Selling is Poverty,Buying a Shame: Representations of Work,Effective Leadership and Market Failures on Wallis

This paper seeks to answer the question why there is no central market on the Polynesian island Wallis, and relates the answer to indigenous representations of work and to cultural constraints on leadership. The title of this paper ‐ Selling is Poverty, Buying a Shame ‐ contains the answer in a nutshell, requires contextualisation in relation to the main cultural, socioeconomic and political features of the society on this island. More specifically, it raises the following questions: What do we mean when we speak about a market? Have there been markets in the past? Are there (other) market‐like structures today? And what do we mean by representations of work?