%0 Journal Article
%T Influence Structures in a Tongan Village: 'Every Villager is not the Same!
%A Giovanni Bennardo
%A Charles Cappell
%J Structure and Dynamics : e-Journal of Anthropological and Related Sciences
%D 2008
%I University of California
%X Tatau, tatau p¨¦, katoa tatau ¡®the same, just the same, all the same,¡¯ is the phrase most Tongan villagers used when asked if any person within the village groups they had just mentioned was mahu'inga taha ¡®most important.¡¯ Such forceful insistence on equality among villagers seems incongruous in the context of a monarchial political system, the Kingdom of Tonga, the only surviving Polynesian monarchy.At the head of this highly stratified society is King George Tupou V, heir of a dynasty that goes back at least a millennium. How can we reconcile the stated lack of local stratification with the overt positive feelings toward a monarchy and its aristocracy?We used social network analysis to investigate the structure and sources of influence in this Tongan village. The results of the analysis reveals a nuanced local influence structure generated by a combination of traditional kinship status characteristics as well as some based in the emerging cash economy. Thus, the descriptive statements used by villagers, ¡®we are all the same¡¯, do not adequately represent the empirical nature of the local influence structure.
%K Network Analysis
%K Influence Structures
%K Human and Social Capital
%K Polynesia
%U http://repositories.cdlib.org/imbs/socdyn/sdeas/vol3/iss1/art2/