![Sample our Area Studies journals, sign in here to start your access, latest two full volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5922/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Area-Studies.jpg"})
Abstract
Aid agencies provide significant funding for the development of modern market systems in subsistence societies. Despite the advantages generated by aid partnerships, aid agencies are often unsuccessful in producing the market changes they aim to realise. This project investigates barriers to the development of demand-driven agrifood market systems at the local level in Solomon Islands and Tonga. We demonstrate that performances that imply a readiness to expand into a capitalist market economy elide the everyday social relations and cultural traditions of local village actors. These villagers would need to move away from their own traditional thinking about food production, and deny their customary subsistence and market narratives, to meet the requirements of externally imposed, modern market systems that drive the modern market development thinking of aid donors. The reality is that village-based socio-cultural, economic and religious obligations obstruct the basic demand-driven market practices required for a successful formal market environment. We conclude that a critical anthropological understanding of local market systems is essential to the generation of modern market opportunities at village levels.
Acknowledgements
We acknowledge the assistance of interviewees in Solomon Islands and Tonga; the research assistance provided by Milton Moloka and Anne Maeda in Solomon Islands; and of The Tonga Community Development Agency (TCDA) and Papiloa Bloomfield in Tonga. Gerhard Hoffstaedter, Kristen Lyons, Graham Baines, David Trigger and two anonymous referees commented on earlier drafts of the paper. Elana Stokes drew the figures.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on contributors
Anne (Annie) Ross has a background in social archaeology and anthropology, focusing on cultural approaches to heritage management in Indigenous communities in Australia and Solomon Islands. Her main research expertise is in cultural landscapes narratives and management in Australian Indigenous communities; counter mapping in Aboriginal heritage; and Indigenous socio-cultural responses to imposed cultural heritage constructs. Her work with Professor Kim Bryceson has encouraged the melding of socio-cultural anthropological approaches to economic development with supply-chain research paradigms.
Kim Bryceson has a background in industry and government research, specialising in the use of information technology in agricultural production and agribusiness. Her main research expertise is in supply/value chain analysis across whole of agrifood industry chains, and in using agent-based modelling to construct supply chain risk assessment and performance management scenarios. Four recent projects have been in: modelling agrifood supply chains as complex systems; developing risk assessment and performance management criteria in internal business supply chains; developing a Hybrid Value Chain Framework (HVCF) as a tool for investigating economic development through agrifood chains in small scale societies; and analysing the Australian Beef Industry Supply Chain in relation to new technology development. Kim leads the Agribusiness Theme in the successful ARC Transformational Training Hub in Food Science, Sensory Science and Agribusiness. Kim’s work in the Pacific has included a lead agribusiness role in the Pacific Agribusiness Research in Development Initiative and the research reported in this paper was funded under this scheme.