Ol Man Kam: Community Associations as part of inclusive urban governance in the urban South Pacific

Abstract

Emerging governance structures of small, Pacific island capital cities are important because indigenous knowledge and practice present an alternative to dominant, Eurocentric ideas around which most of the world is now organised. Mobilising culture and indigeneity to challenge hegemonic ideas has become important all over the world (Escobar 2007; Freire 2005) and over-reliance on coloniallyinfluenced social structures as instruments of governance discounts the possibility of allowing new ones to be integrated into governance processes.