Fragments of Youth: Young Men and the State in Honiara, Solomon Islands

Abstract

The thesis examines the lives of a group of young men who live in and around Honiara, the growing capital of Solomon Islands in the southwest Pacific. Based on field work mainly conducted in 2016 in two urban communities, Burns Creek and White River, it employs interviews and participant observation in order to understand how a segment of the population engages with their state. It presents a typically underarticulated perspective: that of unemployed and under-schooled young male urbanites. In undertaking this examination, issues related to the nature of the contemporary Solomon Islands state, state-society relations and processes of state-formation as perceived and experienced by its young male citizens are engaged with. The thesis is also concerned with representations of young urban men in Solomon Islands, assessing how has this cohort been encountered and considered by those around them, in popular discourse, policy engagements and strands of academic literature.

While 'male youth' are the primary object of the thesis, they should not be considered a unitary, undifferentiated category. The study reveals dynamic elements of young urban men's socio-economic positionings, worldviews and day-to-day lives, as well as insights into the physical spaces that they inhabit and engage with.

Various lenses and thematic foci are employed in the thesis' engagement with its protagonists: international development thought and practice; the actions of, and perceptions towards, the state's police force; public group violence on Honiara's streets; and young Honiara residents' involvement in illicit livelihoods. These encounters are highly relevant for providing insights into the state-male youth relationship. Outside of routine service provision, they are sites where many young Honiara men are most likely to come into contact with elements of the state.

The findings presented challenge deficit framings of male youth. The research argues that in the main the young men studied have a difficult association with the Solomon Islands' state and have been problematically labelled and represented. The state-male youth relationship is one that cannot be neatly categorised nor defined by reference to rigid binaries. While the state is considered legitimate it is simultaneously resisted and preyed upon.