Gift-giving in Western Polynesia: Lifting the Contradiction Between Samoa and Tonga

Polynesia, more than Micronesia and certainly much more than the socalled Melanesia, is a cultural area: a young one (less than 2000 years of diversification between languages) and still unitary enough. Everyone acknowledges how closely related are all Polynesian languages. Thus, it is legitimate to systematically attempt comparisons between sociocultural contexts from different Polynesian societies: worldviews, kinship systems, relationship to land, etc. and, why not, categories of ceremonial gifts and exchange patterns. But at this point a difficulty arises. It has been asserted, repeatedly, that on that latter topic, comparison is not possible, even if we start with one sub region of the whole Polynesia, such as Western Polynesia: the Samoan and the Tongan case are too different and even contradictory.