Social rationality and scales of action: inter-ethnic relations in cockfighting and game-fishing, Raiatea, French Polynesia

Abstract

This article challenges the notion of economic rationality as a criterion for explaining ethnic boundary maintenance. It offers an ethnographic analysis of inter-ethnic relations in the context of games (cockfights and game-fishing contests) in the island of Raiatea (French Polynesia). Although all players engage in the same basic gambling practices, money is differentially scaled and mobilized by the Tahitian and Chinese participants. Building on recent pragmatic approaches to rationality, it is shown that the players' rationalities differ not from the point of view of economic maximization, but only in so far as they participate in social relations at different scales.

Keywords:

• Rationality
• local/global scales
• pragmatics
• interactionism

Acknowledgements

I wish to express my gratitude toward my Tahitian and Raiatean hosts for their hospitality and their patience in explaining the details of the games, as well as to the journal's anonymous reviewers for their attentive reading and helpful comments.

Notes

1. I use these labels in the way they are used in contemporary Polynesian society. ‘Ta'ata Tahiti’ (Tahitians) designates the inhabitants of the Society Islands, in contrast to the other archipelagos of French Polynesia (Gambier, Australs, Tuamotu and Marquesas). ‘Polynesians’ is more encompassing; it is challenged by ‘Ma'ohi’, which refers to all indigenous inhabitants of French Polynesia. ‘Tinito’ or ‘Chinois’ refers to the Hakka and Cantonese descendants of immigrants from China.

2. In the 1950s and 1960s, the colony became a French Overseas Territory renamed ‘French Polynesia’ and came under tighter control from the Metropole. The massive injection of funds, aimed at accelerating economic development and preventing opposition to French rule, led to the rise of a wages economy. Since the end of nuclear tests in late 1996, the Metropole has allowed more autonomy to the territory and established a fund for the post-nuclear restructuring of the economy, which consists of the injection of an annual 150,000,000 euros (193,000,000 USD) for a population of around 250,000. This has fostered the expansion of the civil service sector and subsidized employment.

3. Ethnic boundaries have subsisted despite the high rate of marriages between Chinese and Tahitians, especially in outlying islands such as Raiatea.

4. I have dealt with these games separately and more in depth in previous publications (Trémon 2005, 2006, 2010).

5. This gendered aspect of the games is an important dimension that I shall not address in the space of this article.

6. His ‘grammar for action’ differs from Bourdieu's ‘generative grammar’ in that he does not use the notion of ‘disposition’ (the internalization of the larger social structure that determines the possibilities of action). To this extent, the modified version of Barth's approach to inter-ethnic relations I propose diverges from other suggested alternatives, among which is that of Bentley (1987), who uses Bourdieu to challenge Barth's methodological individualism.

7. Whereas in Bali this dichotomy matches a distinction between high-status and low-status players and spectators, in Raiatea it does not.

8. The island of Raiatea was divided into nine districts before the arrival of the Europeans. The islanders continue to refer to districts even though they were replaced by three ‘communes’ in 1971.

9. Cf. note 1.

10. Prior to the first contest, they also pay their annual fee of 20,000 Pacific francs for participation in the championship.

11. In a series of twenty-three matches between Tahitians and Chinese, the Tahitians lost seventeen matches – and their bets.

12. The Raiatean Tahitians have relatives living on other islands, but their present-day networks rarely extend beyond French Polynesia.