacific Islands. He is the editor of the Pacific Islands Monograph Series (PIMS), the founding editor of Oceania Currents, and a member of the editorial board of The Contemporary Pacific. He has published extensively on the Solomon Islands civil unrest and the Australian-led regional intervention, the forestry industry in Solomon Islands, China in Oceania, and on governance issues in the Pacific Islands. He is the co-editor (with Greg Fry) of Intervention and State-building in the Pacific: the Legitimacy of ‘Cooperative Intervention’ (Manchester University Press, 2008). In 2000, following two years of conflicts in Solomon Islands, he participated in the peace talks in Townsville, Australia, as one of the chief negotiators. He is a regular commentator on Radio Australia. Kabutaulaka comes from the Weather Coast of Guadalcanal in Solomon Islands.

Research areas and interests

Land, natural resources, and economic development
China in Oceania
Regionalism
Governance
Natural resources
Conflicts
Post-conflict rehabilitation/peace-building
International intervention
Political developments in Oceania

Selected Works

  • 2017 with Jackie Leota-Ete, Kealalokahi Loch, Fleur Enchante Palmer, Damon Salesa, Hiagi Wesley, Terence Wesley-Smith, Sarah Wongking, Health and Environment in the Pacific, Vol. 3. Teaching Oceania Series, iBook, Honolulu: Center for Pacific Islands Studies, University of Hawaii, https://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/handle/10125/46004
  • 2016    “China and Natural Resource Development in Oceania: Feeding the Dragon.” In China and the Pacific: the view from Oceania, edited by Michael Powles, Wellington: Victoria University Press.
  • 2015    “Re-Presenting Melanesia: Ignoble Savages and Melanesian Alter-Natives.” The Contemporary Pacific, 27 (1): 110-45.
  • 2015    “Tuhu Vera: My journeys, routes, places and identities.” In Oceanian Journeys and Sojourns: Home Thoughts Abroad, edited by Judith Bennett, Dunedin: Otago University Press, pp. 133-150.
  • 2013    (with Terence Wesley-Smith and Gerard Finnin). “An Interview with Oscar Temaru.” The Contemporary Pacific, 27(1): 300-307.
  • 2010    “The Man from Tiko.” The Contemporary Pacific, 22(1): 111-114.
  • 2010    “Milking the Dragon in Solomon Islands.” In China in Oceania: Reshaping the Pacific? Edited by Terence Wesley-Smith and Edgar Porter, New York: Berghahn Books, pp. 133-150.
  • 2008    with Greg Fry (eds.), Intervention and State-Building in the Pacific: the Legitimacy of ‘Co-operative Intervention,’ Manchester University Press.
  • 2005    “Australian Foreign Policy and the RAMSI Intervention in Solomon Islands.” The Contemporary Pacific, 17(2): 283-308.
  • 2004    “Failed State’ and the War on Terror: Intervention in Solomon Islands.” Asia Pacific Issues, No. 72, March 2004, East-West Center, Honolulu, Hawai’i.
  • 2002    Footprints in the Tasimauri Sea: a biography of Dominiko Alebua, Suva: Institute of Pacific Studies, University of the South Pacific.
  • 2008    “Westminster Meets Solomons in Honiara Riots.” In Elections and Violence in Solomon Islands, edited by Stewart Firth and Sinclair Dinnen, Canberra: Asia-Pacific Press.
  • 2006    “Global Capital and Local Ownership in Solomon Islands’ Forestry Industry.” In Globalisation and Governance in the Pacific, edited by Stewart Firth, Canberra: Pandanus Press.
  • 2006    “Parties, Constitutional Engineering and Governance in Solomon Islands.” In Political Parties in the Pacific Islands, edited by Roland Rich, Canberra: Australian University Press.
  • 2005    “Crowded Stage: Actors, Actions and Issues in Post-Conflict Solomon Islands.” In Securing a Peaceful Pacific, edited by John Henderson and Greg Watson, Christchurch, New Zealand: University of Canterbury Press.
  • 2002    (with Sandra Tarte). “Rethinking South Pacific Security: Fiji and Solomon Islands.” In The Unraveling of Island Asia? Government, Communal, and Regional Instability, edited by Bruce Vaughan, Westport, Connecticut: Praeger Publishers, pp. 61-82.