COVID 19, communal capital and the moral economy: Pacific Islands responses

Abstract

One of the impacts of COVID-19 is that communities have looked for alternative means of survival as the market economy went into a major crisis and people lost their jobs. For many communities in the Pacific Islands, who have relied largely on the market economy over the years, this means falling back on their communal way of life which has provided resilience for centuries. The revival of various forms of communal capital such as kinship exchange, subsistence farming and strengthening of social solidarity have become features of this bourgeoning moral economy. In the post-COVID era, there needs to be a major rethinking of how community-based moral economies can be mainstreamed as assurance for resilience and as a responsive mechanism against future economic calamities.