This article examines a tension at the heart of national leadership in Solomon Islands today: a conviction that national leaders need to spend more time in rural environments to better represent rural interests, needs and values, while having to be in town to access the individuals and organizations that, essentially, make them national leaders in the first place. Drawing on fourteen months of ethnographic fieldwork in urban Honiara and the rural Lau Lagoon, Malaita, we are especially interested in how this tension shapes rural perceptions of the legitimacy of chiefs as national leaders. Given that development projects can only be negotiated in Honiara, where the required state institutions, international (N)GOs and major businesses are based, rural residents feel compelled to send their most important village leaders, especially clan chiefs, to town. However, the longer these leaders are away from their homes, the more they seem distracted by urban ‘luxuries’ and the less they appear committed to their rural homes. In particular, villagers complain about their chiefs' contributions to exchange relations. Villages, thus, find themselves in a double‐bind that exaggerates a broader ‘crisis of leadership’ alongside an urban‐rural divide which challenges the promise of chiefly leadership as solution to antipolitical sentiments and a centralized state.

中文翻译：

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缺席领导力：所罗门群岛中部地区的谈判距离

本文探讨了当今所罗门群岛国家领导核心的紧张局势：一种信念，即国家领导人需要在农村环境中花费更多的时间，以更好地代表农村的利益，需求和价值观，同时必须到镇上与个人和社区接触。从本质上讲，使他们成为国家领导人的组织。我们利用在霍尼亚拉市区和马拉塔岛农村劳泻湖上十四个月的人种学田野调查，对这种紧张关系如何塑造农村对酋长作为国家领导人合法性的看法特别感兴趣。鉴于开发项目只能在霍尼亚拉（Honiara）进行谈判，而霍尼亚拉是所需的国家机构，国际（N）GO和主要企业的所在地，因此农村居民被迫派遣最重要的村领导，尤其是氏族首领，进城。但是，这些领导人离开家园的时间越长，他们对城市“奢侈品”的分心似乎就越多，他们对农村家园的投入也就越少。特别是，村民抱怨他们的酋长为交流关系做出的贡献。因此，村庄发现自己陷入了双重束缚，夸大了更广泛的“领导危机”，同时又出现了城乡差距，这挑战了以主要领导作为解决反政治情绪和中央集权国家的希望。