Development discourse and the Politics of environmental ideologies in Samoa

摘要

The demise of Samoa's native forests and coral reefs is suggestive of similar environmental transformations occurring in rural areas throughout the Pacific and the world. The more conventional explanations of why such transformations occur do not hold when applied to Samoa, yet they are continually invoked within development policy debates affecting the local politics of land. The latter are far more salient to understanding why things are the way they are in Samoa. But then this is likely to holdtrue for other areas of the Pacific to the extent that such politics are entwined with the politics of island governance. And they likely play a central role in similar ways wherever customary rules matter and people are dependent upon the control of land for their power, prestige, and survival. Conventional explanations provide valuable insights, but they do not adequately account for the effects of local (intravillage) politics and the ways in which extralocal politics influence the social relations mediating local environmental practices.