Search results

Purpose – The chapter looks at the way a group of Cook Islands women in South Auckland used neoliberal-inspired community funding to fulfil the criteria of the funders as well as their own noncapitalist aims.Methodology/approach – The chapter draws upon a combination of original ethnographic fieldwork and literature pertaining to the production and use of tivaivai in South Auckland and neoliberal policy in New Zealand.Findings – The chapter analyzes the cultural context of value creation that the production and use of tivaivai constitutes for Cook Islanders in South Auckland. The production of tivaivai as a “commercial” derivative of these elite social textiles saw the group of Cook Islands women operating in a “human economy” (Graeber, 2012), despite the neoliberal agenda of the funding.Originality/value – As a group, Cook Islanders are marginalized in New Zealand, but the outcome of this funding in the details of how the women recipients managed the use of the money, and how and what they produced, tells a different story about how Cook Islanders engage with capitalism via the “human economy.” Such an analysis adds considerable complexity to the understandings of the way women make and use tivaivai in New Zealand, as well as the ways Cook Islanders do economics in an expanded notion of economy. This sheds light on the subaltern strategies that Cook Islanders create in response to the opportunities and hegemonic forces that exist in the global capitalist economy, and the way they engage with capitalism in the context of the New Zealand political economy.

Purpose – The authors introduce the chapters of Engaging with Capitalism with a discussion of anthropological and other social theory about peoples’ approaches to capitalism, especially peoples with vibrant noncapitalist social systems, such as are found in Oceania.Approach – The introduction is in the form of a review of anthropological and other social theory about interactions between capitalism and noncapitalist social systems.Findings – The theoretical literature has tended to dichotomize capitalist and noncapitalist societies. While heuristically it is useful to contrast capitalist and noncapitalist social systems, in practice once societies come into the orbit of capitalism people adapt elements of capitalism to suit their aims. Furthermore, societies generally considered thoroughly capitalist also include noncapitalist features. So it is more accurate to think of societies as involving a mix of capitalism and noncapitalism, and the nature of that mix is part of what makes each society distinct.Social implications – The theoretical dichotomization of societies as capitalist or not, with capitalism understood as being universal, and noncapitalism understood in general terms such as gift economy, is prevalent in public imaginaries. Domestic social policy and international development assistance are often based on this dualistic understanding. Such programs could work better if they were based instead on an understanding that each group of people has a dynamic economic system, which includes capitalist and noncapitalist elements that interact in ways influenced by their history and locality.Value of paper – The chapter provides a conceptual scaffold for thinking about the ways people engage with capitalism.