Gifting commodities: Sino-Pacific networks, exchanges, and diplomacy in Solomon Islands

Paper Abstract: This paper analyses local negotiations of value among Chinese incomers and the inhabitants of the Marovo Lagoon, Solomon Islands, elicited by recent development initiatives. Following the construction of a new area where agricultural and fishing products can be bought and sold, Marovo islanders have been discussing about the value of food, natural resources, and manufactured goods. Their conversation about different value systems is further elicited by a recent development project which includes a number of fishing boats, engines, and eskies donated by the People's Republic of China (PRC) as part of a diplomatic campaign.

While acknowledging the heated debate about the increasing presence and influence of China in the Pacific, this paper focuses on the moral and economic reasoning that Sino-Pacific relationships make observable, especially in terms of local and foreign systems of valuation. Hence, this paper takes a much-needed decolonial approach to study how Pacific Islanders actively and creatively reformulate their valuation methods to face new conditions, and how these methods connect with other measurement systems in the Pacific, the Asia-Pacific, and beyond.

The first theoretical aim of this paper is to analyze negotiations of value in such a way as to exemplify how Solomon Islanders establish connections between their environment, their local measurement methods, and the commodification process. The second theoretical objective is to explore the possibility of connecting vernacular systems with other measurement systems, such as those informing the moral economy of funding development initiatives, and the marketability of local products.