No Idyll on South Sea

Island!

Study o of Polynesian Economics

By “Anthropos”

WHEN I was working with him at Syd ney University in 1931, Raymond Firth, M.A., PhD., the boyish-featured young New Zealander, who was Acting Professor of Anthropology at the time, showed me a large steel trunk which oc cupied a corner of his study and said: “That’s my Tikopia stuff. Goodness knows when I'll get the time to write it up”.

The box was chock-full of field-notes gathered by Firth during his year’s so journ among the interesting Polynesian people of the lovely little island of Tiko pia, an outlier of the Solomons Protec torate. He had managed up to that time to do no more than publish, in such journals as “Oceania”, one or two articles on special aspects of Tikopian life, in cluding a description of the unique na tive dart-throwing competitions.

Next year saw Firth installed at Lon don University as assistant to Malinow ski in the Department of Social Anthrop ology, where, presumably, in spite of a very wide field of interests and the many calls upon his time for special lecture purposes, not to mention his marriage, and the secretarial duties of the Royal Anthropological Institute, with its exclu sive fellowship, he managed to sort out the contents of the iron box.

Two years ago saw the first of his proposed Tikopian trilogy launched, and well received, under the compelling title of “We, the Tikopia”. This large tome presented a picture of the Tikopian background and general culture on de tailed lines, such as have rarely been found in enthnographic studies of this type.

Firth’s early study interest was the field of economics. He had published a most detailed thesis, “Primitive Econo mics of the New Zealand Maori”, prior to his trip to Tikopia. This work broke new ground and caused a good deal of academic fluttering in its attitude to wards the conventional theories of pri mitive economic life.

It is not surprising, therefore, to find No. 2 of the Tikopia trilogy dealing with the economic side of the life of the peo ple. Published a few months ago under the title of “Primitive Polynesian Econ omy ”, the work, while embodying some material already published in various scientific periodicals, deals in great de tail with population and food, labour, technical processes and achievements, property, exchange values, and the social relationships involved in the economic organisation of the island: in short, the organisation of the life of a primitive homogenous people living on a small island remote from outside contacts and influences, from the economic viewpoint.

FIRTH himself early hits out at the old idea held by those whose conclusions were based on data apparently more imaginative than real: “The popular idyllic picture of the Golden Age primi tive man sitting beneath his tree and waiting for the fruit to fall before him is seen to find no place in a community where the struggle to wrest a livelihood from the environment is a very definite reality”.

In other words, as I think the average man who has observed primitive people closely in their everyday life would put

it, “Life’s not so simple for these folk as the romantic literature of travel makes out”.

Firth scotches, by implication, the idea that these primitive people are lazy. He scotches, too, the idea that they are com munists. They are, we know, communal ists, forming a unity of co-operating in dividuals, services and talents; but com munists in the sense of common owner ship and equality of property division they certainly are not.

In Tikopia, for instance, a chief draws income from his subjects in the form of food and material objects, they, receiving in return the right of his protection and

the advantages of attachment to his group.

There are recognised rates of exchange —lO locally-made, primitive but most ef fective, fish-hooks for one type of club, for instance. There is a regular system of labour division; there are expert tech niques in the making of nets, building of houses, and fashioning tools —from clam shells, in some cases. And all of these techniques must be acquired by diligent apprenticeship on an organised plan.

There are, however, no distinctive em ployer and employee classes. Each man makes his own contribution to the eco nomic welfare of the whole, getting and

giving, receiving and contributing. A man may be employer or boss (in his special field) to-day; and employee or worker under another boss to-morrow.

There is an element of equality about it all. And behind it all is the urge, the sheer life necessity, of keeping the whole thing going.

As Firth says: “There is no clash of interests between workers as a whole and employers as a whole”; and “there are no strikes of labour in Tikopia’’.

Can it be that, out of that iron box, with its valuable records of Tikopia, has come at last an outline of the ideal sys tem of living and working harmoniously and co-operating together for the com mon good, which surely all mankind to day is seeking?

There's only this difference —that Euro peans are not Tikopians. They’re more “civilised”!