Cooperative Artisanal Fishing on Rabi Island, Fiji

Abstract

This is an unfinished story. It deals with an artisanal fishing project, jointly planned by a local political-administrative body, the Rabi Council of Leaders, and this anthropologist. The project presently is in an early stage of implementation. While it is recognized that the social, economic, and political situation in which the project is embedded is important to understanding it, at present I will focus on the relevance of the local context since it was at this level that the project initially suffered a severe setback. (See also Dagmar's article "Banabans in Fiji: Ethnicity, Change and Development," in Ethnicity and Nation-building in the Pacific, M. C. Howard, ed. [Tokyo: United Nations University Press, 1989].)