Langi Kavaliku’s chapter sets out the basic theme and offers a clear, principled stand on a number of issues. The perspective he brings is that of a political leader with long experience at the critical intersection of international development discourse and national policymaking. His address makes three significant points. First, that, the majority of global conferences on development as well as the policies of major development agencies are overwhelmingly focused on economic issues. Culture generally appears as an afterthought, mentioned, if at all, ‘only in dispatches.’ While this was hardly news to his audience, his second point effectively stands the first on its head, drawing attention to the fact that,

What this implies is that culture is not merely an afterthought, an impediment to development, and a contradiction of the basic premise of the universal rationality of economics. Economics cannot claim universal rationality. It was not created in a vacuum, but by a group acting from within the culture of capitalism. Thus Kavaliku’s third point casts aside the conceptually flawed contrast between culture and development and replaces it with the much more potent rhetoric of modernisation and westernisation.

Given his identification with the powerful élite of a country with a notably stable and enduring national culture, it is understandable that Kavaliku does not dwell on the tensions, ambiguities and conflicts inherent in that culture. Many of the chapters in the following ‘specific’ group, however, address these issues directly in the context of other countries, using contrasts variously phrased as ‘government and culture’, ‘centre and edge’, ‘rational/legal authority and traditional authority’ as well as ‘development and culture’.

The two following chapters have the same expansive theoretical sweep. Kavaliku used an image of Pacific countries as lokua, small fish living in reef ponds cut off from the sea at tidal lows, but periodically replenished by ocean waters. Epeli Hau’ofa’s central concern is with the ocean (‘our most wonderful metaphor for just about anything we can think of’), but his fish are hardly lokua; instead they are a much bigger, more confident species, ranging over the whole Pacific and its surrounding shores. Pacific emigrants have sustained their homelands independently of the world of official diplomacy and neocolonial dependency. The sea has been a pathway into the whole region, a common inheritance and a potent symbol of a common Oceanic identity—which, he points out, has the capacity to be the foundation on which to build a humane vision of the future free from the market economy and the ‘homogenising force of the global juggernaut’.

Marshall Sahlins has little to say about the possibilities of regional unity, but much about the capacity of local cultures everywhere to seize the opportunities and the wealth provided by the global system for whatever good things make up the local conception of human existence. Culture is not disappearing, as predicted by the old ‘Despondancy Theory’. Instead, ‘global homogeneity and local differentiation have developed together’. The process, the ‘indigenisation of modernity’ echoes closely the distinction made by Kavaliku in his call for modernisation (of the local scheme of things) as against homogeneity and a disabling westernisation.

According to Peggy Fairbairn-Dunlop, although Pacific women generally argue that they have not been disadvantaged by the development process because they have been shielded by customary ways, the question remains as to whether those customary ways have in fact done enough to protect women’s overall well-being. There is considerable evidence to show that this is not always the case: for example, despite generally having the same educational attainments as men, women participate much less in national decision-making; family systems are weakening, marriages breaking down and households headed by women are increasing. Malama Meleisea, Tarcisius Tara Kabutaulaka and John Burton all lend weight to these general statements with their observations on how some women have been treated in development situations in Samoa, Solomon Islands and some Papua New Guinea societies.

Meleisea’s chapter concerns governance in Samoa. It begins with the observation that ‘values about governance are rooted in culture, and that not all cultures value the kind of openness and acceptance of individual rights that Western thinkers have argued to be the basis of human development’. His point is based on the well-known contrast between rational/legal authority underlying the constitution and government, and the traditional chiefly authority that is the basis of Samoan culture. This, he points out, ‘gives us two system of legitimacy to draw upon’, with the gloomy result that both systems are compromised and the sense of citizenship eroded. Meleisea’s chapter resonates strongly with Kabutaulaka’s account of the same sort of corrupting compromises in Solomon Islands, hinging on the interaction between the customary land tenure system and the logging industry. This, he points out, produces a hybrid culture—dynamic to be sure, and heavily influenced by the traditional patron-client political relationships, but in a situation which encourages and facilitates individual accumulation at the expense of traditional wealth redistribution. The resulting situation is one which has deleterious effects on social stratification, the position of women and the sustainability of resources.

Burton stresses the fundamentally political nature of the relationship between ‘remote peoples’, the central government of Papua New Guinea and the large foreign corporations involved in mining enterprises. His plea for sociocultural research is couched in terms which are disingenuously neutral and modest—namely ‘the avoidance of risk for both investors and local communities’—but the wider implications, political catastrophes like Bougainville, are obvious. He lays some stress on the particularities of different situations: the nature of the traditional political organisation, the impact of mining, the corporate culture and the monitoring capacity of government. As his examples clearly show it is wrong to assume that ‘remote peoples’ have no power. They can, in certain situations, easily match the power of both central government and large corporations; but it is an enervating, and, in many cases, extremely combative process, which might be avoided to some extent if as much were spent on social and cultural monitoring as is spent on environmental impact studies.

Philipp Muller, like Kavaliku, writes from the perspective of a Pacific Islander with long experience of the management of development projects. Like Kavaliku, he has a clear idea of the contradictions involved when the ‘educated privileged’ (as he puts it, ‘almost systematically desensitised to the needs of our own people’) promote noble general goals such as job creation, foreign exchange earnings and improved balance of payments, in almost complete ignorance of what people on the ground consider to be important. Projects are directed by a faceless government, carried out by officials who are hard pressed and under-resourced—an unfortunate situation leading straight to what he calls two universal lies: ‘that you can get useful information from a government department, and that a government official is there to help you’. Joeli Veitayaki has a keen awareness of the same contradictions. His experience, however, is shorter than Muller’s, and, because his chapter on fisheries management deals with a situation in which cultural principles are taken into account, his perspective is a somewhat sunnier one. There are obviously good lessons to be learned from the way in which Fiji has endeavoured to take culture into account in its fisheries management, marrying it with research and grass-roots participation. Kerry James’ chapter echoes many of the points about culture and participatory development made by Muller and Veitayaki. However, like Burton, she also stresses the particularities of local social organisations and authority structures and the dangers inherent in assuming that the ‘educated privileged’ have any greater understanding of them than the average foreign development project consultant.

Fiji can also apparently provide good lessons in the importance of ‘taking cultural principles into account’ in fields other than fisheries management. Robert Norton’s chapter shows how the deep ethnic differences between Fijians and Indians have been successfully managed and negotiated in a way that, for the present at least, accommodates both groups. Again, it has depended on historical particularities rather than recourse to universalistic principles. Chiefs have retained their position as icons of traditional life, as against money-based lifestyles, and from this position of political and cultural strength they have been able to encourage acceptance among non-chiefly Fijians of the political and economic accommodations they have reached with Indian interests.

While virtually all the other chapters are concerned with relatively organised, relatively stable and ongoing ‘traditional’ cultures and their relationships to the forces of development, Shane Jones’ chapter on the New Zealand Maori describes a situation where both ‘culture’ and ‘development’ are in the process of active construction. The question here is whether the natural resources transferred to Maori by the state are better developed from the centre (by building large commercial enterprises with growing capital bases, maintaining technical advances with profits dedicated to further Maori education and training) or from the edge, by having the resources developed by tribal bodies, the inheritors of the rights and resources denied to their ancestors. The New Zealand situation, as Jones describes it, is obviously a limiting case for any discussion of the relationships between culture and development, with conceptual, political and moral implications going far beyond the scope of this brief introduction.

Richard Englehardt, Levani Tuinabua and Hana Ayala deal with cultural tourism. All stress the spectacular, worldwide growth of the industry and its potential contribution to the economic development of countries like those of the South Pacific.

Englehardt reviews the hard questions that are commonly asked about the industry. Who actually benefits from the money that tourism generates? What are the effects of industry on the environment and the local cultures? Are children and women exploited on the fringes of affluent resorts? He stresses that there are no general answers since the necessary studies have not been done. He focuses on the lessons provided by two case studies, from Vietnam and Laos, stressing the importance of planning and exhaustive consultation with all the ‘stakeholders’ involved in tourism and heritage developments. He also makes the valuable and timely recommendation that properly prepared cultural impact assessments ‘should be required by law prior to the approval of every (tourism) development activity.’

Tuinabua adds the valuable observation that tourism should not be held wholly responsible for drugs, immodesty and the trivialisation of sacred traditions, drugs and immodesty, which may be also be the result of other influences. He also draws attention to local cases in which tourism development has worked smoothly with traditional communities, to the obvious satisfaction of both sides.

Ayala writes from a planning, management perspective, but on a more ambitious and regional scale, stressing the possibilities open to Pacific countries through careful evaluation of their heritage resources, in particular for tourism, conservation and research. She points to the ways in which these activities might be mutually beneficial and the part that Vaka Moana might play in achieving their complementarity.

Together, these three papers all argue for a cautious approach to what is undoubtedly a contentious field of development. All are concerned that the process of development should not result in traditional cultures being destroyed. Their conception of culture is, however, less comprehensive than that embraced by any of the other conference chapters. What they stress is mainly the observable artefacts of culture, what Burton refers to as the ‘feathers and paint’, without exploring what is involved in translating these artefacts into commercial settings. This observation is not meant as a criticism. England, for example, has considerable industry in ‘heritage tourism’, but nobody would suggest that this does much to preserve the values, way of life and culture of Elizabethan times. Again, there are numerous Pacific examples of satisfactory accommodation between culture and commercialism of the kind referred to by Tuinabua.