1. The rapidity of this change raises an awkward question for us, as well as for any anthropologist working in a similar rapidly changing setting: just what is it that we have studied and described? This is too subtle a question to deal with here. All we can say is that we have studied and described a set of social and economic relationships that existed on a particular small island at the time we were there—and even this is a simplification, for those relationships were changing as we watched. By observing this set of relationships we have learned something about the range of possible relationships, and we are able to use this to reflect on some issues that concern anthropologists. Whether we have learned about Ponam society, or indeed even what that phrase might mean beyond a convenient designation of a particular conjunction of people, time, and place, is an issue we leave to those whose familiarity with metaphysics is greater than our own. [BACK]