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Culture and Sustainable Development in the Pacific

25-Nov-2009 | Lorena Gibson

Culture has always been an integral component of development, and Hooper's "Culture and Sustainable Development in the Pacific" has useful ideas about the relationship between culture and development in Oceania.

I was recently reading Culture and Sustainable Development in the Pacific, a book edited by Antony Hooper (2005) and published online through ANU’s E Press. I particularly like the comment Hooper makes in his introduction to the book:

“A hundred and fifty or so years ago, when people of the Tokelau atolls began to have access to iron, European cordage and nautical goods, they set about acquiring it by whatever means available. They discarded their shell fishhooks and made their own out of iron, replaced their sennit lines with manufactured ones and their matting sails with canvas. They learned of pulaka (Cytosperma chamissonis) from what was then the Ellice Islands, labouriously dug up acres of their rough coral ground two metres down to the fresh-water lens and planted flourishing crops. When manufactured hooks and monofilament lines appeared they set upon those as well, and, much later, enthusiastically set about acquiring aluminium dinghies and Japanese outboard engines. Nobody in the atolls now refers to all this as ‘development’, however. It is regarded simply as common sense, what the people themselves did, for themselves, to make their production more efficient and to secure their food supply” (Hooper, 2005:8).

Most of us working in the Pacific region know that Oceanian cultures are innovative, creative, and that they actively engage in change and development. However, as Hooper points out, this is not how development is understood in Oceania today.

Culture has always been an integral component of development and an increasing number reports, policies and strategies aim to harness culture for sustainable development. Although the papers contained in this book are over a decade old (they were originally presented at a UNESCO conference in Fiji in 1997, during the World Decade for Cultural Development), the ideas they contain about the relationships between culture and development in Oceania are still relevant and useful, and refreshing in that they focus more on what people do than on policy.