ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes the political careers of John Gerea and Allan Taki, two men whose leadership and development agendas have helped shape collective efforts and political discourse in West Kwara'ae over the past thirty years. Gerea and Taki's careers have taken place during an era of fundamental political and social transformation in the Solomons. Taki announced that he has retired, and, although still attempting to pursue new projects, Gerea has lost the confidence of church funding agencies and much of the local population; it is unlikely he will regain the respect and concomitant power he once enjoyed. The Kwara'ae have a classificatory kinship system, in which same-sexed siblings of one's father and mother are treated as parents, and parallel cousins as siblings. Mamana'anga as power is not necessarily continuously felt by one who is mamana. A more culturally congruent metaphor involves a continuum between hot and cold in which both ends are associated with mamana'anga.
