Study title

(a) Transcribed and translated indigenous vernacular accounts of how life-cycle rituals should be performed, paying particular attention to kin relations and transfers of money and objects. All researchers will collect contrasting exemplars that reflect the particular cultural circumstances in question (In Fiji, for example, this would include accounts of weddings in ‘northern,’ ‘southern,’ and Muslim weddings). These accounts will be used as the basis for detailed observations of actual events, the variations of practice from norm noted, and indigenous explanations sought. Full audio-visual documentation will be made of selected rituals; these will, with the permission of the parties concerned, constitute part of the publicly available dataset. (b) Full statistical documentation of how selected life-cycle rituals were actually performed using the method of ‘concrete, statistical documentation’ as Malinowski (1922: 24) called it. A big change since Malinowski’s days is that many of these detailed accounts are now kept by the participants themselves as publicly available records. Such records provide a means for developing micro-level statistical analysis of money flows within the DME that are founded in models of significant monetary transactions as developed by the informants. (c) Focus group transcriptions: We will conduct, record and transcribe the focus groups in the common language of migrants (English). Our findings will create the comparative basis for a radical critical ethnography of moral reasoning, using an interpretive method already piloted in a series of workshops between Melanesianists and South Asianists run by Sykes at Manchester (Sykes 2009). (d) Non-market transaction data on selected ‘everyday’ events. Researchers will make detailed observations of selected non-market transactions noting the relationship between the transactors, the quantity and quality of the objects transacted, and the indigenous interpretation of the transaction....