Emergent Masculinities in the Pacific by Aletta Biersack Martha Macintyre

Author:Aletta Biersack, Martha Macintyre [Aletta Biersack, Martha Macintyre]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780415786942
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 32148480
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2017-04-19T00:00:00+00:00

Revaluing Labour and Relationships

The efforts by sons to overturn given generational relations and structures of authority and power can also be interpreted as an expression of conflict between different values of labour as sons attempted to extricate labour from indigenous exchange. By disputing the cultural norms and values that mediated income distribution amongst family members involved in oil palm work under the wok bung wantaim production strategy in favour of more market-based ones, market labour values were emphasised. This undermined generational relations and indigenous ways of valuing labour determined by kinship and social relationships. In this way, labour was transformed from a gift to a commodity as it was extricated from indigenous circuits of exchange. Thus, the makim mun strategy signified an important social transformation as adult sons tried to replace indigenous ways of valuing labour with more market-based ones.

It is probable that the revaluing of labour, and in particular the more commodified notions of labour, among adult sons arose in part from their experiences of plantation work during periods of depressed oil palm prices or when individual cash demands were high. As one agricultural extension officer lamented in reference to the changing labour values of young men: ‘before young men would be happy to work [for family or relatives] for food or beer, but now young men work for money’ (KN 12). Another extension officer born in a WNB village growing oil palm, and based on her nine years as an extension officer, observed that wok bung wantaim remained widespread in the villages and strongly valued. People were happy to receive ‘free rice’ (a meal of cooked rice at the end of a day labouring) for their assistance with harvesting. In contrast, on the LSS, people increasingly ‘worked for money’ and expected market rates of remuneration (ER 27/7).

As production became more market-based, alternative values, authority and power relations undermined co-operative inter-household labour strategies and the cultural norms and values in which they were embedded. Indigenous social and economic relations were rejected by sons in favour of more market-orientated ones as they attempted to replace past traditions, norms and values with new relations of production and exchange. In the process, sons contested given generational relations and structures of authority and power (Curry & Koczberski 2012).

There are also other likely factors, apart from the heavily monetised environment of the LSS, that may be implicated in this revaluing of labour by younger men raised on the land settlement schemes. Of particular importance is the institutional context in which the land settlement schemes were developed and in which contemporary oil palm production now takes place. Many facets of the scheme’s underlying concepts, design and goals were oriented towards promoting individualism, particularly individual property rights, wage labour and commodity production by the Australian administration and the scheme’s financial backer, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (later known as the World Bank) (Cheetham 1963; Hulme 1984). Indeed, the concept of individual ownership has now become well entrenched among leaseholders who assert that being the

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