This research endeavors to understand how hybrid economies are socio-culturally embedded in Palm Island society: Hybrid Economies and Indigenous Resilience Assignment, JCU, Singapore

This research endeavors to understand how hybrid economies are socio-culturally embedded in Palm Island society. This project will consider the interconnected sectors of contemporary Indigenous hybrid economies including customary, market, and state components (Buchanan, 2016). A customary economy is not restrained to profit efficiency but circumscribes the sociocultural aspects of the economy (Woods, 2016). These aspects include trade between groups, distributive arrangements, art creation, hunting, and the production of ritual or sacred items.

Woods (2016), asserts that customary economies generate socio-cultural capital within communities including status, cultural knowledge, intellectual property, ecological management, social bonding, and quality of life. This project will take a strength-based approach, seeking to identify specific resiliencies, ways of knowing, and ways of being (Martin, 2008), inherent to the Palm Island population, that may be leveraged by the residents themselves to achieve greater economic well-being. Furthermore, this study seeks to inform
future policy discourses in mainland bureaucracies that strive to empower the Palm Island polity.