Space and time in West Guadalcanal: a political economy

Abstract

In Guadalcanal, regular contact with European traders beginning in the early 1800s initiated a profound shift in the nature of settlement, a reconfiguration in the pattern of life and a reorientation of economic practices away from the bush and towards the coast. The Vaturanga have come to use directional markers to explain the changes they have experienced as a result of pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial processes. These include east and west, but are more pronounced in the usage of tasi (towards the sea) and longa (towards the bush). These directions have come to represent change not only in space but in understanding time. The main issues relevant to this are land claims, rights, exchange patterns and notions of identity. The Vaturanga assert ideas about space in order to resist and alter dominant hegemonic constructions made about them by others.

Keywords:

• Guadalcanal
• space
• time
• hegemony
• modernization

Introduction

Colonialism and nationalism have impacted local peoples throughout the world in various ways. However, the most important aspects centre on questions of land tenure, land usage and population movement. Wherever it has arrived, modernization has brought with it new practices, new economic goals, and the reshaping and reframing of territory.

Guadalcanal began to see significant contact with the outside world only about 1800 (Bennett, 1987). Traders and later missionaries arrived, to be followed eventually by the establishment of the British Solomon Islands Protectorate (BSIP) in 1893 (Bennett, 1987). Eventually gaining independence in 1978, the modern nation-state of the Solomon Islands has continued many of these processes.

The Vaturanga District, where I conducted field research in 1989, 1995 and 1996–97 (see Ryniker, 2001, 2012) was one of the earliest areas in the region to have significant and regular contact with Europeans. Moreover, since that contact, the local people have found themselves absorbing not only political and economic changes, but hegemonic constructions of themselves and their territory.

Much of this has been focused on plantation agriculture, specifically copra (an ingredient used in soap), but also missionization, roads, ports, schools, resorts and mass media have all played a role in shaping their awareness of themselves as a people. It is through these patterns and institutions that the Vaturanga have come to explain and attempt to resist and constrain the domination they have experienced (Ryniker, 2001, pp. 240–243).

The earliest contact reshaped life in significant ways. People began to move from hamlets in the bush down to the coast to form villages where they could trade with European ships traversing the Pacific. Access to trade goods (cargo) led people to adopt new kinds of social patterns. Missionaries furthered this process in the area by establishing mission stations where ships called regularly.

With colonialism came plantation development, roads and the arrival of plantation workers in large numbers. Land alienation has significantly impacted the region and in many ways the whole nature of land usage has been altered. Yet the Vaturanga maintain many traditional practices, such as matrilineal ownership of land, slash-and-burn horticulture, and hunting, fishing and gathering on traditional lands.

Yet other aspects of their lives have been radically altered. Missionization led not only to a movement down to the coast to form villages (rather than hamlets) but to the elimination of traditional religious duties (e.g. ancestor shrines). The bush or longa gradually came to be associated with what was lost, while the coast or tasi became associated with modern ways. Thus, the directions have taken on ideological components. Similarly, east and west have come to be thought of as representations not only of space but of time, of change, of difference.

This work is a political economy of the Vaturanga usage of directional markers to explain their lives, the changes and problems they encounter, and their attempts to manage and make sense of their experiences as they encounter the modern world of development, money, population movement and land alienation.

Theoretical orientation

It has been noted by various scholars that the economic imperatives of modernization have led to the reorganization of space on various scales, globally and regionally (see Frank, 1969; Wallerstein, 1974). Others have noted similar features of consciousness (Gramsci, 1971; Williams, 1977). It is important also to look at issues of memory and how people respond to and adapt to colonization, nationalism and transnational forces (see Anderson, 1992; Hobsbawm & Ranger, 1983).

I am particularly and especially interested here in how a local people (the Vaturanga) conceptualize space both in ways framed by colonialism and modernization and in resistance to such frames. More specifically, how memory connects to spaces. Boyarin (1994) has noted how both conceptions of the past and present, as well as those of geographic units, are more fluid and dynamic than we usually conceive. Memory is political (Boyarin, 1994, p. 2). Moreover, space, especially in the modern conception of it, is unquestionably so. Importantly he asks, “Is it possible for us to think … as cultural actors evidently do, … of ‘past’ events being truly effective in the present – conceive of them, that is, as not really past?” (Boyarin, 1994, p. 2). It is critical to my thesis that the Vaturanga have managed to create notions of space which allow for the past to be held in the present, separated less by time than by space.

Giddens (1994) has noted:

Modernity, one could argue, is precisely the transmutation of time and space – or, at least, such a transmutation is at the core of the institutional dynamism which has torn apart traditional orders and lodged all of us aboard a careering juggernaut whose track and destination we only partially control. (p. xi)

To Giddens and others, time and space have become “empty categories” (Giddens, 1994, p. xii; see also Friedland & Boden, 1994). The meaning here is somewhat obscure, but essentially refers to the way globalization and modern economic processes make local conceptions of life irrelevant except in their relation to the universal.

Anthropologists, who arguably are part of modernization, have often treated their subjects ahistorically (synchronically). Moreover, although we have not discounted indigenous forms of knowledge, we have often tended to treat them in universalizing ways. That is, we have tended either to describe them as instances of something more general, or we have assumed (presumed) that they are reactions to the general.

Local peoples, however, continue to construct their own realities even if the terms for that construction are shifting and changing due to large-scale forces like modernization. Fernandez (1984) has argued that there is a reciprocal nature to the conceptions of space made by cultural actors. I find particularly useful his notion of “architectonic” space and his characterizations of different groups as organizing space in centripetal, centrifugal and centred ways (Fernandez, 2003).

Following this thematic approach, I argue that the Vaturanga have conceived of space in forms primarily directional. Given their history of movement, missionization, colonization and national consciousness, they have reframed their environment into traditional and non-traditional spaces, specifically linking the past to the present, holding it in a separate and distinct spatial relationship using the directions of tasi (towards the sea), longa (towards the bush) and, to a lesser degree, the east–west axis of Guadalcanal.

In doing this the Vaturanga are able to hold claim over land and resources and to bifurcate their responses to the modern world to maintain indigenous knowledge and resources in a rapidly changing economic context.

Inventing the past

In Melanesia there has been a widespread debate about the meaning of the past and its relation to the present. This has usually been framed in terms of kastom (Pijin for “customary ways”) which is often contrasted with European ways or skul (see Keesing & Tonkinson, 1982). Ideas about the past are presented to the Vaturanga as part of the nation-building project of the Solomon Islands. As such the mass media, the government, schools and other institutions regularly present to people ideas about their past. These ideas are often contested and used to legitimate certain projects, practices and patterns of power distribution.

When these issues emerge, which they frequently do, a hegemonic construction is asserted by various parties which justifies land alienation or resource extraction or political rights. Each time this happens the Vaturanga respond to this by expressing notions of space, particularly the four directions.

Towards the bush, or longa, is mapped as the direction of kastom, because that is the direction of the neglected ancestor shrines, of the hamlets their ancestors occupied before the missionaries, where there are no roads and (now) few people. On the other hand, the coast, or tasi, is mapped as the opposite, a place where the Vaturanga confront economic and social change on a daily basis – multiple ethnic and cultural traditions, busy roads taking people and commodities to markets in Honiara, and so forth. Similarly, they also think of “east” or ara as kastom and “west” or aso as change, although this is less pronounced than in the usage of longa and tasi.

Chronological and spatial features

It is necessary that we gain some perspective on the spatial arrangements in and around the Vaturanga District. Figure 1 focuses on the many features of modernization present. This small district has one of the country's few good roads passing through it. Along the road lie all Vaturanga villages except one, and in addition there are mission stations, markets, schools, a nearby resort and nearby copra plantations. It is difficult not to notice that everything and everyone are crowded along this road which is very close to the shoreline.

Figure 1. The Vaturanga District and environs.

Figure 1 also shows alienated land in and near the Vaturanga District, including the church-run Taitai plantation and the commercial Lavuro plantation. These facilities as well as others mentioned above have brought in people from elsewhere, who have different ideas about kastom and about land usage and tenure.

In addition, the chronological features need to be detailed. The transformation of the district began in the early 1800s when the first regular traders began to call at Guadalcanal (see Bennett, 1987). Table 1 shows the significant historical dates which have played a role in this transformation.

Table 1. Historical trajectory of change in the Vaturanga District.

1568	Spanish explorer Alvaro de Mendana sights the Solomon Islands
c.1800	First regular traders arrive
1871	Anglican Melanesian Mission established
1893	British Solomon Islands Protectorate established
1898	Roman Catholic Marist Mission established
1907	Levers Pacific Plantations Limited acquire 300,000 acres in Guadalcanal, Nggela and Russell Islands
1920s	First Land Commission (others to follow in the 1950s and 1960s)
1942–43	Japanese Occupation and Battle of Guadalcanal (Americans build road)
1978	Independence (transferring foreign ownership to 75-year leases)
1980	Taitai No. 1 Plantation returned to local control
1988	Taitai No. 2 Plantation turned to other uses (Hautambu Society of St Francis and Selwyn College)
1990s	Logging concessions in West Guadalcanal
1998	Guadalcanal Revolutionary Army begins road blockades in West Guadalcanal

Part of these processes involved the creation of taxonomic spaces and boundaries, the articulation of a national project, and distinctions between village and town. In addition to these historical events and spatial features, we can also detect the influence of mass media (radio and newspapers), ideologies (via missions and nation-building projects) and educational imperatives.

As we can see, the Vaturanga and their neighbours have experienced considerable economic and political changes over the past 200 years. Much of their land has been alienated, logged, altered and their entire pattern of residency has been reshaped by these forces.

Responses

Ideologies are not one-way streets. Discourses are dialectical in nature, and people do not merely absorb ideas from others, but also respond to them in meaningful and practical ways. Ideologies may be either hegemonic or counter-hegemonic (see Gramsci, 1971). In all cases, economic rights, conditions, labour productivity and resources are important features and central to the assertion of competing ideologies.

The Vaturanga participate in such debates about themselves and others in various ways. They characterize themselves as “landowners” (or “lo”) for instance, to contrast themselves with the large population of plantation workers who mainly come from the island of Malaita to the east of Guadalcanal. They also are characterized by those plantation workers (and others especially town dwellers) as “Solomons Men” and are ideologically marked by them as lacking kastom. This assertion allows others to justify usurping and occupying Vaturanga land. These contestations have led in recent years to significant ethnic tension (see Fraenkel, 2004; Moore, 2004).

We are interested here, however, in how the Vaturanga specifically talk about space and time and how the conceptions of space and time play a role in counter-hegemonic constructions about the land, about the past, and about themselves and their rights.

Relevant ethnography

To understand how the Vaturanga engage in ideological contestation of notions of the land we need to know something about their traditional culture and how it intersects with the modern world system. The distinction between kastom and modern influences is very prominent in the minds and symbols employed generally in the Solomon Islands. We will look both at how this distinction is made among the Vaturanga, and at the influences and impacts of larger colonial and post-colonial systems in the region.

The Vaturanga see themselves as one part of a larger community of peoples who live in West Guadalcanal, including those calling themselves Nggae, Ngeri, Ghari, Tambulivu and Kakabona. These people share the same language (although they speak different dialects) and share similar cultural features, many of which are identified ideologically with kastom. They also identify with peoples in other parts of Guadalcanal, especially in terms of the notion of “landowners” or “lo”.

The web of social relations is defined first by kinship and three features are prominent here: (1) matrilineal corporate descent groups, (2) marital exogamy and (3) patrilocal residence. The clans and moieties are listed in Table 2. The peoples of Western Guadalcanal, essentially just west of Honiara through the Ghari District (see Figure 2), share the same six clans, which are divided into lineages, and the entire system is divided into two moieties. Individuals are expected to marry into the opposite moiety, and their kinship terminological system is Iroquois, meaning that they can marry their cross-cousins, but not their parallel cousins. This pattern contrasts the people of this region with the predominant outsiders with whom they come into contact – Malaitan plantation workers.

Figure 2. The landowners of West Guadalcanal.

Table 2. Moieties and their clans in West Guadalcanal.

Bahea moiety	Manu loki moiety
(shark)	(eagle)
Kakau Clan	Lakuili Clan
Kidipale Clan	Haubata Clan
Kiki Clan	Simbo Clan

Marriage is also an important economic transaction which effects access to land and resources. When a West Guadalcanal man takes his wife back to his own ancestral area, he will claim land and resources through his maternal uncle. His wife and children will not belong to his lineage, but will rent land locally. Thus, marriage is an important means by which land is distributed and controlled. This process of land redistribution through marriage ties is referred to as sui kokochi (lit. “share land”). This process is repeated when a man's sister's son marries, thus creating complex and interweaving ties between different districts and communities, complicating land claims and an understanding of the landscape.

As noted in Table 1, regular contact with outsiders (Europeans) began around 1800. Guadalcanal was among those areas favoured by traders, while the neighbouring island of Malaita became an important source of labour recruitment for plantations in Queensland and Fiji (see Bennett, 1987, pp. xvii–xviii). Once the BSIP was established in 1893, Guadalcanal, Central Province and areas to the west were strongly favoured for plantation development, which was accompanied by land alienation and direct contact by resident ex-patriot owners and managers (see Hookey, 1969; Scheffler & Larmour, 1987). These plantations mainly produced copra and palm oil. Malaita was avoided, in large part because of a history of sometimes violent resistance to outsiders (see Keesing, 1992). Even today, Malaita has only two plantations and logging concessions are controversial there.

As a result of this pattern, many Malaitans migrated to West Guadalcanal to work on plantations or to take up jobs associated with town dwelling and the service industries associated with development. Equally disruptive was the considerable land alienation experienced by peoples in West Guadalcanal and the influx of outsiders who do not share their traditions, patterns or understanding of land usage and tenure. Although Guadalcanal islanders and plantation workers do intermarry on occasion, and do form other significant relationships, sometimes friendly, sometimes not, the two groups lack shared interests and engage in fundamentally different patterns of making a living. Although plantation workers do grow food in garden plots (often over and against the objections of local landowners or lo) they primarily rely upon wages.

The Vaturanga and their landowner neighbours, however, find themselves enmeshed in an economic system consisting of two contrasting patterns – first, a subsistence pattern derived from local traditions which is kinship-dependent and second, a market-oriented pattern derived from the colonial and post-colonial experience. These two strains intersect and affect each other. This intersection underlies many of the issues, conflicts and problems the Vaturanga face. It also plays a powerful role in their understanding of land and space and their relationship to time.

Vaturanga subsistence practices involve a mixed horticultural practice with some fishing, hunting and gathering, and animal husbandry (pigs and chickens). Each lineage has its own land base which is distributed to its members for the growing of gardens and fruit groves. This is an extensive mode of production requiring a large land base due to the rotational pattern in tropical horticulture. Women do most of the work in the gardens, while men clear the land when ready, and otherwise are engaged in fishing, hunting or feasting.

Feasting is the primary means of formal exchange and land control in the region. The peoples in the area share a system involving four kinds of feasts: mortuary feasts, bride wealth, land sharing and changing lineages (for more information on the pattern, see Ryniker, 2001, p. 51). This system brings together people from all neighbouring districts that share the same lineages and clans. Thus, the ties represented in these practices are widespread, complex and interlocking in such a way as to create a viable community consisting of the entire western part of the island.

The Vaturanga also participate in the market economy, primarily through making and selling copra, selling some of the subsistence resources in public markets and in operating small businesses or transportation services. In my survey (see Ryniker, 2001, p. 55) I found that 88% of households were engaged in selling goods of some kind.

Additionally, logging concessions and mining interests have become more prominent in Guadalcanal in recent decades. These issues have powerful implications for the understanding of land and space, since many of these resources are located in or towards the bush or longa. The potential income from such concessions is considerable, and has led to much conflict and debate within the community about how to deal with such pressures. Some Vaturanga have begun to argue for a change in the entire land tenure system, promoting private property. One group has even left the main villages and set out to make a living on their own without regard to the chiefs and elders.

Thus, the political system is powerfully implicated here. Traditionally each village has two chiefs, one representing each moiety. These village chiefs are selected by the elders (or tauvia) of the various lineages. These persons are responsible for land distribution and resolving disputes (which are often over land rights). The term tauvia is contrasted with that of mane loki or “big man” which is someone who gains political authority through charism and effective feasting and exchange. Increasingly men are able to assert the status of “big man” via non-traditional means, especially if they are connected with the Anglican mission, the schools or some development project (like the water system). These institutions have also developed their own alternative feasting systems. Moreover, they also generally involve persons who have obtained a relatively higher status due to educational attainment. Thus, the entire system of social control is undergoing pressures and changes.

All of these issues raise questions about tradition or kastom and modernity or skul. All of them are implicated in the way land is understood, how that understanding is evolving among locals, and how they are attempting to make sense of change and preserve and sustain their claims over land.

Things longa

We will first look at matters and concepts which the Vaturanga specifically identify as pertaining to the bush or longa. There are three principal concerns which they identify: ancestors and other tindao, magic and kastom.

I learned about the ways the Vaturanga speak about space and time on my very second day of my third field trip. The brother-in-law of my host offered to take me into the bush to see the gardens and other features of the area. Vulu (not his real name) told me about Vaturanga land, how it is controlled through the woman's line (matrilineality) and that this sometimes created problems, since the men will bring their wives to their own ancestral territory, where those wives will not have land to grow without additional exchanges (sui kokochi). He felt that this was a hardship for many families.

I asked him about making sacrifices in the gardens. He told me:

if it is a newer garden deep in the bush where the ancestors use to live then people will burn some pigs, make a sacrifice to ask the ancestors to help them, make the garden grow good and the people's life good.

The inference is clear that it is in the bush (that is longa) that one must take into account such matters. I did learn that gardens closer to the sea or tasi did not usually involve any special rituals, although I was able to observe garden magic in such gardens.

People generally do not know precisely where the ancestor shrines are located, as this information is conveyed mainly through storytelling. Connected with the ancestors and other spirit beings, generally referred to as tindao, is a complicated list of places. Among them are the mythological “owners” of Guadalcanal called the mumu who are non-human beings who gave the Vaturanga and the neighbours their names and their locales to live in. The caves of the mumu are still there, but it is said that no one knows how to talk to them anymore, that this knowledge has been lost (except perhaps in East Guadalcanal). Some say that the caves are hidden from their eyes because they have lost this knowledge.

Also in the bush are the ancestor shrines, the skulls of ancestors kept in them, the bones of pigs sacrificed, sacred groves and streams, and gardens that are no longer in use. With all of these things are presumed also to reside the spirits of the dead ancestors, who many Vaturanga describe as “angry” with them because they no longer tend to them or make sacrifices. Because of this, many people say that it is dangerous or tambu even to go into the bush, unless you know what you are doing and where you are going. If you do have to go into the bush, people will wear charms or paint their faces, in the hopes that ancestors will not recognize them and then show their anger to them by giving them sickness or misfortune.

Cheche, an elder, told me about the ancestor shrines:

The shrines are deep in the bush (he emphasizes the word “deep”) and you should not go there. It is not possible for a Lakuili to visit a Lakuili shrine or a Kakau to visit a Kakau shrine because our ancestors are very angry with us and would kill us. Only Kakau can visit Lakuili or Lakuili visit Kakau. Even then you need protection from the spirits (tindao). This is because we abandoned our shrines and their worship to become Christians and live on the coast in villages, instead of in the bush like we use to. The spirits are so unhappy that they would kill any of their own if they came back or at least make them very sick. You cannot go visit these places just to see, you must have a good reason, such as a land claim, and then we would have to make sacrifices and those who went would carry ginger with them to protect them. These places are very tambu. The shrines consist of stones, groves of trees, strings of shells and skulls. You will also find pig bones there.

The ancestors and other beings are central to this discourse. For it is through ancestor beings that land claim and rights are made. Such beings are referred to as tindao by the Vaturanga. The Pijin gloss for this is “devil” which derives from the missions referring to the old ways as “worshipping the devil”. However, the word tindao does not mean “devil” in any sense that we would comprehend. It simply refers to any being that has mana and is non-human or no longer human, such as the mumu and the dead ancestors.

Two young men Mangan and Sukul excitedly told me one day about a non-ancestral tindao in the bush behind Selwyn College:

“This one is a snake” Mangan said. Some students saw it and were very afraid. (I wondered if such a sighting might include a message from a spirit being.) “Oh yes,” said Sukul “the ‘devils’ always show themselves for a reason.” (I asked them to speculate as to what the reason might be, they spoke generally.) “We don't know but usually it is because some being wants to tell us that they are angry with us, or sometimes that they are going to help us”, Mangan said. Sukul added “sometimes they come to tell you something about what has been on your mind, and they are a sign about that”. (I asked what one should do about seeing a tindao.) “If it just happens there is nothing you can do” said Mangan. “But if you seek them out you must wear charms and paint your face. Only men who know about such things would dare to do it.” Sukul added “We are too young to know about how to do such things.”

There are also tindao who are associated with the coast, especially the shark, and shells. There is a sacred shark associated with each nuhu or finger of land that points out into the sea. People used to make sacrifices to them, but no one now remembers how to do this, and I was not able to observe this, although Mangan claimed to have seen one of these beings.

As we can see there are very strict rules about interacting with tindao and this fact alone, which is complicated, makes it dangerous for people to enter into the bush unprepared and lacking in knowledge about such matters.

East and West Guadalcanal play an important role in the life of the dead. Hautambu, in the Vaturanga District (see Figure 1), is the place where the dead begin their journey to the land of the dead, which is a small coral islet on the very east end of Guadalcanal called Marapa. Thus, the ancestors literally are believed to live in East Guadalcanal, although they can manifest anywhere.

The ancestors are believed to manifest in various forms, usually totemic, such as sharks, eagles, snakes and sometimes shells. Other spirits manifest in similar forms, although the mumu usually appear as small muscular men. It is also said that the mumu keep treasures in caves in the centre of the island and that because the Vaturanga no longer follow kastom they do not have access to this knowledge.

Magic is a prominent theme throughout Melanesia, but Guadalcanal is especially renowned for it (see Ryniker, 2012). This issue is also closely connected to the bush, and also to East Guadalcanal. Several weeks after my visit to the bush with Vulu, his brother-in-law Kesa told me a story about learning a new kind of magic called taho:

One day in Honiara this old man from the bush in East Guadalcanal kept staring at me. Finally I went up to him and said “Old man what do you want?” He said he wanted some fish and chips, that he was hungry. So I went and bought him some fish and chips and gave them to him. He said to me “I don't have any money to pay you back, but take this bag and go stand outside the bank. Don't look inside it.” So I went and stood outside the Wespac Bank and stood there for thirty minutes. Then I went back to the old man who opened the bag and inside it was lots of money and he gave me $100. So this old man he knows taho.

Significant here is that this man was both from the bush and from East Guadalcanal. Kesa explained that people in East Guadalcanal live in the bush still, and so they know more magic than people in West Guadalcanal who live close to the sea (or tasi). Those who live in longa are said to be closer to ancestral ways, to tindao (or non-human entities or beings) who know more about magic.

Magic also played a role in another encounter I had about longa and East Guadalcanal. Siu, a kinsman to Kesa, told me that he had a similar encounter with a man in Honiara who was from East Guadalcanal. This man taught Siu a form of magic called goloandivisu (lit. money come back):

This man from Birau [in Tasemboko area east of Honiara] came up to me and said “give me $10” but I said I didn't have any money (I lied because I didn't want to give up the money). The man insisted and said “You have $10 in your pocket.” So I gave him $10 and we went to Chinatown together. He spent the $10 on three packets of fish and chips (one for me, one for him and one for his son who was also present). After we ate, the man said to me that he wants six beer but I said “I don't have any more money.” But he told me “You've still got some money in your pocket.” So I went and bought six beer and then he said he wanted six more. I said (truthfully) that I now had no more money. Then he gave me a 5 cent coin in a small box. He told me that if I took this box with me whenever I spend money, that money will come back to me. I did it and it worked. I even tested it by marking the bill I spent and it was the same bill that came back into my pocket.

As we can see from these examples concerning magic, concerns about the modern world and how to interact with it are being asserted. These sorts of practices and beliefs have been referred to as commodity fetishism (see Appadurai, 1990) but for our purposes, what is central is that people from East Guadalcanal and the bush (longa) have different kinds of knowledge than people in West Guadalcanal who live on the coast (tasi). A central form of this knowledge is magic which is presumed to be knowledge that is longa and not tasi.

Similar themes also emerged when I asked people about their kastom. A younger man named Paheha (again, all names are pseudonyms) told me one day that “If you want to find out about our kastom you should go to Moro's village. That is where they still practise kastom. We Vaturanga, we don't have any kastom anymore.”

Moro's village, which is in south-eastern Guadalcanal, has been discussed at length by Davenport and Coker (1967). What struck me, however, was the assertion that Vaturanga do not have kastom or do not follow it. This was a frequent theme in my encounters with villagers and outsiders such as plantation workers. The Vaturanga are identified by others, especially those from outside Guadalcanal (such as Malaitan plantation workers), as not a people who practise kastom ways. The Vaturanga assert this even about themselves, and often when asked will tell you that they have forgotten their traditions.

As such, they explain their kastom as residing in a physically removed space, usually and most prominently the bush or longa and sometimes as East Guadalcanal (where people also tend to live in the bush). Kesa once told me that “we forgot how to do (kastom) things”. He told me that “bush people are lucky because they know how to do kastom things”.

Although many scholars have identified kastom with an invented tradition (see Hobsbawm & Ranger, 1983; Keesing & Tonkinson, 1982), it is also an ideological construction of the past. For the Vaturanga, kastom is something they have largely forgotten, yet it remains a powerful concept because it is the source of their position as landowners (or lo) and it represents a kind of burden. Vulu expressed this most thoroughly:

Following kastom is very expensive. You have to feed all your relatives when they come, you must save up lots of pigs and money and other goods to give away to them, even just to get married. People will be angry with you if you do not do this. And you must obey the tauvia and you cannot buy or sell things easily.

Thus, kastom plays a kind of dual and contradictory role in the lives of the Vaturanga. It is useful in some ways and problematic in others. It legitimates one's claims and titles, but also limits them.

Things tasi

The coast is associated with issues which sometimes parallel and sometimes contrast with those of the bush. The principal issues faced by living tasi are land disputes, contact with outsiders and their interests, and conflicts about identity.

As noted, the changes brought about by the modern world have implicated land use and entitlement. While tasi represents today and longa the past, each are also directions. And it is longa where land claims and disputes are particularly relevant. There are two intersecting principal threats to land title: development projects and immigration. With the loss of alienated land in and near the Vaturanga District (see Figure 2), less land is available for landowners in this area. This means that there are many disputes about land, from the right to fell a tree, to the right to sui kokochi. With continued encroachment especially of loggers in the area, resource loss is becoming a significant problem (see Moore, 2004).

Logging has produced a number of problems. One local man from outside the Vaturanga District, named Ronis (again, all names are pseudonyms), talked about the impact of logging in his area (he was from another area of Guadalcanal). He listed the following: family fights, land disputes, land court cases and social inequality. By family he is referring to extended families or lineages. Logging concessions directly intrude upon the bush, but are also highly lucrative as companies will pay a lineage thousands of dollars for logging rights. Some regions have been logged more than others, but West Guadalcanal has seen considerable logging activity since the 1990s.

Land disputes are a logical consequence of these processes, as the potential commercial value of land conflicts with traditional land usage patterns, especially sui kokochi. Kesa told me that “some people will no longer do kokochi with land because they hope instead to gain a concession on that land and make modern money. This means many people will be disadvantaged and not be able to grow food.” Land disputes are supposed to be settled according to kastom as applied by Customary Land Courts. However, changes in the economy and in living arrangements have made people uncertain as to their land rights and claims. Often individuals will assume they have rights to certain resources in an area, only to find that they do not because they are not descended matrilineally. This has led to much fighting and trouble between lineages and within them. Sometimes people even resort to magic in these disputes, leading to increasing tensions within the community as accusations of harmful magic are levelled at particular individuals (for more information on magic, see Ryniker, 2012).

This has been compounded by the immigrant plantation worker population which has begun in some areas to encroach upon traditional lands to grow their own gardens and supplement their incomes by harvesting local resources to sell in markets. They ideally should seek permission to do this, but in some areas this is almost impossible to foresee and has led local landowners (lo) to view the migrant population with suspicion.

Here the distinction between the big road and the small road comes into play. Vati told me “people who live along the big road (see Figure 1) practise kastom less than those who live along small roads (where vehicles cannot pass)”. He told me:

We are very close to town here. The logging trucks go by all day and all night. We have market trucks and transportation trucks that make it easy for us to go to the city or to school or to sell copra in town. So we are more influenced by your (white people's) kastom than people in the bush.

Embedded in these conversations were ways of thinking about space and time. These themes would be repeated in many instances and observations.

The tasi world involves contact with many outsiders. There are plantation workers, school teachers, development specialists, missionaries, religious authorities and students. In addition, there are many potential benefits to living tasi including services, access to town, health care (at the mission station in Visale and at Selwyn College) and access to information like newspapers, public institutions and so forth.

Although in my observation the Vaturanga do keep many traditional practices, such as matrilineal descent, feasting, land tenure practices, and recognizing both the tauvia (elders) and mane loki (big men) as their legitimate political leaders, they often claim (as Paheha told me) to have forgotten their traditions. The missions have played an important role here. Kesa told me early in my fieldwork that “our ancestors moved out of the bush and to the coast when the missionaries came”. The Anglican mission which arrived in the 1870s not only provided cargo and other trade goods, but a reasonable degree of stability compared to the local warring and fighting that most people assume was normative prior to contact. However, the missionaries forbade the converts from attending their ancestor shrines and gradually attempted to regulate other aspects of daily life, including feasting and exchange systems.

This factor has led some to refer to Guadalcanal peoples generally as “Solomons Men”. This practice involves a deliberate ideological construction of the Vaturanga and their landowner neighbours as inauthentic and illegitimate, thus symbolically depriving them of their land rights and other claims. Those most likely to construct them as such are the plantation workers, who mainly come from Malaita, and with whom the Vaturanga and other Guadalcanal peoples have been in open conflict with since 1998 (see Fraenkel, 2004).

I encountered this directly one day in the form of a Kwaio elder from Lavuro plantation. I had called at Hautambu to buy supplies at their store, and the English brother there told me there was someone I should meet in the dining room, that he was a man associated with Roger Keesing and had carried his ashes to Malaita. I was introduced to Arae as an anthropologist. We spoke in Pijin and he said to me “Why are you speaking Pijin?” I replied “You spoke Pijin to me so I spoke Pijin back. Did I use it incorrectly?” He shook his head. Then he said to me again (in Pijin) “David Akin doesn't speak Pijin, he speaks language.” I said that I was still learning the Vaturanga language and so had to rely on Pijin until then. This elicited another shake of the head. Finally he asked me “When are you going to Malaita?” to which I replied “I am not going to Malaita, I am studying the kastom of the Vaturanga.” This was greeted with a dismissive sound and a polite rebuff that he needed to get on to other things.

This encounter highlighted for me the idea that many outsiders, especially those from Malaita, do not see Guadalcanal people as having any kastom and certainly would not be worth the efforts of an anthropologist. In discussing this encounter with villagers and other plantation workers I began to understand that this represented the contested and ideological nature of the past. In Malaita there is very little development compared to Guadalcanal, and particularly some areas (such as Kwaio regions) have resisted the encroachment of modernization and missionization, sometimes violently (see Keesing, 1992).

The Vaturanga, however, were among the first peoples to be missionized in the Solomon Islands and so they have been experiencing gradual cultural change for approximately 150 years at this point. It is not surprising then that they might see themselves (and be seen by others) as acculturated into Western (not kastom) ways. In many ways a hegemonic construction has taken place in which legitimacy and kastom are highly contested and with very high stakes involved: the land itself and the right to use it.

Discussion

Fernandez (2003), in his discussion of African spaces, has noted that:

social subjects, the Is, yous, hes, theys, of social life, are essentially inchoate and must recurrently obtain identity – a set of satisfactory feelings of quality – by predicating upon themselves objects from other (non-literal) domains of experience. However, not only do men predicate upon themselves from other domains of experience, they also create domains, ritual arenas as it were, in which they can transform, or go through a series of transformations in, their identities. (p. 189)

As such, we might imagine locations and spaces as scenes or stages for meaningful action and power to be exhibited and discussed and contested. The scene is set for the Vaturanga by historical circumstances, colonization and post-colonial and development projects, which cause them to recurrently assert and proclaim identities about which they are always uncertain.

Ideas and patterns that are tasi remain very active and powerful in the Vaturanga District. Roads, schools, market trucks, newspapers, radios, missions, health stations, resorts, even tourism (scuba diving is very popular in the area) all continually present themselves as daily issues for people in this region. They have little choice but to deal with them.

Yet all of these patterns and practices bring occasions for pondering themselves and their past. Roads not only bring in modern ideas, but people who have different ideas about tradition. Newspapers and radio programming discuss change and tradition in very ideological forms. For instance, newspapers frequently report on official occasions in which kastom is identified and observed and SIBC radio has a Kastom Story Hour programme weekly. Schools present images of kastom as backwards and problematic. Moreover, people in this region see many benefits in being closely connected to the big road, to Honiara and through these the outside world.

All peoples reflect upon their condition. And they absorb, adapt or resist changes in diverse ways. Much of the change we are speaking of is hegemonic in nature, that is, the modern world is presented through various tasi experiences as dominant, natural, normative and even desirable. Yet it also is a profound challenge to the Vaturanga, as their land rights and resource claims are brought into question by their successful adaptation to living tasi.

Living on the coast has brought benefits, but it has also challenged the fundamental sense of identity that is prominent in the modern world. Ideologically one must counter the images constructed about one's group by outside others with various and diverse agendas. The modern world is digital in its orientation (see Eriksen, 2010, pp. 79–80) meaning that everything and everyone and every aspect is classified, defined and narrowed. This has the benefit (to the modern world) of making land and resources more accessible, because the overall goal of such ideological constructions is to control and manage such resources.

By adding their own set of categories, framed as the oppositional relationship between tasi and longa, and also West and East Guadalcanal, the Vaturanga interrupt this digitizing discourse, using physical spaces to understand not only their experiences, but to assert that their kastom (and hence their rights as landowners) is still alive, still relevant, if not fully understood, practised or known.

Knowledge of kastom (or at least adherence to it as an idea) and the acknowledgement of that knowledge by outsiders identifies landowners in important ways. It means that government bodies recognize their legitimacy. It means that consensus is still required for significant land tenure change. It means that the Vaturanga are able to maintain a degree of control over their resources even in the face of an onslaught of outside interests. Despite the massive changes they have experienced over the past 215 years, the Vaturanga have found a way to manage change in credible and self-sustaining ways.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.