Pacific contact often difficult

Methods employed in the analysis of culture contact and some of the shortcomings of social work in the Pacific context was the subject of the first MacMillan-Brown lecture of this year's series.

Miss D. F. Crozier of Victoria's Anthropology Department in this year speaking on the topic of "Togan and Papalangi Anomie in Polynesia".

Briefly translated the topic means "the stresses of contact between Tongans and foreigners".

Miss Crozier said that Tongans, and most Polynesians, were so reserved in the presence of papalangi, or outsiders, that all field workers must have known "the blank wall at the end of the blind alley" feeling.

Time limited the opportunities to find out what the other was thinking, she said, and the tendancy was for field workers to form a stereotype of all the members of a society, be it Tongan, Fijian or Maori.

For this reason she felt that no matter how well intentioned many Volunteer Service

Abroad workers, Foreign Aid technicians and missionaries were, they were unable to fully communicate with the objects of their benevolence and so failed to fulfill their objectives.

Miss Crozier used her experiences in Tonga to illustrate the "curtain" that existed between the field worker and the native.

She talked of aspects of kin relationship and why the native suffered when confronted with the conflicting customs of his own society, and the introduced customs of the papalangi.

The next lecture in the scries will be tomorrow at 1.00 p.m. in Lecture Block 2.