Tonga, the South Pacific island kingdom located east of Fiji and south
of Samoa, is one of the world's few remaining constitutional monarchies.
Although Tonga has long been linked to the world system through markets
and political relationships, in the last few decades emerging regional
and global structures have had particularly intense and transformative
effects. Today, because of greatly increased labour migration, people,
money, and resources are in constant circulation among Tonga, New
Zealand, Australia, and the United States.
In Persistence of the Gift, Evans provides a detailed ethnographic and
historical analysis of how, in spite of superficial appearances to the
contrary, traditional Tongan values continue to play key roles in the
way that Tongans make their way in the modern world. But this
ethnography is neither that of a timeless "ethnographic present" nor of
a remote coral atoll. Instead, like the inhabitants of Tonga themselves,
the monograph begins in the islands, and works outward, tracing how
Tongans seek to meet their own, culturally specific goals, within the
constraints, challenges, and opportunities of the world system.
Tongan culture, like our own, continues to transform in the face of
global change, but the changes experienced by Tongans everywhere are
patterned and managed by the values of Tongan agents. Both creative and
conservative, the emerging transnationalist system continues to be
discernibly and proudly Tongan.
