Connections between the Economic and the Social Spheres: Strategies of Kanak Rural Households

Résumé 0

Our study results from an action-research project accompanying a development project in New Caledonia. This paper proposes an analytical framework based on the linkages between the economic and social spheres to investigate the strategies of rural households. We plan to reconsider the notions of trade and non-trade concerns as detailed in recent studies in economic anthropology and new economic sociology. This approach enabled us to formalize tools based on the recognition of the “embeddedness” of economic relations in social relationships to analyze actor strategies. The Kanak rural population offers a perfect illustration of the interest of viewing the economic and social organization in this way. Kanak households are undergoing a recent and significant economic development, which means extended integration into the market, but which also encounters some specific social rules in an ambiguous way. Based on the results of inquiries in Kanak households on the East coast of New Caledonia, the article shows that pluractivity, the diversity of agricultural practices as well as of uses of rural products result from hybridization between trade and non trade logics. Finally, the article shows that such an approach to actor strategies highlights in an original way the phenomena of territorial reorganization in New Caledonia today.