J Connell
Biographic Data
| ID | 25152 |
|---|---|
| NAME | J Connell |
| GIVEN NAMES | J |
| FAMILY NAME | Connell |
| SIGNATURE | CONNELL J |
| AFFILIATIONS | The University of Sydney |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0945-0684 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 43 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 331 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 43 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1979 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 10 |
Medicinal Plant Knowledge and Practice in Island Ecologies
Traditional medicine was once ubiquitous on islands and a valued component of local environmental knowledge. Its practice has declined and been partly superseded by biomedicine in every island context. A comprehensive initial comparative review of contemporary studies from more than forty mainly tropical and sub-tropical islands indicates that the number of medicinal plants in use, and the range of uses, has fallen fastest in European and Caribbe…
Burn Like Hot Stones’
A survey of children in the small Pacific Island state of Samoa was undertaken through focus groups and drawings. This primary study of children of different ages demonstrated that children were aware of local environmental changes including those triggered by climate change. The majority of Samoan children of both genders were aware of the multiple dimensions of climate change affecting Samoa, namely rising temperatures, heavier rainfall, strong…
Remittances and social capital
Social and financial remittances from the Australian Seasonal Worker Programme (SWP) have transformed the livelihood capabilities of participating households from Timor-Leste. Timorese workers generally participate in SWP for a six-month period, with many returning for subsequent seasons. Qualitative, multi-sited research investigated the livelihood strategies of 50 Timorese worker households over a three-year period. Their net earnings averaged …
Increasing livelihood vulnerabilities to coastal erosion and wastewater intrusion
Most livelihood research focuses on micro-level decisions affecting occupations but fails to examine wider scale processes that shape markets, institutions, and thus livelihood choices. A political ecology framework can help address this gap by providing ways to analyse how multi-scalar and extra-local practices, policies, and discourses affect local-level socio-environmental outcomes. In the qualitative research reported here, that framework is …
Covid‐19 in the Pacific territories
Early experience of COVID-19 in seven Pacific politically dependent territories (Guam, American Samoa, Pitcairn, Tokelau, French Polynesia, Wallis and Futuna, and New Caledonia) emphasises a diversity of contexts, responses, outcomes and possible futures. The consequences of COVID-19, whether present or absent, included deaths, social isolation, impossibility of medical referrals, economic decline, breakdown of supply chains, and some return migr…
Full Issue
Social media, popular culture and ‘soft heritage’
Complex relationships exist between rationales for visiting, experiences and perceptions. Tourists are influenced by others, increasingly through social media as electronic word of mouth (ewom). While visitation rationales associated with popular culture are well documented, less understood is how social media use among specific cultural groups constructs and fuels new fictitious sites of popular cultural tourism, through what we call ‘soft herit…
Contracting Margins? Liquid International Migration in the Pacific
In the smaller Pacific islands especially, migration has a long history. In this century international migration has become more significant in Melanesia, more diverse in terms of destinations and occupation, more valuable to national economies through remittances and more likely to be permanent. Governments of the smaller Pacific island states have become increasingly involved in negotiating migration strategies, as remittances have become more …
Contested notions of disaster justice during the 2011 Bangkok floods
The 2011 Bangkok floods, a slow onset event, flooded significant parts of the city. The state's response to flooding followed a traditional cultural and hierarchical approach to justice within Thailand, stemming from Buddhist values, an informal caste system and monarchical order. This resulted in a spatially uneven outcome, with the ‘preservation’ of the central city and two‐month‐long floods in outer suburbs, exacerbated by inadequate managemen…
Social capital in a crisis
Two major earthquakes hit Nepal in April and May 2015 causing widespread devastation. Many NGOs, including CARE Nepal, International Nepal Fellowship and Richa Bajimaya Memorial Foundation, responded to the crisis in diverse ways. In the relief phase, the three NGOs faced many challenges as a result of inadequate planning for a large‐scale disaster, including access to information, coordination and inaccessibility. NGOs were able to partly overco…
Participatory natural resource management in rural China
Environmental and development discourses in China can be categorised into three narrative motifs framing human–nature relationships: peasant, indigenous, and community. Indigenous and community narratives have been widely adopted by environmental NGOs (eNGOs) in China in promoting community‐based natural resource management projects, but there has been very limited critical research on such phenomena. Analysis of socio‐economic change in two ethn…
We don’t feel free at all”
Seasonal worker programmes are promoted as a quadruple win, bringing benefits to participating countries, employers and workers. These benefits, however, are most often framed as economic, while the social costs of such schemes have received less attention. In 2009, Australia introduced a short-term agricultural employment scheme to provide unskilled labour for farmers, and temporary work for migrants from Pacific island states. The scheme has co…
Globalisation, soft power, and the rise of football in China
Sport, especially football, has rapidly acquired global cultural, commercial, and also political prominence. China recently and belatedly has sought to acquire international recognition in sport and participate in global development by linking soft power, national status, and football. Market principles have been adopted, football clubs are owned by wealthy corporations, partly directed by government, and expensive coaches and players have been t…
Rural-urban migrants, translocal communities and the myth of return migration in Vanuatu
Urbanization in Vanuatu has increased rapidly in recent decades. Circular mobility has gradually given way to urban permanence as second and third generations grow up in urban centres. Migrants from the small outer island of Paama are numerically significant in the capital Port Vila with more Paamese living there than in their ‘home’ island. Few have returned to Paama, despite a substantial proportion of all generations professing intentions to d…
Escaping Zaria's fire? The volcano resettlement problem of Manam Island, Papua New Guinea
Most resettlement in the Pacific, whether for political, economic or environmental reasons, has been in some respects unsuccessful, often resulting in land disputes, social conflicts, marginalisation, impoverishment and return migration. Resettlement after volcanic eruption poses particular problems because of necessary immediacy, temporal uncertainty over the duration of the displacement and the wish of most of those displaced to return, when po…
Kastom, property and ideology
The relationship between customary land tenure and 'modern' forms of landed property has been a major political issue in the 'Spearhead' states of Melanesia since the late colonial period, and is even more pressing today, as the region is subject to its own version of what is described in the international literature as a new 'land rush' or 'land grab' in developing countries
Greenland and the Pacific Islands
Predictions for the future of small islands and island states are often pessimistic. Multiple discontents have followed decolonization. In Pacific island states poverty and inequality have increased, free trade offers few development possibilities, governance is weak and urban biased, and aid dependence has not declined. Economic niches, including ‘sovereignty sales’, have largely failed to emerge. Populations are contracting from outer islands, …
Last days in the Carteret Islands? Climate change, livelihoods and migration on coral atolls
It is widely assumed that the impacts of climate change on atolls will render them uninhabitable. The Carteret Islands, an iconic Pacific atoll, is experiencing physical changes, documented in the media, the outcome of multiple factors, alongside critical economic livelihood problems. Its population has sought to resettle on nearby Bougainville Island, but land has not become available. The search for migration opportunities parallels trends on c…
All the world is a stage
The involvement of small island states (SISs) in a growing number of international organisations (IOs) has placed increased pressure on domestic bureaucracies and political systems. Rapid turnover among SIS leaders, combined with generational change and decreased local support, has amplified disadvantages. Growing complexity has therefore further exposed the long-standing vulnerabilities of SISs. They can play a creative role at the margins, and …
What about the workers? The missing geographies of health care
Geographies of health have neglected relevant consideration of health human resources. Five developments in the sub-discipline are examined to demonstrate how health labour has been neglected. Three research themes, circulation, regulation and distribution, are then presented to indicate the value of a greater focus on health workers for the geography of health, and we suggest that deeper analytical engagement with labour and feminist geographies…
Migrants' Remittances, Poverty and Social Protection in the South Pacific
Small island states are increasingly characterised by the growing role of international migration and remittances as components of national and household incomes. Recent household‐level survey data on migration and remittances in two Pacific island states, Fiji and Tonga, demonstrate that where formal social protection systems are largely absent, migration and remittances can perform a similar function informally, contributing significantly to de…
A new inequality? Privatisation, urban bias, migration and medical tourism
Access to health care in developing countries, the main destinations of medical tourists, is notoriously uneven, and often becoming more so. Medical tourism, urban bias and privatisation have combined to exacerbate this trend. This is exemplified in both Thailand and India, where regional areas have been disadvantaged by the migration of health-care workers to hospitals focusing on medical tourism, neo-liberal national financial provision for med…
Elephants in the Pacific? Pacific urbanisation and its discontents
Urbanisation has proved seemingly inexorable in the island Pacific in recent decades, yet has largely escaped critical attention. Urban growth has been associated with civil unrest, unemployment, crime, poverty, environmental degradation, traffic congestion (and heightened inequality), inadequate formal housing provision, the rise of the informal sector (and repressions of it), pressures on education, housing, health and other services such as wa…
New Caledonia or Kanaky?
Change and Continuity in the Pacific
Beyond Manila
Suburbanisation in the extended metropolitan area of Manila has produced new middle-class consumer landscapes of exclusive suburbs-alongside tower blocks, offices, residential estates, shop-ping malls, and golf courses-linked by freeways and flyovers. Economic growth, the emergence of a new and mobile middle class, and the lack of public planning have emphasised individualism and privatisation. Enclosed homogeneous suburbs, designed and marketed …
Island dreaming
Cultural Festivals and Economic Development in Nonmetropolitan Australia
Examining a database of 2,856 festivals in Australia and survey results from 480 festival organizers, we consider how nonmetropolitan cultural festivals provide constraints as well as opportunities for economic planners. Cultural festivals are ubiquitous, impressively diverse, and strongly connected to local communities through employment, volunteerism, and participation. Despite cultural festivals being mostly small-scale, economically modest af…
Last days in the Carteret Islands? Climate change, livelihoods and migration on coral atolls
It is widely assumed that the impacts of climate change on atolls will render them uninhabitable. The Carteret Islands, an iconic Pacific atoll, is experiencing physical changes, documented in the media, the outcome of multiple factors, alongside critical economic livelihood problems. Its population has sought to resettle on nearby Bougainville Island, but land has not become available. The search for migration opportunities parallels trends on c…
What about the workers? The missing geographies of health care
Geographies of health have neglected relevant consideration of health human resources. Five developments in the sub-discipline are examined to demonstrate how health labour has been neglected. Three research themes, circulation, regulation and distribution, are then presented to indicate the value of a greater focus on health workers for the geography of health, and we suggest that deeper analytical engagement with labour and feminist geographies…
Kastom, property and ideology
The relationship between customary land tenure and 'modern' forms of landed property has been a major political issue in the 'Spearhead' states of Melanesia since the late colonial period, and is even more pressing today, as the region is subject to its own version of what is described in the international literature as a new 'land rush' or 'land grab' in developing countries
Losing ground? Tuvalu, the greenhouse effect and the garbage can
Greenhouse‐induced sea‐level rise (SLR) threatens coral atolls and particularly the few atoll states, such as Tuvalu. This central Pacific island microstate has minimal economic development options, and has increasingly perceived emigration and remittances as a development strategy, despite restricted opportunities. Internal migration, in search of wage employment, has brought almost half the national population to Funafuti atoll, with negative l…
We don’t feel free at all”
Seasonal worker programmes are promoted as a quadruple win, bringing benefits to participating countries, employers and workers. These benefits, however, are most often framed as economic, while the social costs of such schemes have received less attention. In 2009, Australia introduced a short-term agricultural employment scheme to provide unskilled labour for farmers, and temporary work for migrants from Pacific island states. The scheme has co…
Elephants in the Pacific? Pacific urbanisation and its discontents
Urbanisation has proved seemingly inexorable in the island Pacific in recent decades, yet has largely escaped critical attention. Urban growth has been associated with civil unrest, unemployment, crime, poverty, environmental degradation, traffic congestion (and heightened inequality), inadequate formal housing provision, the rise of the informal sector (and repressions of it), pressures on education, housing, health and other services such as wa…
All the world is a stage
The involvement of small island states (SISs) in a growing number of international organisations (IOs) has placed increased pressure on domestic bureaucracies and political systems. Rapid turnover among SIS leaders, combined with generational change and decreased local support, has amplified disadvantages. Growing complexity has therefore further exposed the long-standing vulnerabilities of SISs. They can play a creative role at the margins, and …
Bali Revisited
Since package tourism began on a small scale at the start of the 20th century, tourism and travel to Bali have gone through a series of overlapping and interlocking phases. By the 1930s the destruction of 'authenticity' and the process of transformation were already apparent to some. Tourism expanded and diversified. In the 1970s world travellers, and later 'surfies', contributed to the distinctiveness of Kuta, a way station on the Asian overland…
Social media, popular culture and ‘soft heritage’
Complex relationships exist between rationales for visiting, experiences and perceptions. Tourists are influenced by others, increasingly through social media as electronic word of mouth (ewom). While visitation rationales associated with popular culture are well documented, less understood is how social media use among specific cultural groups constructs and fuels new fictitious sites of popular cultural tourism, through what we call ‘soft herit…
Migrants' Remittances, Poverty and Social Protection in the South Pacific
Small island states are increasingly characterised by the growing role of international migration and remittances as components of national and household incomes. Recent household‐level survey data on migration and remittances in two Pacific island states, Fiji and Tonga, demonstrate that where formal social protection systems are largely absent, migration and remittances can perform a similar function informally, contributing significantly to de…
The End Ever Nigh
Climatic change
Escaping Zaria's fire? The volcano resettlement problem of Manam Island, Papua New Guinea
Most resettlement in the Pacific, whether for political, economic or environmental reasons, has been in some respects unsuccessful, often resulting in land disputes, social conflicts, marginalisation, impoverishment and return migration. Resettlement after volcanic eruption poses particular problems because of necessary immediacy, temporal uncertainty over the duration of the displacement and the wish of most of those displaced to return, when po…
Occupation-specific analysis of migration and remittance behaviour
Most previous empirical studies of migration and remittances ignored possible differences among occupational categories of migrants. Where human capital investment decisions and occupational choices are influenced by perceived prospects for international migration, internationally tradable occupations such as nursing are likely to attract individuals with particular attributes and with a stronger propensity to migrate. We argue that this can also…
Britain's Caribbean colonies
(1994). Britain's Caribbean colonies: The end of the era of Decolonisation? The Journal of Commonwealth & Comparative Politics: Vol. 32, No. 1, pp. 87-106
Migration, rural development and policy formation in the south Pacific
Contested notions of disaster justice during the 2011 Bangkok floods
The 2011 Bangkok floods, a slow onset event, flooded significant parts of the city. The state's response to flooding followed a traditional cultural and hierarchical approach to justice within Thailand, stemming from Buddhist values, an informal caste system and monarchical order. This resulted in a spatially uneven outcome, with the ‘preservation’ of the central city and two‐month‐long floods in outer suburbs, exacerbated by inadequate managemen…
A new inequality? Privatisation, urban bias, migration and medical tourism
Access to health care in developing countries, the main destinations of medical tourists, is notoriously uneven, and often becoming more so. Medical tourism, urban bias and privatisation have combined to exacerbate this trend. This is exemplified in both Thailand and India, where regional areas have been disadvantaged by the migration of health-care workers to hospitals focusing on medical tourism, neo-liberal national financial provision for med…
Back to Nukunuku
Return migration has escaped significant analysis in the Pacific island region. Both migration from and return migration to the Tongan village of Nukunuku are for multiple reasons, with migration centred on employment and education, and return centred on the social context of home and duty. Return is limited, with intentions not being matched with practice, and the village and national population not growing. However, return migrants acquire skil…
Regulation of space in the contemporary postcolonial Pacific city
National development problems in the weak states of Papua New Guinea and Fiji have resulted in external intervention. However neo‐liberal development strategies have not resolved development problems and may have further weakened state structures. In both capital cities rural‐urban migration, rising urban unemployment, and the expansion of squatter settlements and the informal sector have all continued in recent years. The numbers of beggars, str…
Globalisation, soft power, and the rise of football in China
Sport, especially football, has rapidly acquired global cultural, commercial, and also political prominence. China recently and belatedly has sought to acquire international recognition in sport and participate in global development by linking soft power, national status, and football. Market principles have been adopted, football clubs are owned by wealthy corporations, partly directed by government, and expensive coaches and players have been t…
The Taste of Paradise’
Effective global competitiveness is rare in the Pacific islands, yet FIJI Water has been a major success story since 1997, exporting bottled water to the USA and elsewhere. A bland commodity has been linked to an ‘exotic’ place, and sold to elite consumers, as a form of cultural capital. The company website and newspaper extol the virtues of a ‘pristine’ product, produced in a natural context, in an environmentally sensitive manner. Marketing the…
A kind of development? Spatial and structural changes in the beef cattle industry of Papua New Guinea
Independence, dependence and fragmentation in the South Pacific
Indian doctors in Australia
The ‘brain‐drain’ of doctors is examined in Australia, with particular reference to Indian doctors in New South Wales, the principal destination of all migrant doctors. The Indian medical system exhibits an urban bias, and hence a misdirection and loss of investment; health care is inadequate especially in rural areas and modern technology dominates primary health care. Since the mid‐1960s Indian doctors have migrated to Australia and transformed…
Conference news
Migration, rural development and policy formation in the south Pacific
The End Ever Nigh
Climatic change
Bali Revisited
Since package tourism began on a small scale at the start of the 20th century, tourism and travel to Bali have gone through a series of overlapping and interlocking phases. By the 1930s the destruction of 'authenticity' and the process of transformation were already apparent to some. Tourism expanded and diversified. In the 1970s world travellers, and later 'surfies', contributed to the distinctiveness of Kuta, a way station on the Asian overland…
Britain's Caribbean colonies
(1994). Britain's Caribbean colonies: The end of the era of Decolonisation? The Journal of Commonwealth & Comparative Politics: Vol. 32, No. 1, pp. 87-106
Beyond Manila
Suburbanisation in the extended metropolitan area of Manila has produced new middle-class consumer landscapes of exclusive suburbs-alongside tower blocks, offices, residential estates, shop-ping malls, and golf courses-linked by freeways and flyovers. Economic growth, the emergence of a new and mobile middle class, and the lack of public planning have emphasised individualism and privatisation. Enclosed homogeneous suburbs, designed and marketed …
Losing ground? Tuvalu, the greenhouse effect and the garbage can
Greenhouse‐induced sea‐level rise (SLR) threatens coral atolls and particularly the few atoll states, such as Tuvalu. This central Pacific island microstate has minimal economic development options, and has increasingly perceived emigration and remittances as a development strategy, despite restricted opportunities. Internal migration, in search of wage employment, has brought almost half the national population to Funafuti atoll, with negative l…
Regulation of space in the contemporary postcolonial Pacific city
National development problems in the weak states of Papua New Guinea and Fiji have resulted in external intervention. However neo‐liberal development strategies have not resolved development problems and may have further weakened state structures. In both capital cities rural‐urban migration, rising urban unemployment, and the expansion of squatter settlements and the informal sector have all continued in recent years. The numbers of beggars, str…
Island dreaming
The Taste of Paradise’
Effective global competitiveness is rare in the Pacific islands, yet FIJI Water has been a major success story since 1997, exporting bottled water to the USA and elsewhere. A bland commodity has been linked to an ‘exotic’ place, and sold to elite consumers, as a form of cultural capital. The company website and newspaper extol the virtues of a ‘pristine’ product, produced in a natural context, in an environmentally sensitive manner. Marketing the…
Occupation-specific analysis of migration and remittance behaviour
Most previous empirical studies of migration and remittances ignored possible differences among occupational categories of migrants. Where human capital investment decisions and occupational choices are influenced by perceived prospects for international migration, internationally tradable occupations such as nursing are likely to attract individuals with particular attributes and with a stronger propensity to migrate. We argue that this can also…
Foreign Flowers
Back to Nukunuku
Return migration has escaped significant analysis in the Pacific island region. Both migration from and return migration to the Tongan village of Nukunuku are for multiple reasons, with migration centred on employment and education, and return centred on the social context of home and duty. Return is limited, with intentions not being matched with practice, and the village and national population not growing. However, return migrants acquire skil…
Cultural Festivals and Economic Development in Nonmetropolitan Australia
Examining a database of 2,856 festivals in Australia and survey results from 480 festival organizers, we consider how nonmetropolitan cultural festivals provide constraints as well as opportunities for economic planners. Cultural festivals are ubiquitous, impressively diverse, and strongly connected to local communities through employment, volunteerism, and participation. Despite cultural festivals being mostly small-scale, economically modest af…
A new inequality? Privatisation, urban bias, migration and medical tourism
Access to health care in developing countries, the main destinations of medical tourists, is notoriously uneven, and often becoming more so. Medical tourism, urban bias and privatisation have combined to exacerbate this trend. This is exemplified in both Thailand and India, where regional areas have been disadvantaged by the migration of health-care workers to hospitals focusing on medical tourism, neo-liberal national financial provision for med…
Elephants in the Pacific? Pacific urbanisation and its discontents
Urbanisation has proved seemingly inexorable in the island Pacific in recent decades, yet has largely escaped critical attention. Urban growth has been associated with civil unrest, unemployment, crime, poverty, environmental degradation, traffic congestion (and heightened inequality), inadequate formal housing provision, the rise of the informal sector (and repressions of it), pressures on education, housing, health and other services such as wa…
Migrants' Remittances, Poverty and Social Protection in the South Pacific
Small island states are increasingly characterised by the growing role of international migration and remittances as components of national and household incomes. Recent household‐level survey data on migration and remittances in two Pacific island states, Fiji and Tonga, demonstrate that where formal social protection systems are largely absent, migration and remittances can perform a similar function informally, contributing significantly to de…
All the world is a stage
The involvement of small island states (SISs) in a growing number of international organisations (IOs) has placed increased pressure on domestic bureaucracies and political systems. Rapid turnover among SIS leaders, combined with generational change and decreased local support, has amplified disadvantages. Growing complexity has therefore further exposed the long-standing vulnerabilities of SISs. They can play a creative role at the margins, and …
What about the workers? The missing geographies of health care
Geographies of health have neglected relevant consideration of health human resources. Five developments in the sub-discipline are examined to demonstrate how health labour has been neglected. Three research themes, circulation, regulation and distribution, are then presented to indicate the value of a greater focus on health workers for the geography of health, and we suggest that deeper analytical engagement with labour and feminist geographies…
Greenland and the Pacific Islands
Predictions for the future of small islands and island states are often pessimistic. Multiple discontents have followed decolonization. In Pacific island states poverty and inequality have increased, free trade offers few development possibilities, governance is weak and urban biased, and aid dependence has not declined. Economic niches, including ‘sovereignty sales’, have largely failed to emerge. Populations are contracting from outer islands, …
Last days in the Carteret Islands? Climate change, livelihoods and migration on coral atolls
It is widely assumed that the impacts of climate change on atolls will render them uninhabitable. The Carteret Islands, an iconic Pacific atoll, is experiencing physical changes, documented in the media, the outcome of multiple factors, alongside critical economic livelihood problems. Its population has sought to resettle on nearby Bougainville Island, but land has not become available. The search for migration opportunities parallels trends on c…
Geography (31 works) · Political science (30 works) · Economics (27 works) · Island Studies and Pacific Affairs (24 works) · Sociology (21 works) · Economic growth (20 works) · Climate Change, Adaptation, Migration (19 works) · Business (12 works) · Development economics (12 works) · Politics (12 works)