Content area
Full text
HARD TIMES ON KAIRIRU ISLAND: Poverty, Development, and Morality in a Papua New Guinea Village. By Michael French Smith. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. 1994. viii, 278 pp. US$39.00, cloth. ISBN 0-8248-1581-5; US$14.95, paper, ISBN 0-8248-1536-X.
ANTHROPOLOGISTS have frequently remarked on the dense meshing of moral and material concerns in many Melanesian societies. Far from indicating a mundane, materialistic orientation to success in the world, a concern with goods and how they travel from person to person may be deeply embedded in the social and moral fabric. Social and material wellbeing not only reflect one another, but also profoundly mirror the moral status of individuals and the community, and prosperity becomes a comment on social harmony and moral correctness. What happens in such a society when it is confronted with the forces of capitalism and colonialism that challenge the cultural assumption of moral, social, and material interconnectedness? The answer to this question is the main...