Introduction
Books are born and grow. This one grew out of the 2007 Macmillan Brown
Lecture series, The Warm Winds of Change in the Contemporary Pacific. Thelectures, and now this book, drew heavily on findings from a 40-year
research partnership that developed out of our interest in Sāmoans inboth Sāmoa and abroad. This started in the early 1970s when we carriedout fieldwork for the first comprehensive study of Sāmoan migrants inNew Zealand (Pitt and Macpherson 1974) and has, since then, led us intosuch disparate areas as the social correlates of youth suicide (Macphersonand Macpherson 1987), medical knowledge and practice (Macphersonand Macpherson 1990), dependency and sovereignty (Macpherson andMacpherson 1998), changing contours of migrant kinship (Macpherson andMacpherson 1999), ethnic diversity in migrant populations (Macphersonand Macpherson 2000), evangelical religion among migrants (Macphersonand Macpherson 2001), fine mats and the valuation of social honour(Macpherson and Macpherson 2005), social dimensions of the Pacificlabour migration process (Macpherson and Macpherson 2006a), the natureand limits of traditional dispute resolution (Macpherson and Macpherson2006b), and the experiences of migrants’ children who have returned tothe islands (Macpherson and Macpherson 2009). This book provides anopportunity to acknowledge our partnership in a way that the lectures
could not: neither of us could, or would, have produced this work alone.
The project has given us a chance to bring together a number of ideas
and conversations, and is, we hope, more valuable because of the range of
research and experience on which it draws, and the complementary skills
we have brought to it.
The series emerged from a growing awareness of the impact of global
forces on daily life in the village in which we live during annual stays inthe Warm Winds of Change

Sāmoa. Evidence of their pervasive, and often almost imperceptible, influ‑ence is everywhere, and the series provided both reason and opportunity tooutline some changes in village life over the past 40 years and to discuss theforces that have produced them. Since we began to think about these issues
over an evening meal, the evening itself provides a convenient illustrationof both the changes and the processes that are producing them.	Evenings, in the 1960s and 1970s, were typically quiet times spent withfamily. In the early evening, when the locust chorus began, adults stopped
work, returned to their homes, bathed and chatted. Around the house, chil‑dren talked as they did chores and played games. When the village church
bell rang, the family gathered inside for evening devotions and shared ameal interrupted only by adult conversation and laughter. Dinner, preparedover a fire in a small outdoor cook house, included breadfruit and talo fromthe family gardens, some fresh fish and a crab caught earlier in the day,
washed down with tea made from the leaves of the orange tree behind thehouse, or with cocoa made from beans from the family cocoa plantation. The
meal was served from large, smoke-stained aluminium stockpots and eaten
from banana leaves on woven mats, and a few enamel plates and mugs; thetea was made in a large, battered aluminium teapot. After dinner children
played outside until it became dark and they went inside where, in the dim
glow cast by a single light bulb, adults played animated games of cards anddraughts, swapped gossip, discussed the day’s events, planned the following
day and, occasionally, speculated on the religious significance of particular
local and national events. News of the world beyond the village was of lim‑
ited interest, and only those who made the nightly trip to the pastor’s houseto listen to the news from Apia on the government radio station 2ap, and avery few people who owned shortwave radios, ever heard it.	Evenings in 2008 are very different. On our first evening in Sāmoa thatyear, we ate a meal of tinned herrings from Malaysia, rice and noodles
from China, washed down with instant coffee from the US, sugar fromFiji and powdered milk from New Zealand. The meal was cooked overgas and in a microwave, and water was boiled in an electric jug in thekitchen. Dessert, a new item on the menu, was ice-cream, which had been
kept in the fridge. The meal was served from stainless steel pots and eatenintroduction

from a floral-patterned Chinese dinner set with matching bowls; the tea
was made in a china teapot. With dinner over, we settled down to theTelevision One news from New Zealand with our family. Adults andchildren alike watched with great interest and in silence, punctuated onlyby incoming cellphone calls and text messages. The news was followed byanimated discussions over everything from the selection of the latest AllBlack squad, New Zealand’s prospects in the Bledisloe Cup, the wisdomof becoming involved in the Iraq war, Barack Obama’s prospects in the US
presidential elections and the Labour party’s prospects in the forthcom‑
ing New Zealand election. The conversation ended with a debate about
possible causes of simultaneous floods in England and Bangladesh: were
they the consequence of global political inaction on climate change or
divine intervention in the biblical tradition? The family spent the rest ofthe evening watching world news, a BBC documentary on global warming,an Indian television movie and a televised rugby match from Sydney. From
time to time people flicked between the Samoan Broadcasting Servicechannel and the new Chinese channel, CCTV, which offers a broad rangeof English-language programming.
In a relatively short time, the world beyond the village, as seen on TV,
has become for many families in Sāmoa the focal point of the evening.
Families even move meals and evening devotions, previously the high pointof the day, to accommodate the evening news in both English and Sāmoan.
This change reflects the growing interest in events beyond the village and,indeed, beyond Sāmoa. Discussion of these events reflects a new knowledgeof the outside world and a growing awareness of its influence on their daily
lives.
The ‘global’ economy has a direct and obvious impact on ‘local’ daily
life, controlling the market for the village’s main cash crop, copra; demand
for labour from the village both in and beyond Sāmoa; and the prosperityof expatriate relatives. These factors in turn influence opportunities for
local employment and the level of remittances received from expatriate
relatives, which then determine whether or not people can pay school fees,
extend their homes, renovate the village school and buy new uniforms forthe village rugby team. World food shortages now translate into rises inthe Warm Winds of Change

prices of new ‘staples’ such as flour, rice and sugar, and impact in new ways
on household economies, which were once almost self-sufficient. Shifts inworld currency exchange rates impact on how much foreign currency will
be worth and how much wages and remittances from relatives abroad will
buy in Sāmoa on any given day. Rice, at one time a luxury, is now such astaple that the cost of a sack, which is influenced by both currency exchange
rates and world food supply, has become the new index of the cost of livingin the village.
These ‘global’ influences are changing the rules of social, political andeconomic organisation in ways that neither of us anticipated even ten years
ago, and the pace of change seems to increase each year. The lecture series
and now this book provided reason and opportunity to discuss changes invillage life over the past 35 years and the forces that produced these changes.
The book has given us an opportunity to expand and develop our ideas, andinvariably led us back to the growing impact of three factors on both thevillage and the nation: the movement of people, the introduction of ideas
and ideologies, and the development and spread of technologies. Thesethemes framed the lectures and now frame this book.
One of the risks inherent in such projects is the tendency to romanticise
a society’s past and to lament its passing. This is particularly true wherea society’s ‘tradition’ is fundamental to its national identity and leads, inmany cases, to ‘explanations’ that place responsibility for change on external
agencies bent on remaking smaller, less powerful societies in their image.
While not disputing the significance of the power of large states and inter‑national agencies, the risks inherent in such explanations are that they often
understate the active role small societies play in embracing and shaping
the direction of social change. Explanations that require external agencies,
such as the World Bank, to explain change ignore, or at least understate, thesignificance of internal agency and the fact that social transformation is acontinuous process that occurs where external forces meet internal ones.
We have tried to avoid this in three ways: by identifying the role ofboth external and internal agency, by avoiding passing judgments on thedesirability of changes and by placing contemporary change in historicalcontext. Rather than depicting change as ‘loss of tradition’, we have focusedintroduction

instead on the ‘dynamism’ inherent in social organisation, and on how andwhy change is embraced and shaped by people in the village. We haverefrained from judgements of whether change is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ for thevillage: change happens and is the consequence of people making deci‑
sions about what is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ for them. We have tried to contextualisecontemporary transformation: the changes outlined here, and the forces
producing them, are simply the most recent manifestations of a process oftransformation that has been occurring since people settled in these islands
some 3000 years ago. In the end, it will be the reader who decides whether
we have succeeded.
While this book focuses on Sāmoa, it may have more general signifi‑cance. Many Pacific states have similar ecosystems, and demographic, social,political and economic profiles. Most confront similar external agencies,
expatriate populations, patron states, international financial organisations
and global non-governmental organisations (NGOs), all of which constrain
their development options. While the importance of each of these factors,
and the ways in which they interact, may vary from one location to another,
there are likely to be significant similarities in the processes, options andoutcomes throughout the region. Factors that impact on contemporary
Sāmoa are, for the reasons outlined above, also occurring elsewhere in thecontemporary Pacific, albeit at different rates. In concentrating on processes
at work in a society with which we are familiar, we hope to identify fac‑
tors that may throw light on the dynamics of transformation as it occurs
elsewhere in the region. However, the way each state reacts to these com‑binations of circumstances will also be unique, for cultural, historical andpolitical reasons, and the reader is warned that broad generalisations abouta region as diverse as the Pacific often founder on the rocks of complex
reality.

Churches dominate the landscape and yet they are rarely thought of as evidence of earlier transformations.
Christianity has transformed the Samoan worldview and lifestyle in significant ways.

Young village people periodically visit relatives in enclaves as far apart as Auckland, Los Angeles, Sydney
and are much more familiar with the world beyond the village than their parents were.