Money Makes You Crazy
Custom and change in the Solomon Islands

Ross Macdonald

Book

The Solomons are a group of islands in the west Pacific where most villages have no road access and no electricity and the modern material world has not fully arrived. But, like many other parts of the Pacific and the world, people in the Solomons are daily negotiating with that modern world – especially over its access to their resources.

The author visits five communities and listens to people’s stories of how they are responding to the temptations of the money from logging, fishing and tourism contracts. In a microcosm, this book is about the ways in which Western business is affecting traditional ways of life worldwide.

Born in Scotland, Ross McDonald was teaching business and social issues, business and culture and the ethics of modern economy at the University of Auckland. His research work in the Pacific was done through the Mira Szaszy Centre for Maori and Pacific Island Development at the University.

Contents

Introduction
1 The path to paradise
2 Money kills the spirit
3 Living with the ancestors
4 At the end of the road
5 The only work worth doing Index

Book details

Pacific studies, business ethics
ISBN 1 877276 44 8, 978 1 877276 44 6, paperback, 230 x 155 mm, 96 pp, $29.95
Published: 2003

^ Top of page