Summary
Vā is a Samoan concept for the space between people and things, understood as what connects them, not what divides them. The best-known account in English is the Samoan writer Albert Wendt’s, in his 1996 essay ‘Tatauing the Post-Colonial Body’: vā is “not empty space, not space that separates but space that relates”, the context that gives things meaning. He cites the Samoan expression ‘Ia teu le va’: cherish, nurse, care for the relationships.
Later scholars note it came to the fore as Pacific communities in Aotearoa New Zealand rebuilt relationships far from home. Vā is an ethic to be kept within a living social order, more than a theory.
Rationale
Part 1 names vā, “the relational space between, from Samoa via Albert Wendt”. It gives us a word for where dispositions live, between people as much as within. It remains a Samoan ethic, not ours.