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Pacific Islands Trajectories A PACIFIC ISLANDS A TRAJECTORIES A A A FIVE PERSONAL A VIEWS I )f I - I DII )J PACIFIC ISLANDS TRAJECTORIES FIVE PERSONAL VIEWS Edited by TON OTTO An Occasional Paper of the Department of Anthropology Research School of Pacific Studies The Australian National University Canberra ACT Australia in associationwith The Centre for Pacific Studies, University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands 1993 Published in Australia by the Department of Anthropology, Research School of Pacific Studies, The Australian National University, Canberra. © The several authors, each in respect of the paper presented, 1993. This book is copyright. Apart from those uses permitted under the Copyright Act 1968 as amended, no part may be reproduced by any process without permission. Inquiries may be made to the publisher. National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-publication data: Pacific islands trajectories: fivepersonal views Bibliography. ISBN 0 73 15 1895 0. 1. Social change - Pacific Islands. 2. Acculturation - Pacific Islands. 3. Islands of the Pacific - Social conditions. 4. Islands of the Pacific - Civilization - Occidental influences. I. Otto, Ton. II. Australian National University. Dept. of Anthropology. III. Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen. Centre forPac ific Studies. (Series: Occasional paper (Australian National University. Dept. of Anthropology)). 303.482 Typesetting by Margaret Tyrie Photographs by Bart Hoogveld Cover design by Natalie Spratt Printed by Microdata Printing, Canberra Dedicated to the late Roger Keesing CONTENTS Preface vii Empty Tins for Lost Traditions? The West's Material and Intellectual Involvement in the Pacific TON OTTO 1 A Tin with the Meat Taken Out: A Bleak Anthropological View of Unsustainable Development in the Pacific ROGER M. KEESING 29 Is the West the Model forHumankind? The Baruya of New Guinea between Change and Decay MAURICE GODELIER 56 Reflections on History in Polynesia ALAN HOWARD 83 Unsteady Concepts in the South Seas JEAN GUIART 98 Shaping and Reshaping of the Pacific: The Perpetual European Influence STEPHENPOLONHOU POKAWIN 153 Contributors 176 PREFACE The essays in this volume deal with material and conceptual aspects of the radical transfonnations that have occurred in South Pacific socities in the colonial and post-colonial eras. Topics that are discussed include the sometimes disastrous impact of development projects, the effects of increasing political and economic incorporation, the adaptability and viability of indigenous cultures, and the biases in Western representations of Pacific history and change. The five contributions depict historical trajectories in Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, New Caledonia and the Polynesian islands. In an introductory chapter I highlight and elaborate on the central themes of the following essays. The authors share a critical perspective on Western material and intellectual involvement in the Pacific and they emphasize the need for reflection, dialogue and political engagement. Four of the authors are leading Western anthropologists with long-term involvement in the region; the fifth author is a distinguished Pacific Islander who assesses the colonial impact from a Pacific point of view. The five contributors were invited to deliver keynote addresses during the First European Colloquium on Pacific Studies organized by the Centre forPa cific Studies in Nijmegen on 17-19 December 1992. The general theme of the conference was vii 'Transformation and tradition in the South Pacific' and more than 120 scholars had gathered to listen to and discuss fifty papers. The Centre for Pacific Studies maintains close institutional ties with the Department of Anthropology in the Research School of Pacific Studies of The Australian National University. As a graduate of the latter institution I am pleased that this volume is published as a joint venture, thus facilitating distribution in the Pacific. I am grateful to Michael Young foradv ice and assistance in the editing process, Paula Harris for her careful copy-editing, Margaret Tyrie for her skilful word processing, Natalie Spratt for artfully designing the cover and Judith Wilson foroverseeing the last stages of publication. In Nijmegen I wish to thank Ricky Breedveld and Marlies Berbers for typing two of the contributions and Bart Hoogveld for taking the photographs during the conference. The work on this volume was done while I was a post-doctoral fellow of the Netherlands Foundation for the Advancement of Tropical Research (WOTRO). I thank this institution forits financial support and the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology at The Australian National University for granting me a Visiting Fellowship. On 7 May 1993, less than five months after presenting his keynote address in Nijrnegen, Roger Keesing died tragically and prematurely from a heart attack. To commemorate his great achievements as an anthropologist and his deep concern about developments in the Pacificthis volume is dedicated to him. Ton Otto viii EMPTY TINS FOR LOST TRADITIONS? THE WEST'S MATERIAL AND INTELLECTUAL INVOLVEMENT IN THE PACIFIC Ton Otto INTRODUCTION Political decolonization began late in the South Pacific. Most island countries attained political independence only in the 1960s and 1970s. A fewnations are still in bonds of colonial dependency whereas some other populations have become indigenous minorities encapsulated in state structures dominated by immigrant majorities. In spite of their late political evolution as modem states most Pacific peoples have had a long history of contact with the West. The impact of this contact has been pervasive and has irreversibly changed the face of the Pacific. Histories of migration, technological innovation, and conquest predate Western presence in the South Seas and we should be careful to avoid a Eurocentric perspective on the Pacific's past which, in its most crude form, identifies the beginning of history proper with the start of European exploration and documentation. However, the transformations during the past few centuries, the extent of which cannot be easily exaggerated, have incorporated the populations of the Pacific into one evolving world system of political and economic interdependence: local history has become part of world history. 2 EMPfYTINS RJRLOST TRADIDONS? In their contact with the West, Pacific Islanders have mostly been 'at the receiving end', as Pokawin phrases it in the final essay of this volume. They saw explorers land on their beaches and march into their valleys; they met with traders who wanted beche-de-mer or coconuts in exchange for beads and nails; they watched planters occupy their lands; they were defenceless against the soldiers who came to protect the planters and traders; they listened to the stories of missionaries; and, finally, they encountered anthropologists who came to record their stories. It would be mistaken, however, to depict the Islanders only as passive victims of developments beyond their control. They confronted the new events according to their own cultural convictions and they manipulated the new circumstances to suit their own interests, sometimes by successfully playing colonial agents off against each other. The issue of indigenous agency is an important one and I will return to it below. It is evident, nevertheless, that the initiative and the impetus to the colonial transformations derived from Western expansionism. It is beyond the scope of this introduction to analyse the dynamics of the Western expansion and it suffices to note that the process was propelled by multifarious and varying interests and motives. Knowledge about the existence of South Sea islands and the great South Land (Terra Australis) was provided by explorers from the sixteenth century onwards. However, serious colonial settlement commenced late, formost regions only in the nineteenth century. Apparently the islands had been considered too far away and economic profits too marginal. Only when the established empires were scrambling to occupy the left-over regions, presumably more for strategic than for economic reasons, was the Pacific finally divided up into colonial territories (see Russier 1905). Strategic occupation and economic exploitation were TONOTTO 3 accompanied by another kind of expansion: that of Christianity, the predominant Western religion. This expansion was often accomplished at the cost of great personal endurance and even sacrifice by both Western and indigenous missionaries. However respectable their motives and however great their concern forlocal populations, this should not blind us to the fact that the missions provided an especially powerful ideological justification of colonialism. With the way prepared by pacification and regular transport facilities, the Pacific also saw other kinds of visitors, who were not primarily interested in economic gain or ideological conversion. Rather, these travellers were drawn by the exotic lifestyles of Pacific Islanders and by the intricate artefacts they produced. Whether they came as collectors, artists, tourists or anthropologists, these travellers had one thing in common. Their interest concerned the indigenous cultures in their 'pristine' state, untouched by colonial influences. The irony of the situation was that while other agents of colonialism were engaged in irreversibly changing the Pacific societies, these latecomers on the scene wanted to preserve an ahistorical, tradition-bound, 'primitive' society that had in fact never existed. Following the requirements of their own intellectual
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