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3 - Chiefs, Priests and Vuluvulu

Selective Recognition and the Simplification of Authority in Marovo Lagoon

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 January 2023

Rebecca Monson
Affiliation:
Australian National University, Canberra
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Summary

This chapter focuses on the reconfiguration of land tenure and authority in Marovo Lagoon, a rural area subject to widespread and destructive industrial logging. Women as a social group are known to be largely excluded from formal negotiations regarding logging, and this chapter considers the extent to which this can be traced to a flawed legislative framework, to patriarchal kastom or the erosion of women’s rights by colonisation. Drawing on archival and ethnographic work, it demonstrates that missionaries and colonial officials recognised some idealisations of masculine authority while disregarding other forms of influence, facilitating a simplification of the land tenure system that has enabled some male leaders to consolidate their control over resources. The reproduction of particular idealisations of masculine authority over land continues today, and simultaneously constitutes land control as a masculine domain. While contemporary inequalities can be partially traced to the structural features of the property system, they also emerge from long-term processes of colonial intrusion, capitalist development and the erosion of important aspects of gendered attachments to land.

Type
Chapter
Information
Gender, Property and Politics in the Pacific
Who Speaks for Land?
, pp. 87 - 128
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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  • Chiefs, Priests and Vuluvulu
  • Rebecca Monson, Australian National University, Canberra
  • Book: Gender, Property and Politics in the Pacific
  • Online publication: 19 January 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108953672.004
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  • Chiefs, Priests and Vuluvulu
  • Rebecca Monson, Australian National University, Canberra
  • Book: Gender, Property and Politics in the Pacific
  • Online publication: 19 January 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108953672.004
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Chiefs, Priests and Vuluvulu
  • Rebecca Monson, Australian National University, Canberra
  • Book: Gender, Property and Politics in the Pacific
  • Online publication: 19 January 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108953672.004
Available formats
×