ABSTRACT
The time and space measures held by an observer to define a move will tend quite clearly to reflect both the perceptions of the society under observation and the purposes for which research is being conducted. Thus Chapman (1976:139–40), in a study of south Guadalcanal, is concerned with ‘meaningful time units that reflect the behaviour of definite groupings of people (tribesmen) who have moved, in continually cyclic fashion, over specified areas and in particular directions’. The ‘meaningful time unit’ in this case is as little as twenty four hours and the spatial displacement that constitutes mobility correspondingly small. Conversely, Bedford (this volume) reports of the UNESCO/UNFPA project in eastern Fiji:
primary concern was with movements which necessitated a substantial restructuring of the round of social and economic activities of those involved. Absences from home for a few hours or days were thus not considered relevant whereas a period of at least four weeks generally did result in a locational shift in the primary activities of an individual mover.
