Leadership in Absentia : Negotiating Distance in Centralized Solomon Islands

This article examines a tension at the heart of national leadership in Solomon Islands today: a conviction that national leaders need to spend more time in rural environments to better represent rural interests, needs and values, while having to be in town to access the individuals and organizations that, essentially, make them national leaders in the fi rst place. Drawing on fourteen months of ethnographic fi eldwork in urban Honiara and the rural Lau Lagoon, Malaita, we are especially interested in how this tension shapes rural perceptions of the legitimacy of chiefs as national leaders. Given that development projects can only be negotiated in Honiara, where the required state institutions, interna-tional (N)GOs and major businesses are based, rural residents feel compelled to send their most important village leaders, especially clan chiefs, to town. However, the longer these leaders are away from their homes, the more they seem distracted by urban ‘ luxuries ’ and the less they appear committed to their rural homes. In particular, villagers complain about their chiefs ’ contributions to exchange relations. Villages, thus, fi nd themselves in a double-bind that exaggerates a broader ‘ crisis of leadership ’ alongside an urban-rural divide which challenges the promise of chie fl y leadership as solution to antipolitical sentiments and a centralized state.