The up-to-date ethnographic contributions in this volume describe and analyze the major social, political, and economic changes which have transformed traditional cultures in Oceania: Polynesia, Micronesia, and Melanesia.

1. Introduction to Contemporary Pacific Societies, Victoria S. Lockwood.
I. THE COLONIAL LEGACY AND NATION BUILDING.
2. Tonga's Contemporary Globalizing Strategies: Trading on Sovereignty amidst International Migration, George E. Marcus.
3. Imagining a Nation: Race, Politics and Crisis in Post-Colonial Fiji, Martha Kaplan.
4. The Law of the State and the State of the Law in Vanuatu, William L. Rodman.
5. New Political Statuses in American Micronesia, Robert C. Kiste.
6. Welfare State Colonialism in Rural French Polynesia, Victoria S. Lockwood.
II. MARKETS, DEVELOPMENT, AND CAPITALISM.
7. From the Stone Age to the Age of Corporate Takeovers, Ben Finney.
8. Pigs, Pearlshells, and ' Women's Work': Collective Response to Change in Highland Papua New Guinea, Lorraine Dusak Sexton.
9. The Cult of Custom Meets the Search for Money in Western Samoa, Tim O'Meara.
10. The Samoan Exodus, Paul Shankman.
11. Keeping Options Open: Copra and Fish in Rural Vanuatu, Margaret Critchlow Rodman.
12. Some Pohnpei Strategies for Economic Survival, Glenn Petersen.
13. Education IS Development on a Ten-Acre Island, Alice Pomponio.
III. IDENTITY, COMMUNITY, AND SOCIAL RELATIONS.
14. Migration, Urbanization, and Rural-Urban Links: Toaripi in Port Moresby, Dawn Ryan.
15. The Historial Course of True Love in the Sepik, Frederick Errington and Deborah Gewertz.
16. The Fist, the Stick, and the Bottle of Bleach: Wife Bashing and Female Suicide in a Papua New Guinea Society, Dorothy Ayers Counts.
17. A Pacific Haze: Alcohol and Drugs in Oceania, Mac Marshall.
IV. RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE AND WORLDVIEW.
18. Melanesian Cargo Cults, Kenelm Burridge.
19. The Brokers of the Lord: The Ministration of a Christian Faith in the Sepik Basin of Papua New Guinea, Paul B. Roscoe.
20. Christmas on Ujelang: The Politics of Continuity in the Context of Change, Laurence M. Carucci.
21. The Maori Tradition of Prophecy: Religion, History and Politics in New Zealand, Karen P. Sinclair.