Abstract
Alcohol and drinking are Kabutaulaka’s central point around which he builds his exploration of the relationship between land, culture and logging.
He recounts the corrupting compromises made in the Solomon Islands that hinge on the interaction between the customary land tenure system and the logging industry. This has produced a hybrid culture, which encourages and facilitates individual accumulation at the expense of traditional wealth redistribution. The resulting situation is one that has harmful effects on social stratification, the position of women and the sustainability of resources.
Kabutaulaka’s conclusion is that in large-scale resource exploitation there is a continuous process of cultural reconstruction: in order to address the issue of sustainable forest management there needs to be an awareness of the sociocultural factors which influence decisions on forest development.
Table of Contents
As a landowner from Malaita gulped down the Solbrew to quench his thirst, with a sigh of relief he made it clear where the money came from to finance his favourite pastime: Lif blong akwa nomoa tok (it’s the leaf of the akwa tree that talks). In another incident, a Guadalcanal man who went on a drinking spree with his son told him: Inu ko inu dalequ, inau a lani ona (drink, drink my son, I’m a landowner). I recount these incidents not because there is any particular connection between logging in Solomon Islands and the beer company Solbrew. Rather, the statements demonstrate the ties between land, forest resources, landowners and the kinship bond between people. It signifies the power landowners have, or at least think they have, over resources such as forest.
I have chosen alcohol and drinking—a substance and an activity which are normally found far from rain forests, logging trucks and chainsaws—as the starting point around which to build my exploration of the relationship between land, culture and logging. It illustrates that in the process of resource exploitation and increasing commercialisation, there is also a process of cultural construction and deconstruction taking place. The eventual product is a hybrid culture which has a profound impact on the issue of sustainable forest management. In this case, the beer shifts from the bar and home to the forest. In some instances, the alcohol becomes the commodity around which the logging industry revolves—it dictates the nature of logging negotiations, state policies, and the relationship between landowners and the different stakeholders in the forest industry. This affects sustainability. It is when this happens that the rumble in the jungle begins.
Sustainable logging in Solomon Islands has been difficult, not only because of poor state policies, but also because (i) the land tenure system, and (ii) the logging industry, produce a culture characterised by the rapid monetisation of certain sectors of society, increasing corruption at the political level, and the emergence of a new élite group in the villages. This new élite group is nearly always financed by logging money and backed by logging companies.
An old man from Guadalcanal once said to me: logging hemi spoelem ples en kastom blong iumi ‘logging spoils our place and custom’. Implicit in this statement is the conception of culture, not only as rules, norms or customs that regulate society, but also as the social and physical environment around which culture is produced and sustained through time. The forest, therefore, is not just an economic commodity with the potential of generating monetary income. Rather, it is part of the physical and social existence of society.
Antony Hooper, in discussing the sociocultural aspects of development in the South Pacific, defines culture as ‘the body of shared understandings in terms of which social interactions take place’ (1993:315). Culture also includes the means by which shared understandings are produced and sustained through time. Tradition, on the other hand, is used here to refer to a model of a past way of life. It does not imply something which has existed unchanged since contact with the outside world, even though it is sometimes represented as being unchanging. Rather, the term is used here to refer to the sets of social behaviour and ‘ways of doing things’ that have emerged, and continue to have a connection to the past. According to Erchak, ‘culture is shared symbolic knowledge which people draw on as they make their way through life. It provides its bearers pathways to a satisfying life—or at least survival’ (1992:3). This is a useful definition when discussing the impact of large-scale resource exploitation on society, and the production of a hybrid culture which often has a significant impact on both the industry and society. In nearly all large-scale resource development projects such as mining, forest and fisheries, there are usually a number of stakeholders involved. Often, the most dominant are the state, multinational companies, landowners, non-government organisations, politicians, and local entrepreneurs. These stakeholders usually have different interests in participating in an industry such as forestry. Each stakeholder attempts to maximise its monetary benefit from the resource at stake. In such a situation, ‘the body of shared understandings’ is usually embodied in the contract signed between the stakeholders. This contract is, in nearly every case, surrounded by a culture of intense competition between stakeholders which often is subsequently accepted as the norm.