Bureaucracy and the Pacific Way

Bureaucracy and the Pacific Way

In Mike Judge’s movie Office Space, the main character Peter is a cog in the bureaucratic wheel. He works a middling job for several different bosses, none of who care about him on any personal or emotional level. The system functions smoothly, allowing the business to operate efficiently and effectively. These corporations, like a government bureaucracy are compartmentalized, impersonal, and utilitarian. Every component of every department works toward the goal of efficiency and development. Consequently, the bureaucracy represents the culmination and manifestation of Western business ideal. Ultimately, the bureaucracy is successful when its members relinquish their own personal identity in favor of the bureaucratic ideal. Although these organizations have a significant importance in a society that values efficiency, punctuality, and materialism, the reality is that these values of Western progress are not embodied throughout the world. Other cultures have and maintain beliefs independent from this mindset. In Epeli Hau’ofa’s novel Tales of the Tikongs, the island of Tiko is a uniquely Pacific land that is the subject of a new development effort by the United Kingdom. In the name of progress, the imperialists attempt to modernize a culture they consider “native” (5). Although the Western imperialists claim these efforts are for the benefit of the Tikongs, through an analysis of the bureaucratic institutions in the stories “The Seventh and Other Days” and “The Glorious Pacific Way”, the true purpose of development is exposed to be the pacification of Pacific culture.

The opening of the collection of short stories, “The Seventh and Other Days” provides the contextual background for an understand...

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...orming Tiko into a submissive participant in their international funding games. The Tikongs lost their tradition and identity because of the premeditated actions of the bureaucracy. Furthermore, as evidenced by Pasifikiwei’s symbolic change, even their self-respect disappeared. Like Peter in Office Space, the people of Tiko became the faceless and nameless workers in a government induced pipe dream for the attainment of actual progress. Although the bureaucracy never truly succeeded in incorporating its policies in Tiko, by dehumanizing the Tikongs, undercutting their culture, and convincing the populace to work for “progress”, the bureaucracy pacified the Tikongs. Development did not improve their way of life; instead it turned them into another casualty of colonialism, a people without a culture in a perpetual struggle towards a non-existent goal.