The social forest : landowners, development conflict and the state in Solomon Islands

Abstract

This work develops an historically substantiated anthropological thesis about non-state local governance and its relations with the State in Solomon Islandsover time. Set in the context of the coup and subsequent crisis of the State in Solomon Islands, the thesis takes as an example Kolombangara, a forest resource rich Western Province island. The thesis argues that the consequences of successive local negotiations of world influences from early contact times through colonialism and on to the post Independence period are embedded in present-day social structures and political events at the local level. This process of local negotiation draws on cultural resources held within the local society but in so doing repositions actors in relation to those resources, creating social tensions that further drive politics at the local level. The form of these negotiations is specific to any one place in Solomon Islands. Nevertheless, the logic applied by actors in any one place is informative of processes more widespread across the country. For Kolombangara these processes begin with a reorganisation of frontier period (late C19) maritime exchange oriented 'house groups' into landoriented descent groups as a response to early colonialism. A process of social mobility follows this as the State is nationalised, resulting in stratification of local society (the 'Honiara elite'). This articulates with a fractionation of loca] society into groups competing for 'large scale' or 'small scale' forest resource development. The crosscutting social differentiation drives conflict between 'entrepreneurial landowners' and ' raditionalist smallholders' over forest resources and generates competing island-level political associations. Such island-level dynamics drive the Western Province 'statehood' agenda for control of resource management and revenue distribution. This development pathway competes at the national level against the interests of resource-poor provinces. The result has been one of the major political dynamics involved in the recent crisis of the State in Solomon Islands