ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses upon the mobility data collected for one such people in Melanesia, the technical and methodological traps in such an attempt, and the conceptual rewards that arise from the collection of such fine-grained information. It was designed to test the notion that considerations other than economic are far more significant than has often been recognized in migration research, particularly in non-Western societies; and that, in a process as complex and dynamic as a people's mobility, single-factor explanations are simplistic distortions of reality. It was in an attempt to escape this bothersome dilemma that the present enquiry focused upon a bush and coast community in South Guadalcanal. The tactic of a micro-study was purposely adopted because, as Brookfield cogently argues, ‘It is in this that the system model, and especially the adaptive system, acquires the closest orthomorphism with empirical fact’.
