Comments on: Weekend in Samoa http://everything-everywhere.com/2007/07/03/weekend-in-samoa/ Gary Arndt's journey to travel blog around the world Sun, 12 Feb 2012 20:25:38 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Stephen Hope http://everything-everywhere.com/2007/07/03/weekend-in-samoa/#comment-341 Stephen Hope Wed, 04 Jul 2007 08:53:24 +0000 http://everything-everywhere.com/2007/07/03/weekend-in-samoa/#comment-341 This extended family thing is common all across the Pacific. A close relative/fellow villager is your "one-talk" - literally someone who speaks the same as you (in PNG where there are 700+ languages this makes more sense.) It is very hard to run a business in the western sense when your one-talks are around - because of the shared property thing, your stock will walk out the door, your capital get used for things other than developing the business, your relatives will expect to share your job if they need some cash for a while, etc. How much it affects the society as a whole depends on how many outsiders there are. Samoa is too small, so no outsiders really exist. Fiji has a large indian and smaller chinese population, so they own a lot of business (which causes friction). In PNG and the Solomon Islands, and to a lesser extent Vanuatu and New Caledonia, some-one who wants to run a business can go to a different area, where their own one-talks are not around, so while the system still holds, it doesn't have the same effect. This extended family thing is common all across the Pacific. A close relative/fellow villager is your “one-talk” – literally someone who speaks the same as you (in PNG where there are 700+ languages this makes more sense.) It is very hard to run a business in the western sense when your one-talks are around – because of the shared property thing, your stock will walk out the door, your capital get used for things other than developing the business, your relatives will expect to share your job if they need some cash for a while, etc.

How much it affects the society as a whole depends on how many outsiders there are. Samoa is too small, so no outsiders really exist. Fiji has a large indian and smaller chinese population, so they own a lot of business (which causes friction).

In PNG and the Solomon Islands, and to a lesser extent Vanuatu and New Caledonia, some-one who wants to run a business can go to a different area, where their own one-talks are not around, so while the system still holds, it doesn’t have the same effect.

]]>