Tahitian Transformation: Gender and Capitalist Development in a Rural Society (Women and Change in the Developing World)

As culturally diverse, non-Western communities are drawn into the international division of labour, capitalism takes root in a number of ways. This book describes how capitalism has become a part of the lives of rural Tahitians, starting with the arrival of Westerners to the islands and detailing the nature of the transformation brought about by missionaries, merchants, and French colonisers - a transformation whose pace has accelerated with the islands' rapid modernisation and incorporation into the French welfare state. Lockwood's analysis of the impact of capitalism centres around two major themes in Third World development: the structural changes that take place in non-Western socioeconomic systems as capitalist methods of production overwhelm indigenous economic organisation; and the nature of the increasing social, economic and political subordination of women that accompanies Westernisation.