Islands, islanders and the world: poverty in the periphery?

Abstract

It is fashionable when talking about economic development in the Pacific Islands to draw attention to widening gaps in lifestyle, power and privilege between an urban-based elite (bureaucrats, businessmen and politicians) and a rural peasantry - villagers who practise a mixture of subsistence farming and cash earning activity. In the early 1970s the sub- sistence affluence of village residents in the ni larger Pacific countries was frequently mentioned. Unlike the situation in much of Asia where the term subsistence production was virtually synonymous with grinding poverty, in many parts of the Pacific farmers could satisfy most needs for food and material goods with relatively little regular work and virtually no money income. As Fisk's (1964, 166) 'tribal economist' argued: "If I act in a rational way, I'll just sit on my backside today. When I want a good feed, I've got all I need, piping hot and there's nothing to pay." In the late 1980s the prevailing perspective on rural life in the Pacific is quite different. Rather than referring to "a reasonably comfortable, secure and adequate living" in the village (Fisk, 1970, 45), the current tendency is to argue that village life is "rapidly becoming the preserve of the poor" (Hau'ofa, 1985, 9).