Tabiteuea North: its Social and Economic Organisation

Abstract

Tabiteuea Atoll is in that unhappy position shared by so many of the 'under-developed' areas of the world where many of the social and political forms of the past have been lost or seriously weakened and no clear alternatives have developed to replace them. This thesis attempts to outline some of the most severe strains which have been imposed on Tabiteuean society and the effect these have had on social and economic activity on the island. The dissertation has been divided into two parts. Part One presents a description of social and economic organisation and activity on Tabiteuea Atoll in terms of the recognised institutional areas within a society. It attempts to reflect the consensus view of economic anthropologists on what is contained in a 'primitive' economy. Parallel with this description is an examination of analytic orientations in economic anthropology and a suggested synthesis of some approaches to give an analysis which takes both individual activity and institutional rules into account, does not treat them as opposed but rather as stemming from the same source. This synthesis is based on the self/other definition of individuals by which positional definitions of individuals and groups are determined. This orientation leads to the conclusion that on Tabiteuea North scarcity is socially induced rather than being physically necessary, it is therefore regarded as one of the regulatory means for limiting potential definitional advantage in utilisation of economic resources. Forms of economic organisation and activity are considered to reflect the degree and emphasis of self/other definitional activity in a society. In Part Two the possibility of commencing analysis from an entirely different perspective, analysing activities involving goods, resources and services as an orderly sequence of specific kinds of activity and of sequences of activity, is examined. It is recognised that this order will be in terms of a very complex set of patterns, but patterns nonetheless, which recur and are at least partially predictable. It is suggested that these patterns may indicate the 'structure of social activity' and that any analysis of the purposive activity of individuals and groups should be predicated on such an initial analysis of social activity. Since this approach grew out of a discomforture with the forms of analysis being employed in research the ideas put forward did not produce a full analysis of the society in which data was collected. The limited analysis undertaken, is presented with a 'few thoughts' on the direction in which such an investigation might lead.