The political ecology of a Tongan village

Abstract

This dissertation presents a political ecological case study of a Tongan village. Political ecology includes the methodological approaches of cultural ecology, concerned with understanding human/resource relations, and political economy, concerned with the historical examination of the political and social organization of production and power. The ethnography of political ecology is primarily interested in understanding how certain people use specific environmental resources in culturally prescribed and historically derive ways. With this in mind, the research provides an historical and ethnographic account of a diversified, local economic system characterized by a highly productive but depreciating smallholder agriculture once regenerative and sustainable. The smallholders in the Kingdom of Tonga are imperfectly articulated with market systems and rely on agricultural production for a significant proportion of household consumption and ceremonialized obligations to kin, and community. The dissertation presents an historical account of the political economic changes in Tonga beginning in the nineteenth century and culminating in recent alteration of traditional farming techniques and the loss of economic self-sufficiency and agricultural sustainability.