Influence Structures in a Tongan Village:'Every Villager is not the Same! (original) (raw)

2008, Structure and Dynamics

Abstract

Tatau, tatau pé, katoa tatau 'the same, just the same, all the same,' this is what most Tongan villagers rushed to say when asked if any person within the village groups they had just mentioned was mahu'inga taha 'most important.' These statements might not have come as a surprise had the small village-172 residents-not been in the Kingdom of Tonga, the only surviving Polynesian monarchy. At the head of this highly stratified society is King Taufa'ahau Tupou IV, heir of a dynasty that goes back at least a millennium. Could it be then that within the Tongan monarchic socio-cultural environment people feel and think about other co-villagers as being of the same status? Could it be that at the level of such a small village, stratification so strongly implemented in the social fabric of the overall Tongan milieu is not cognitively present? How can we reconcile the stated lack of local stratification with the overt positive feelings toward a monarchy and its aristocracy? This article is about the social network analysis we conducted to answer these questions. First, we introduce and discuss the social structure of a Tongan village and formulate working hypotheses about forms and types of social networks we expected to find. Second, we describe the methodology employed including the questionnaires used, the overall organization of the data collection, and the types of analysis employed. Third, we present the results of the analyses. The results reveal a local stratification that while differing from the national one, it shares with the latter salient characteristics. In closing, we indicate how the nature of the stratification detected in the village correlates well with other findings about the structure of Tongan mental representations in other domains of knowledge.

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