Abstract:

World War II plunged Fred Fisk into the emerging field of ‘development’ in colonial Malaya. Feeling inadequate to the task, he looked to the 1950s literature – Amar Narain Agarwala, Sampat Pal Singh, Arthur Lewis, Ragnar Nurkse and Ben Higgins. But questions remained about the ‘transition’ from subsistence agriculture to market exchange.

Arriving at the Australian National University in 1960 Fisk expanded the range of his research to take in Papua New Guinea, Fiji and the Pacific Islands, in addition to his Malayan concerns,
continuing his work up to the mid-1990s.

With the political and welfare interests of Islanders always paramount, he established his place in the history of economic development theory. Fisk coined the term ‘subsistence affluence’ to examine the sometimes problematic responses of Islanders to ‘market’ opportunities.