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Identity and Development
Tongan Culture, Agriculture, and the Perenniality of the Gift
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Identity and Development presents a remarkable record of TongaÂs increasing participation in the modern global economy, and provides anthropologists, economists, and historians with a detailed case study that bears heavily on major issues of the day, both practically and theoretically. The book focuses on issues of identity, entrepreneurship, and the intricacies of development and addresses the question: ÂHow (in the current state of the economy) can a Tongan become a successful grower? This question is set against the background of a boom in cash cropping, sparked by a burgeoning export trade with Japan.
Paul van der Grijp is a senior lecturer in anthropology at the Université de Provence (Aix-Marseille I) in the south of France, where he teaches history and theories of anthropology, economic and political anthropology, and Oceania studies. He is also a researcher of the Centre de Recherche et de Documentation sur lÂ'Océanie, Maison Asie Pacifique, in Marseilles.
"Identity and Development is in the tradition of the best Pacific ethnographies insofar as it describes living individualsâtheir specific desires and aspirations, the dilemmas they confront, the cultural ambiguities they must contend with, the constraints and incentives that guide their activities. Van der Grijp explicitly rejects the Âlove of ease which wanders through [...] postmodern anthropology and commits to a comparative perspective that presupposes a dialectic between generalities and particularities, between abstract theory on the one hand, and case studies on the other. The book is a fine example of what this entails."