SMOKE AS MIRROR: MARIJUANA, THE STATE, AND REPRESENTATIONS OF THE NATION IN PACIFIC NEWSPAPERS

Abstract

This article re-assesses the argument that newspapers promote modernist national identities. Reading coverage of marijuana in three Pacific Island states indicates that while the news media may constitute an imagined national community, they also serve other purposes. They may give voice to a morally ambiguous relationship between nation and state, in which the latter’s sovereignty authors and authorizes the internal and external boundaries of the nation incompletely and without full guarantee. How newspapers shape national identity depends on the structure of state sovereignty in which they appear.