Culturalism, Neo-liberalism and the State: The Rise and Fall of Neotraditionalist Ideologies in the South Pacific

Abstract

Whereas it has become fashionable in recent years to consider most Melanesian states as ‘weak’ or ‘failed states’, the time now seems ripe — 30 years after their independence — to review these states’ ideological use of the invocation of culture and local traditions, or kastom, in a context marked by profound social, political and economic upheavals, coups d’etat (two in Fiji, one in the Solomon Islands), a civil war (Bougainville) and Australia’s neo-colonial re-engagement in the region. In many respects, the way in which the Melanesian elites have turned culture into a political symbol is strikingly reminiscent of the quasi-sacralisation of the Maori culture in the bi-cultural framework set up by the New Zealand state, albeit in a very different context. It may be enlightening to compare the two cases and to examine relations between state policies and culturalist ideology in a former colonial country, New Zealand and in the island states that the erstwhile colonisers are now declaring bankrupt.