Vā

Our lives on social media have often come with the promise of connection. However, more often than not, digital proximity is misunderstood for meaningful connection. As we became more and more isolated and atomised, technological pathways opened up to provide us with the resources that we used to offer each other in the collective practice of nurturing and keeping community in place. Today, a device that rests in the palm of your hands is able to help you access food, public transport, the news, and entertainment at the push of a button while you yourself do not breach the wall of your isolation by staying where you are. What might it mean to build relational spaces that recognise our collectives, our communities, and the act of showing up in human solidarity?

The Samoan concept of Vā offers us meaningful guidance in helping us reclaim what we’ve lost in our deeply atomised, hyper-digitalised worlds.

Understanding Vā

Before we proceed further, we want to name something important. Vā exists as a concept across several Polynesian cultures, with variations in how it is known. It exists in Samoan and Tongan as vā, and in Māori as wā. The concept carries related, but not entirely identical meanings in each tradition. We draw primarily from the Samoan and broader Polynesian scholarship here in this resource, while also taking care to name the fact that we are working across cultural distinctions that deserve more care than a single entry can provide. We approach this as learners and welcome correction, especially from those who hold these traditions from within.

Vā refers to the relational space between things. In Samoan thought, and across related Polynesian traditions, this relational space is not empty, but is alive and sacred, and requires care. In this worldview, the health of a community, a family, a relationship, and a collective is measured by the quality of the Vā that exists between them, rather than by the qualities of the individuals involved.

This contrasts with the hyperfocus on individuals that is normalised in most Western ethical frameworks, where the moral focus is on individual rights, intentions, characters, and choices. But Vā asks us to shift the focus to what happens in the relational space, that is, in the space between people, which then draws our gaze to the quality of care, reciprocity, and attention that maintains the space of relationship. It tells us that we are not ethical because of our individual choices or views, but because of how we tend the space between ourselves and others in our lives.

In the words of Timoteo Māhina, Vā is "the concretization of the abstract," that is, the way in which relationships that are invisible become concrete through the practices that maintain them. These practices could be manifold, including such things as greeting, giving gifts, hospitality, caregiving, feeding and nourishing, and performing rituals and protocols for others that honour their dignity. Not tending to the relational space is a kind of harm that lets go of the relational space that sustains life.

In this sense, Vā also goes beyond human relationships and asks us to recognize the relational spaces with everything we are in relationship with, namely the natural world, our ancestors, entire communities, our past, and the future. Vā tells us to pay attention to whether these spaces are being tended, or neglected and violated.  

What Vā unsettles in AI governance

Current approaches to AI governance focus heavily on the material. On the one hand, infrastructure is highly material, and governance attends to systems, models, datasets, algorithms, and outputs. Governance explores what these things do, what harms they cause, how they are constituted, what impacts they have, and what rules should govern all of these aspects. Vā tells us that there are relational spaces between these material components and asks us to explore the quality of these relationships that AI systems enter, create, modify, or destroy.

This reframing is a powerful one because it asks us to go deeper than the surface. Take for example a surveillance system. We might think of it as a tool that gathers data on our whereabouts and movements, capturing multiple images of our faces in the process. But it also transforms the relational space between people. It makes us aware that we are being watched, it changes how we speak, move, and trust, and who we are seen with. It may force us to withdraw from public engagements and being our full selves with those we love because a camera is watching. Take another example, of a content recommendation algorithm. We might think of it as a tool that draws from what we consume to make recommendations for what else we can consume. But it also shapes the relational space between us and our communities, us and our attention, and between us as a collective and our shared reality. We may be forced to consume information that serves power and services a set agenda that may not be what we consent to receive. A third example is useful here, of an automated hiring system. We might think of it as a tool that makes decisions on who should be hired based on a screening process. But in reality, it also transforms the relational space between the applicant and the organisation, the applicant and the larger job market, and the applicant and the field of work by cutting out the human iteration where dignity is either honoured or violated. It can alter our perceptions of suiting a role that we might be well qualified for.

Vā reminds us that AI governance should evaluate AI systems by both, their outputs and what they do to relational space. It asks us to see if a system tends the space between people by creating conditions for genuine encounter, trust, and mutual recognition, or if it thins, surveils, flattens, or commercialises that space, thus giving the transactional greater value than the sacred.

Vā turns the mirror toward the AI lifecycle in itself and asks us to pay attention to the quality of the relational space between AI builders and the communities their products affect. It asks us to explore whether these spaces are sites for genuine encounter and mutual obligation, or whether they are spaces for extraction and distance. It also asks us to interrogate the relationality between the most and least powerful, and how decisions the former make alter the lives of the latter.  

References

Anae, M. (2010). Research for better Pacific schooling in New Zealand: Teu le va–a Samoan perspective. MAI review, 1(1), 1-24.

Finau, S. P. U., Paea, M. K., & Reynolds, M. (2022). Pacific People Navigating the Sacred Vā to Frame Relational Care. The contemporary pacific, 34(1), 135-165.

Koro, M., McNeill, H., Ivarature, H., & Wallis, J. (2023). Tā, Vā, and Lā: Re-imagining the geopolitics of the Pacific Islands. Political Geography, 105, 102931.

Lilomaiava-Doktor, S. I. (2009). Beyond" migration": Samoan population movement (malaga) and the geography of social space (vā). The Contemporary Pacific, 21(1), 1-32.

Māhina, H. O. (2008). From vale (ignorance) to ‘ilo (knowledge) to poto (skill) the Tongan theory of ako (education): Theorising old problems anew. AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples, 4(1), 67-96.

NOTE:

This article draws from the wisdom, practices, and life work of Indigenous groups. While educating ourselves on Indigenous worldviews is important, we understand that our actions can also contribute to and enable appropriation. As part of our ongoing attempts at practicing accountability, we invite readers to consider donating to Indigenous groups, collectives, organizations, or initiatives to support their lives and work.