Download or read book Land, Custom and Practice in the South Pacific written by R. Gerard Ward and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2007-01-18 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Land tenure arrangements are fundamental to the way societies and economies operate. This book argues that in the South Pacific Islands, land formerly held by community groups under "customary" or "traditional" forms of tenure is now often being privatized. There is a divergence between rhetoric and reality concerning these trends. The authors present case studies from Western Samoa, Tonga, Vanuatu and Fiji, and note parallels from other regions experiencing comparable forces of commercialization, individualization and socio-political change.