To browse Academia. Plate 3. The Kwara'ae people of Gilbert Camp, an unauthorized settlement on the outskirts of Honiara, Solomon Islands, exchange gifts of food that circulate within networks extending up to their island of origin, Malaita. In this article, I draw a few analytical connections between the data collected during 13 months of fieldwork conducted between Malaita and Guadalcanal, and the existing literature on urban Melanesia.
The result is a methodological and theoretical blurring of rural-urban oppositions that otherwise are so prominent in some ethnographies of urban Melanesia, as much as in the public discourse in Solomon Islands and elsewhere. Ethnographies of Solomon Islands and other areas of Melanesia rarely elaborate on such nuances and even less often the blurring of spatial oppositions is demonstrated on the basis of ethnographic data.
This kind of data is provided in three tables and two figures included in the article, in order to contribute to shifting the focus of urban ethnographies of Melanesia away from the rural-urban divide. One of the foremost benefits of this shift is the realization that Kwara'ae migrants are neither importing their kastom into the town nor being absorbed by urban culture.
What they are engaging in is a process of cultural creation that, although combining pre-existing elements, is fundamentally new.
It follows that this article contributes also to the recent burgeoning of literature on home-making practices and migrants as city makers. Owo, omo ati alafia money, children and peace play an Important part in the everyday struggles of women and men in Ado-Odo, a small town in southwestern Nigeria.
