Paradoxes of Development in the South Pacific

Abstract

A CHARACTERISTIC of development programmes for underdeveloped countries is the wide discrepancy that often exists between the simple and sanguine view officially taken of the prospects and the great reservations and perplexities which experienced and thoughtful observers actually feel. The approach of Westerners frequently betrays a fundamental ambivalence of attitude, and though a similarly divided sentiment may also be found among others, it is the Westerner's attitude that I wish chiefly to examine. I confine my discussion mainly to the problem as it exists for the Pacific islands. Much of what is said would apply, with modifications, to the problems of Africa, Asia and parts of the Americas, but I have not attempted to generalize beyond the field of my special interest. In considering the matter from the Western point of view I do not ignore the fact that in the long run what counts is the decisions of the native communities themselves; nor do I imply that these people may not have cultural resources of their own to bring into play. But even when full allowance is made for this, it must be admitted that the Western contribution to the shaping of their future is very great, especially because the island cultures lack, for the most part, highly developed indigenous intellectual and technical traditions such as must be taken into account in Asia. The traditional life of these territories conforms more or less closely to what Aristotle meant by economics: a system whose animating principle is to produce or acquire by trade things necessary to life and useful for the community of the family or state-the model being the rural household with a high degree of self-sufficiency. By contrast, modern industrial and commercial life has subordinated this economic element to chrematistics, characterized by commerce, usury and wage labour, and animated according to Aristotle by the spirit of men who turn every quality of art into a means of getting wealth; this they conceive to be the end, and to the promotion of the end they think