The thesis provides a descriptive analysis of a development aid program in Fiji. There are dimensions to the inquiry. First, the rural development scheme is acknowledged to be about Fijians, about what they take to be their traditional culture and about their response to a program is set within the framework of an international voluntary agency. Hence, the study is also about Europeans and their culture and about their participation in a program of cross-cultural development aid. Moreover, the problem is viewed in historical perspective and from that vantage point the current phase of international voluntary development is seen as a secularized version of the missionization of Fili more than a century ago. The thesis traces the parallelism between Christianization and world development as a central theme.

The thesis consists of three major parts: the Phenomenology of Tradition, the Phenomenology of Development and the Phenomenology of Change. Within each of these categories, the analysis progresses from a discussion of the epiphenomena to the phenomena to phenomenology.