Book and Media Reviews

Abstract

Debra McDougall’s Engaging with Strangers: Love and Violence in the Rural Solomon Islands provides an insightful and in-depth account of how Solomon Islanders in rural areas, far from the centers of state power, regularly encounter and engage with “strangers.” It weaves a narrative showing that, rather than being insular, isolated, atomistic, tribal, and inhospitable, rural communities have always been open and willing to engage with the world beyond their shores. As McDougall states, “these social worlds and the people who inhabit them are cosmopolitan” (236). They constantly engage with people from other places, adopt ideas, technologies, and goods, and speak languages other than their own, illustrating that no local worlds are entirely isolated and no cultures are really bounded.