‘More than grass skirts and feathers’: negotiating culture in the Trobriand Islands

Abstract

A number of competing incentives are at work in determining how people actively choose to preserve or, alternatively, discard aspects of their ‘cultural heritage’. Cultural identity serves a social role in giving people a sense of unity and belonging; it may be used to political ends, as a means of imploring government support or special status; and it increasingly serves as a means of generating income and stimulating economic development through tourism. But how does a desire to attract and entertain tourists mesh with ‘keeping culture alive’? How do people choose what aspects of their way of life are ‘good’ for tourists to see? How is this interaction mediated and negotiated? And what happens when tourists who pay good money to see ‘traditional’ people despair that their very presence brings change, which they view as undesirable? The present article draws on recent anthropological fieldwork in the Trobriand Islands, examining the role of history, religion, and socio-economic development in determining how people actively and consciously construct ‘cultural heritage’ in a dynamic and fluid process in order to unpack the paradoxes raised by the practice of cultural tourism in the developing world.

Keywords:

• Trobriand Islands
• identity-making
• tourism
• tradition
• performance

Acknowledgements

My fieldwork in the Trobriand Islands forms the basis of my PhD thesis, presently in progress at the University of Auckland. I am indebted to the Wenner-Gren Foundation and the Faculty of Arts Doctoral Research Fund at the University of Auckland for financial support for this research. I am also extremely grateful to the people of Yalumgwa village, who made me feel at home and taught me everything I know about Trobriand life.

Notes

1. Digicel is a Caribbean-based telecommunications provider that specialises in bringing cheap, accessible mobile phone technology to developing countries which represent emerging markets. They currently operate in 32 markets, 26 of which are in the Caribbean and Central America, and the remaining 6 are in the Pacific (PNG, Samoa, Vanuatu, Fiji, Tonga, Nauru). For a discussion of the social implications of the emergence of Digicel in the Caribbean, see Horst and Miller (2005).