ABSTRACT
In Honiara, the capital city of the Solomon Islands, there are many young boys and young men who hang around the town. The phenomenon of the Masta Liu is not new: there have been liu since the town first started to attract great numbers of Solomon Islanders, without being able to provide them with jobs. This chapter opens up the myth of the Masta Liu that is in the process of developing in the Solomon Islands, by exploring the constitutive elements and the symbols of this subculture. Honiara is the epitome of the ‘spurious’ cultural world dreaded by Sapir and shares with many other towns and budding cities, in Melanesia and other parts of the Third World, the characteristics of undergoing rapid social changes and of being inhabited by a very young population.
