PACIFIC STUDIES A multidisciplinary journal devoted to the study of the peoples of the Pacific Islands MARCH 1996 Anthropology Archaeology Art History Economics Ethnomusicology Folklore Geography History Sociolinguistics Political Science Sociology PUBLISHED BY THE INSTITUTE FOR POLYNESIAN STUDIES BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY-HAWAI‘I IN ASSOCIATION WITH THE POLYNESIAN CULTURAL CENTER EDITORIAL BOARD Paul Alan Cox Brigham Young University Roger Green University of Auckland Francis X. Hezel, S. J. Micronesian Seminar Rubellite Johnson University of Hawai‘i Adrienne Kaeppler Smithsonian Institution Robert Kiste University of Hawai‘i Robert Langdon Australian National University Stephen Levine Victoria University Barrie Macdonald Massey University Cluny Macpherson University of Auckland Leonard Mason University of Hawai‘i Malama Meleisea University of Auckland Norman Meller University of Hawai‘i Richard M. Moyle University of Auckland Colin Newbury Oxford University Douglas Oliver University of Hawai‘i Margaret Orbell Canterbury University Karen Peacock University of Hawai‘i Nancy Pollock Victoria University Sergio A. Rapu Easter Island Karl Rensch Australian National University Bradd Shore Emory University Yosihiko Sinoto Bishop Museum William Tagupa Honolulu, Hawai‘i Francisco Orrego Vicuña Universidad de Chile Edward Wolfers University of Wollongong Articles and reviews in Pacific Studies are abstracted or indexed in Sociolog- ical Abstracts, Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts, America: His- toy and Life, Historical Abstracts, Abstracts in Anthropology, Anthropo- logical Literature, PAIS Bulletin, International Political Science Abstracts, International Bibliography of Periodical Literature, International Bibliogra- phy of Book Reviews, and International Bibliography of the Social Sciences. PACIFIC STUDIES Editor DALE B. ROBERTSON Associate Editor Book Review Editor GLORIA L. CRONIN MAX E. STANTON Book Review Forum Editor Books Noted Editor ROBERT BOROFSKY RILEY M. MOFFAT Technical Editor SHARLENE ROHTER Editorial Policy: Pacific Studies is published quarterly by The Institute for Polynesian Studies, Brigham Young University-Hawai‘i, La‘ie, Hawai‘i 96762-1294, but responsibility for opinions expressed in the articles rests with the authors alone. Subscription rate is U.S. $30.00, payable to The Institute for Polynesian Studies. Articles submitted to the editor must not be submitted else- where while under review by Pacific Studies and should be the original typewritten copy, completely double-spaced (including quotations, ref- erences, and notes). Authors may write to the editor for a style sheet and information on computer-disk submissions. Books for review should also be sent to the editor. The Institute for Polynesian Studies is an organization funded by Brigham Young University-Hawaii. The Institute assists the University in meeting its cultural and educational goals by undertaking a program of teaching, research, and publication. The Institute cooperates with other scholarly and research institutions in achieving their objectives. It publishes monographs, produces films, underwrites research, and spon- sors conferences on the Pacific Islands. Further information on the activities of the Institute may be obtained by writing to the editor. © 1996 Brigham Young University-Hawai‘i. All Rights Reserved. Printed in the United States of America. This publication is printed on acid-free paper and meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Council on Library Resources. ISSN 0275-3596 Volume 19 March 1996 Number 1 CONTENTS Articles Land Tenure and Hierarchies in Eastern Melanesia JEAN GUIART. 1. Copra Came Before Copper: The Nasioi of Bougainville and Plantation Colonialism, 1902-1964 E UGENE OGAN. 31 The Second Decade: The Theme of Social Change in Papua New Guinean Literature, 1979-1989 GILIAN GORLE . 53 New Trends in Micronesian Migration: FSM Migration to Guam and the Marianas, 1990-1993 FRANCIS X. HEZEL and MICHAEL J. LEVIN. 91 Unbounded Politics in the Solomon Islands: Leadership and Party Alignments JEFFREY S. STEEVES . 115 Book Review Forum Geoffrey M. White, Identity through History: Living Stories in a Solomon Islands Society MARGARET JOLLY . 139 LIN POYER . .148 PASCAL BOYER . .156 Response: GEOFFREY M. WHITE .......................................... 160 vi Pacific Studies, Vol. 19, No. 1--March 1996 Reviews Roger Neich, Painted Histories: Early Maori Figurative Painting (TOON VAN MEIJL) . 173 F. Allan Hanson and Louise Hanson, eds., Art and Identity in Oceania (ALAN HOWARD) . 178 Books Noted Recent Pacific Islands Publications: Selected Acquisitions, May-September 1995 R ILEYM. MOFFAT . 185 Contributors . 193 Special Supplement Index, Volumes 17-18 . 195 PACIFIC STUDIES Vol. 19, No. 1 March 1996 LAND TENURE AND HIERARCHIES IN EASTERN MELANESIA Jean Guiart Musée de l’Homme, Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle Paris THE SOUTH PACIFIC ISLANDS HAVE BEEN A LABORATORY for social anthro- pologists for the best part of a century. Theoreticians have come and gone, but the field still yields rich data and continues to raise questions about the operation of island societies. However, too much description has been spoiled by giving greater weight to models stemming from Western culture than to observation of the way people actually live. With regard to land ten- ure and social hierarchies, the result ignores the flexibility that is so charac- teristic of island life. On the other hand, islanders have never been sure of what could be safely entrusted to the hands of anthropologists. They have tended to resist our inquisitive curiosity. Although they have answered what questions were put to them, they did not volunteer answers to those that were not asked. Some relevant questions emerged only recently because of the dominance of Western models. Others were raised by earlier scholars but were not taken up until years later.1 Land tenure and social hierarchies have been shown to be linked since the earliest research in Polynesia and Fiji, but experience from Vanuatu, New Caledonia, and the Loyalty Islands points to some still underexplored research areas. I have had unique opportunities to follow the dynamics of contrasting systems in these islands, by virtue of my long stay there (since 1947) and the fact that my wife is linked by descent or marriage to most of the chiefly lines in the Loyalty Islands. These circumstances have brought a great deal of spontaneously given data my way, as well as providing the facil- ities to check this information over time. 1 2 Pacific Studies, Vol. 19, No. 1--March 1996 Models Following Radcliffe-Brown and later Lévi-Strauss, anthropologists have often been zealously seeking models, to extract the generalities and to illus- trate the rules that we thought governed different cultures and societies.2 Such things do exist, and islanders can be brilliant in their expression of them, having even created some quite satisfying mathematical models.3 The unhappy fact is that they also spend as much time evading the consequences of the theoretical models as following their component rules. For example, after having had explained to me marriage rules in northern Malekula, I was flabbergasted to observe no actual marriage. One year later, I was informed that the people had decided to stop all marriage prepara- tions while I was present, because each of them would have been conducted contrary to the given rules. The very simple reason was that, according to those rules, there was no marriageable girl present because of a sex ratio of 140 males to 100 females in the area.4 Other institutions have been influenced in parallel ways by a fluctuating population, as in the system of titles linked to land tenure and social control in central Vanuatu5 or the sur- vival of the traditional social structure in a New Caledonia continuously raked with rebellions and bloodied by military repressions.6 Models do express a certain reality. As long as there are islanders to out- line such complexities, partly through relating them to foundation and other myths, models will be part of anthropology, if not the complete answer they were thought to be. They sometimes function at a more sophisticated level than was thought. For example, I have been able to show, on the basis of named titles controlling land tenure and social status extending from Efate to southeastern Epi in central Vanuatu, that the system was known to every single adult member of the population in such a way that the information drawn from each island, each village, and each family was found to be logi- cally coherent all over the area. The computer analysis of the mass of data obtained was one of the very first attempted in anthropology.7 The fact that any partial amount of data obtained from any of more than three thousand informants fitted in the whole without showing any logical fault has impor- tant theoretical consequences. All formalized aspects of social and cultural life fit inside specialized sys- tems (language, kinship, exchange of goods and artifacts, rites of all kinds). The problem is in envisaging a “system of systems.” Thus, the functionalist idea that a cultural whole was so interconnected that it would crumble under the onslaught of the West has been proven wrong. Island societies have survived and adapted, which means the systems were flexible, never fixed. For example, rules for hypergamic marriages among chiefly lines in Land Tenure and Hierarchies in Eastern Melanesia 3 Lifou were evaded in three generations of my