262 the Contemporary Pacific • Spring 1998

262 the contemporary pacific • spring 1998 Guardians of Marovo Lagoon: Prac- achievement. I believe that Guardians tice, Place, and Politics in Maritime of Marovo Lagoon will take its place Melanesia, by Edvard Hviding. Pacific as a permanently valuable record of Islands Monograph Series 14. Hono- New Georgia ethnology, in particular lulu: Center for Pacific Islands Studies, the postcontact history, modern social School of Hawaiian, Asian, and Pacific organization, and maritime culture of Studies, University of Hawai‘i and Marovo Lagoon along the eastern half University of Hawai‘i Press, 1996. of New Georgia. It is a book that no Isbn 0–8248–1664–1, xxix + 473 serious Melanesianist should ignore, pages, maps, figures, photos, tables, and one that no library with a commit- appendixes, notes, glossary, references, ment to the region can afford to be index. Cloth, us$45. without. The University of Hawai‘i Press is to be congratulated for pro- Ethnography has generated its own ducing a book of outstanding quality, “mental map” of the Pacific Islands, so profusely illustrated, and impeccably that one navigates around the islands edited by Linley Chapman for the of Melanesia, or through the highlands Pacific Islands Monograph Series. The of New Guinea, by reference to the press has also published the book at a outstanding landmarks in ethno- price that even keen students might graphic scholarship. Thus in Solomon afford. Islands we have the well-charted out- Guardians of Marovo Lagoon is liers, such as Tikopia (Firth), Ontong the third publication in book form Java (Hogbin), and Bellona (Elbert and that has been generated from Edvard Monberg), which surround the main Hviding’s long period of engagement islands whose prominent landmarks— with the people and Area Council of some a little erased by time—can easily Marovo Lagoon, with their marine be distinguished, for example Ulawa resources and system of tenure, and (Ivens), Guadalcanal (Hogbin again), with their language and other aspects Malaita (Keesing, Ross, Burt), of culture. I know from my own Choiseul (Scheffler), and Bougainville travels around New Georgia in 1996 (Oliver). Until now, most of the west- that Hviding’s earlier books (1995a, ern Solomon islands were lost in the 1995b) are already widely distributed mists of obscurity. Other than Simbo and well read throughout the Western (Hocart), these large and mysterious Solomons. The first, written in the forested islands were relatively Marovo language, is a collection of uncharted, from the ethnographic custom stories. The second is in both standpoint. It is a pleasure to record Marovo and English, and is a dictio- that the biggest blank on our mental nary of environment and resources in map of Solomons ethnography, New which the biota and landforms are Georgia Island, has now been trium- classified and described according to phantly filled by Edvard Hviding by indigenous conceptions and taxonomy, means of his outstanding new book. but are also identified in scientific It is not often that a reviewer has terms (including botanical and zoolog- the opportunity to signal such an ical nomenclature) that make the book reviews 263 accounts consistent with the conven- The book begins with a review of tions of western knowledge. Hviding maritime Melanesia that comes to the was also involved, in 1996, with the simple and basic conclusion that much production of an ethnographic film, too little is known about the relation- produced in collaboration with the ships of coastal Melanesians to the National Museum in Honiara, that marine environment that forms a sig- promises to reveal in visual form some nificant context for their lives. In the further dimensions of this remarkable case of Marovo Lagoon, neither land area—an area that until recently was nor sea has been properly understood little known to ethnographers and by outsiders, or is not documented others. except in the glimpses of passing trav- The book currently under review is elers and district officers. In his recon- based on three major periods of field- struction of Marovo history and the work in the period 1986–1992, rein- analysis of maritime relationships, forced by some shorter visits in the last Hviding therefore starts with a clean five years. It is a revised and extended slate. Yet the subsequent chapters of version of the doctoral dissertation the book amply demonstrate that the Hviding submitted in 1992 to the Uni- ten thousand Marovo people (double versity of Bergen, Norway. Hviding’s the population of the 1960s) have original project was unusual in two retained large elements of their tradi- respects. First, the area on which he tional knowledge and use of the has focused, Marovo Lagoon, lagoon and its resources, and the near- remained a blank on the ethnographic shore fisheries. They have also been map largely because it was assumed by able to adapt systems of tenure and anthropologists to be “uninteresting” management to accommodate chang- because it was thought to have been ing technology and to meet the new severely transformed by the suppres- challenges of church authority, the sion of headhunting raids by British money economy, colonization by copra warships in the 1890s and the sub- planters, bitter fighting between Japa- sequent impacts of Methodist and nese and Americans, and the recent Seventh Day Adventist missionary intrusions of companies engaged in activity and the copra trade. Second, tuna-bait fishing in the lagoon and his research is unique because of its logging its forested hinterland. focus on an aspect of Melanesian A review of this length cannot do culture almost entirely disregarded in justice to the richness of the insights most of the “classic” ethnographic gained by Edvard Hviding, for exam- accounts. For a research student to ple through the many hundreds of focus on an apparently obscure topic hours that he spent as an active partici- in an unknown but unpromising pant in fishing trips from his home region seemed, when I first learned of base at Chea, or journeying the length Hviding’s proposals in 1985, to be and breadth of the lagoon to discuss foolhardy in the extreme. I am very the politics of sharing or excluding happy to have been proved completely others from the use of marine wrong. resources. Marine tenure is discussed 264 the contemporary pacific • spring 1998 in the evolving context of Marovo the prophets of globalization are leadership, ritual practice, and mari- already manifest in the workshops time technology. The “ethnographic and propaganda of Greenpeace, present” is utterly banished from this Friends of the Earth, ecotourism con- account, which displays great sensitiv- sultants, and the Kumbulan Emas log- ity to the dynamism of this society ging company. In a book already rich from at least the 1850s onward. What in insights about changing ways of we see today is just the latest episode managing shellfish beds and reef fish- in a series of adjustments by the eries, Hviding confronts also the new Marovo people and their leaders to challenges to Marovo autonomy that the opportunities and challenges of the conflicting agents of environmen- the outside world. The story is unfold- talist utopia and capitalist magic are ing at an accelerating rate, as Malay- now offering. As Hviding shows, sian loggers now exceed the earlier “present-day discourses in Marovo, efforts of the Japanese tuna fishers oppositional, confrontational or other- in a race to commoditize the resources wise, borrow freely and innovatively of the lagoon for the benefit of from global systems of political econ- foreign companies and their share- omy and meaning.” These borrowings holders. include domains as diverse as anthro- In a chapter entitled “The Work of pological kinship theory, colonial land the Guardians: Confronting Global legislation, Christian doctrines, and Systems” the social anthropology of environmentalism. this embryonic “globalization” process I believe Guardians of Marovo is considered. The village world of Lagoon will take its place as an Marovo is still superficially similar to ethnographic classic that opens new the almost closed communities of the windows on a Melanesian society colonial past (more closed than in the seen through the optic of marine precontact period, Hviding argues), tenure. The people of Marovo Lagoon but the surface appearance of “tradi- have been well served by their eth- tion” is misleading. Whereas Mali- nographer, whose book serves as a nowski fretted in the Trobriand Islands model of collaborative anthropology because he was starved of news of the research that meets both the wishes Great War in Europe, an event quite of local communities to see their outside the knowledge of his infor- customs documented, and also the mants, Hviding in Marovo Lagoon exacting standards of innovative never escaped from the discourse of scholarship. In both respects the fron- global warming, rainforest destruc- tiers of knowledge have been signifi- tion, biodiversity prospecting, privati- cantly extended. zation, and the new world order, tim bayliss-smith because this is increasingly the context St John’s College, in which key decison-makers in University of Cambridge, England Marovo Lagoon now operate. The World Wide Web has not yet arrived in villages in the Western Solomons, but book reviews 265 References articles to regular books are published on some aspect of development in the Hviding, Edvard. 1995a. Vivinei Tuari pa Ulusaghe: Custom Stories of the Marovo region. A Sustainable Future for Area. Recorded and edited by Edvard Melanesia? Natural Resources, Popu- Hviding. Bergen: Centre for Development lation and Development is an example Studies, University of Bergen, in collabora- of the burgeoning literature on devel- tion with Western Province Division of opment in the Pacific. Culture, Gizo, Solomon Islands. Coauthored by Bob Thistlethwaite ———. 1995b. Kiladi oro vivineidi tonga- and Derrin Davis and published in nia ria tingitonga pu ko pa idere oro pa 1996, this book is part of the Pacific goana pa Marovo.

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