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This paper discusses the multiple ways in which rural economic wealth in the New Georgia islands of the western Solomons has been built up in both ephemeral and enduring ways through several decades of intensive industrial logging on customary lands. The scale of wealth accumulation in the rural western Solomons and the often associated process of dispossession of communal natural resource rights are rarely taken into account in discussions of political economy in early 21st-century Solomon Islands. Through this paper, changing configurations and trajectories of accumulation and dispossession are traced. The comparison of two distinctly different processes whereby collective social agency over customary land is weakened, ultimately for accumulation in the hands of a few, involves a discussion about the centralisation and disintegration, respectively, of customary chieftainship in New Georgia. This leads to a more general assessment of how authority over customary land in Melanesia can be the subject of large-scale dispossession.

Fast money schemes in Papua New Guinea, collectivities in rural Solomon Islands, gambling in the Cook Islands, and the Vanuatu tax haven—all feature in the interface between Pacific and global economies. Since the 1970s, Melanesian countries and their peoples have been beguiled by the prospect of economic development that would enable them to participate in a world market economic system. Access to global markets would provide the means to improve their standard of living, allowing them to take their places as independent nations in a modern world. Managing Modernity in the Western Pacific takes a broad sweep through contemporary topics in Melanesian anthropology and ethnography. With nuanced and rigorous scholarship, it views contemporary debate on modernity in Melanesia within the context of the global economy and cultural capitalism. In particular, contributors assess local ideas about wealth, success, speculation, and development and their connections to participation in institutions and activities generated by them. This innovative and accessible collection offers a new intersection between Western Pacific anthropology and global studies.