Pacific Edens? Myths and Realities of Primitive Affluence

Donald Denoon

doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521441957.004

3 - Pacific Edens? Myths and Realities of Primitive Affluence

from Part One - The Pacific To 1941

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2008

Donald Denoon and

With

Jocelyn Linnekin and

Donald Denoon: Affiliation:
Australian National University, Canberra

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Summary

PRIMITIVE AFFLUENCE

What is loosely described as ‘subsistence’ production has a poor reputation among economic planners, and so has stone technology. In 1975, for example, a World Bank mission to Papua New Guinea tied both concepts together to dismiss the whole pre-colonial record:

the original stone-age tribes have lived unto themselves in conditions of primitive isolation … [Modernisation] began among a people who had no alphabet and hence no writing, knew neither the knife nor axe nor any form of metal, used only stones for cutting, hunted and killed with bows and arrows and clubs, knew neither wool nor cotton, used only pounded bark as cloth, and used no bullock, ox, horse or cow in their subsistence agriculture. Subsistence agriculture is relatively easy and has bred an agricultural labor force that has not had to acquire disciplined work habits …

This critique is unusually crude, but its elements are widely accepted—stages of development, the stagnation of isolated communities, denigration of stone technology, a sharp dichotomy between subsistence and market production, and subsistence as a school of idleness. These assumptions impede appreciation of the systems of production which Islanders refined over centuries, the strategic alliances they created and maintained, the environmental imperatives they accommodated, and the threats they averted. Many planners assume that all pre-colonial production and consumption can be described as subsistence, and that trade and exchange were incidental. They also imagine that subsistence has not been modified to meet changing needs, and that it demands little labour, expertise or planning.

Keywords

Land tenure arrangements coastal New Guinea agriculture trade and exchange Pacific Edens primitive affluence

Type: Chapter
Information: The Cambridge History of the Pacific Islanders , pp. 80 - 118

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521441957.004 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 1997

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3 - Pacific Edens? Myths and Realities of Primitive Affluence

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