Leading Lights in the ‘Mother of Darkness’: Perspectives on Leadership and Value in North Ambrym,Vanuatu

In comparative political theory in Anthropology, Pacific leadership has had a prominent place, with a long history of debate about typologies and forms. In this paper I eschew such approaches in favour of a demonstration of the complexity of interactions fostered in local communities by interpretations of a protean ‘tradition’, refracted by a history of encounters with modernity and its social imaginary at a particular historical moment. The narratives of three local leaders in Vanuatu's recent history, provide a context for evaluating the relative merits of such typologies when the grounds of leadership itself are contested.