“Inventing Tradition” and Development: The Representation of Raised Field Agriculture

Issues of cultural representation have become a theme in anthropology over the past three decades (Kellogg 1991; Marcus and Fischer 1986; Ortner 1984). Following Said’s (1978) groundbreaking work, anthropologists have examined the ways that we represent other cultures through our work and in our ethnographies (Clifford 1983; Rabinow 1986). Anthropologists working in the Pacific culture area have focused attention on cultural representations of tradition and custom, by using history as an analytical tool to view how such traditions and customs originated (Carrier 1992a). Likewise, the concepts of tradition and custom have caught the interest of nation-states attempting to regulate culture through cultural policy (Lindstrom and White 1994).