The Method of Hope

The Method of Hope

ANTHROPOLOGY,
PHILOSOPHY,
AND FIJIAN KNOWLEDGE
Hirokazu Miyazaki
STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
STANFORD, CALIFORNIA
Published with the assistance of
the Hull Memorial Publication Fund of Cornell University
Stanford University Press
Stanford, California
2004 by the Board of Trustees of the
Leland Stanford Junior University
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Miyazaki, Hirokazu.
The method of hope : anthropology, philosophy, and Fijian
knowledge I Hirokazu Miyazaki.
p. em.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN o-8047-4886-r (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Ethnology-Fiji-Suva-Philosophy. 2. Ethnophilosophy
Fiji-Suva. 3 Fijians-Land tenure-Fiji-Suva. 4 Fijians-Fiji
Suva-Government relations. 5 Fijians-Legal status, laws, etc.
Fiji-Suva. 6. Suva (Fiji)-Social life and customs. 7 Suva (Fiji)
Politics and government. I. Tide.
GN671.F5M59 2004
305.8'oo996r r-c22 2004004764
This book is printed on acid-free, archival-quality paper
Original printing 2004
Last figure below indicates year of this printing:
IJ 12 II IO 09 08 07 06 05 04
Designed and typeset at Stanford University Press in IOIIJ Sabon
For Annelise, my hope
F Acknowledgments
This book is an ethnographic demonstration of a very simple argu
ment: hope is a method of knowledge formation, academic and
otherwise. In more specific terms, it is a method for apprehending
a present moment of knowing. As an instantiation of this method,
the book juxtaposes hope in the philosophy of Ernst Bloch, Walter
Benjamin, and Richard Rorty with the long-standing hope of a
group of dispossessed Fijians, Suvavou people, to reclaim their
ancestral land. Ultimately, it seeks to bring into view the work of
hope in anthropological knowledge.
In the spirit of hope in this sense of the term, the book is also an
instantiation of my own hope as a response to the hope friends and
colleagues of mine have had in this project. The book draws upon
archival and field research done in Fiji between August 1994 and
March 1996, funded by the Division of Pacific and Asian History
at the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies at the
Australian National University. I thank Donald Denoon for gener
ous arrangements and my mother, Keiko Miyazaki, for additional
financial support.
For granting a research permit expeditiously, I thank the Fiji
government. The National Archives of Fiji provided me with a
research base during the entire period of my fieldwork, and I thank
Margaret Patel, then government archivist, and her staff for their
assistance.
From August 1994 until June 199 5, I lived at the Australian
National University, Suva Flats, in Laucala Bay and engaged in
extensive archival research at the National Archives of Fiji, as well
as at other government departments. For generous access to gov-
VIII Acknowledgments
ernment records, I thank Ratu Jone Radrodro, then permanent sec
retary for Fijian Affairs, Ratu Viliame Tagivetaia of the Native
Lands and Fisheries Commission, Seru Naqase of the Native Land
Trust Board, Samu Levu of the Ministry of Lands and Mineral
Resources, and Samisoni Sawailau of the Ministry of Tourism. I
also thank the office of Roko Veivuke (Suva/Beqa) for assistance in
obtaining permission to access records at the Native Lands and
Fisheries Commission.
In late October 1994, I began my work in Suvavou, a Fijian vil
lage near Suva, and I spent almost every day thereafter in the vil
lage. From the beginning of July I 99 5, I lived near the village and
participated in Suvavou people's daily activities. I thank the chief of
the village, Tui Suva Ratu Epeli Kanakana, for generously allowing
me to conduct research in the village. I also thank Metui Muduna
vosa, Seruveveli Dakai, and Pastor Samuela Ratulevu for their hos
pitality. I also thank members of both Methodist and Seventh-Day
Adventist churches in Suvavou. In particular, I thank the vakatawa
(catechist) of the Suvavou Methodist church, Avisai Bokosa, and
William Dyer, Sakeasi Tuni Koroi, Uraia Kerekerelevu Rabuatoka,
and other senior members of the SDA church. Special thanks are
due to the Suvavou Soqosoqo Vakamarama (women's association)
for letting me participate in their meetings and activities. I thank
Alumita Koroi, Atelina Turagabeci, and Niko Tamani for research
assistance during the last five months of my fieldwork. Last, but
not least, I thank the Koroi family in Suvavou for taking such good
care of me during my research. In particular, I thank Makeresi,
who worked at the National Archives of Fiji, and Laisani, who is
now in Hawaii, for introducing me to the Tui Suva in October
1994. Subsequently, Sikeli and Ana accepted me into their family.
For critical comments in the early stages of this project, I thank
my teachers at the Australian National University, especially Don
ald Denoon, Bronwen Douglas, Jim Fox, Margaret Jolly, Brij Lal,
Nicholas Thomas, and R. Gerald Ward, as well as my dissertation
examiners, Don Brenneis, Stephen Hugh-Jones, and Marshall
Sahlins.
For their careful reading of an entire draft of this book and for
Acknowledgments IX
their insightful comments, I thank Tom Boellstorff, Jane Campion,
Tony Crook, Jane Fajans, Iris Jean-Klein, George Marcus, Adam
Reed, Nicholas Thomas, Matt Tomlinson, Christina Toren, and
especially Don Brenneis and Bill Maurer. Erica Bornstein, Vincent
Crapanzano, Patrick Deneen, Davydd Greenwood, Jane Guyer, Bill
Hanks, Naoki Kasuga, Webb Keane, Donald Moore, Bill Murphy,
Kathy Rupp, and Allison Truit also read portions of the manuscript
and provided me with consequential advice. Special thanks are due
to Naoki Kasuga and Matt Tomlinson for generously sharing their
knowledge of the Fijian language with me. Participants in my grad
uate and senior seminars at Cornell University during the
2002hoo3 academic year also read an entire draft of the book. I
thank them all for their challenging comments. The core argument
of the book was presented at the 2001 meeting of the American
Ethnological Society held in Montreal, the 2002 meeting of the
American Anthropological Association held in New Orleans, and a
conference on pragmatism held in March 2003 at Cornell Uni
versity's Clarke Program in East Asian Law and Culture. I thank
Webb Keane, Joel Robbins, and Steve Sangren for their helpful
comments at these occasions. I am also deeply indebted to Muriel
Bell for taking a leap of faith in this somewhat unusual project and
for all her support and patience ever since. I also thank my copy
editor, Peter Dreyer, for his careful reading. Special thanks are due
to Jason Ettlinger for his assistance of many kinds at the last stage
of this project.
The book could not have been written without witnessing first
hand the making of Annelise Riles's exemplary work. I am grateful
for her care as well as for her uncompromising criticism at every
step of this project. More than anything else, it is her faith in me
and my work that has sustained my hope. In anticipation of and in
the spirit of the argument of this book, she gave me both hope and
method.
The argument of this book has developed in a series of essays I
have written in both English and Japanese over the past few years,
portions of which appear in the book. All chapters were written
anew as book chapters, however, and the core argument of the
X Acknowledgments
book is presented here for the first time. More important, my
argument is predicated on the particular shape of the entire book
developed over the seven chapters. Portions of the following essays
appear in this book, and I thank their respective editors and pub
lishers for permitting me to use them here:
"Faith and Its Fulfillment: Agency, Exchange and the Fijian Aes
thetics of Completion," American Ethnologist [American Anthro
pological Association] 27 (1) (2ooo): 31-p.
"The Limits of Politics," People and Culture in Oceania Uapa
nese Society for Oceanic Studies] 16 (2ooo): 109-22.
"Hobo toshite no kibo" ["Hope as a method"], Shakai jin
ruigaku nenpo [Tokyo Metropolitan University Society for Social
Anthropology annual report on social anthropology] 27 (2001):
3 5-5 5.
"Bunka no seiji niokeru bubun to zentai" ["Parts and wholes in
the politics of culture"], Minzokugaku kenkyu Uapanese Society
for Ethnology journal of ethnology] 66 (2) (2001): 240-57.
"Delegating Closure," in Law and Empire in the Pacific: Fiji and
Hawai'i, edited by Sally Engle Merry and Donald Brenneis (Santa
Fe, N.M.: School of American Research Press, 2004), pp. 239-59.
The publication of this book was generously supported by the
Hull Memorial Publication Fund of Cornell University. A grant
from Cornell University's Department of Anthropology made pos
sible the speedy preparation of the index.
Throughout the book, Bible passages are quoted from the King
James Version and the standard Fijian translation. Some of the
names of Suvavou kin groups (i tokatoka, mataqali, and yavusa)
and individuals I use in this book are fictitious. As is the common
practice in Fiji, I use the term "Fijian" to refer to "ethnic Fijian."
F Contents
A Note on Fijian Orthography X Ill
I Hope as a Method I
2 A History of Thwarted Hope
3
1
3
A Politics of Self-Knowledge
so
4 Setting Knowledge in Motion 6
9
5
Intimating Fulfillment 86
6 Repeating Without Overlapping I08
7
Inheriting Hope I
3
0
Notes I4
3
References I67
Index I
93
F Maps and Photographs
Maps
I The Suva Peninsula
2 The Suvavou and Lami area
Photographs
34
35
I Tui Suva Ratu Epeli Kanakana signing a report
44
2 Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka at a foundation-laying
ceremony rr 7
F A Note on Fijian Orthography
b is pronounced mb as in number
c is pronounced th as in thus
d is pronounced nd as in mend
g is pronounced ng as in sing
q is pronounced ng as in anger
The Method of Hope
1 F Hope as a Method
This book examines the place of hope in knowledge formation,
academic and otherwise, in response to ongoing efforts in social
theory to reclaim the category of hope (see, e.g., Hage 2003;
Harvey 20oo; Zournazi 2002; cf. Williams 1979, 1989). These
efforts are part of divergent searches for alternative modes of criti
cal thought that have followed the apparent decline of progressive
politics and the rise of right-wing politics (cf. Lasch 1991). As
David Harvey puts it: "The inability to find an 'optimism of the
intellect' with which to work through alternatives has now become
one of the most serious barriers to progressive politics . . . . I believe
that in this moment in our history we have something of great
import to accomplish by exercising an optimism of the intellect in
order to open up ways of thinking that have for too long remained
foreclosed" (Harvey 2000: 17).
Because these efforts constitute social theorists' response to con
servative politicians' appropriation of the language of hope, for
most social theorists, hope as a subject immediately triggers a series
of ethical concerns regarding its content and its consequences (see
Crapanzano 2003: 6; Zournazi 2002: 218). For example, in a
series of interviews with renowned thinkers on the subject of hope,
the philosopher Mary Zournazi has recently observed,
The success o
f
right-wing governments and sentiments lies in rework
ing hope in a negative
f
rame. Hope masquerades as a vision, where the
passion and insecurity felt
b
y people
b
ecome part o
f
a call
f
or national
unity and identity, part of a community sentiment and
f
uture ideal o
f
what we imagine ourselves to be. It is a kind o
f f
uture nostalgia, a "
f
an
tastic hope"
f
or national unity charged by a static vision o
f
li
f
e and the
2 Hope as a Method
exclusion o
f
di
ff
erence. When,
f
or the bene
f
it o
f
our security and
belonging, we evoke a hope that ignores the su
ff
ering of others, we can
only create a hope based on
f
ear. (Zournazi 2002: 1 5)
Zournazi instead seeks to carve out a space for "a hope that does
not narrow our visions of the world but instead allows different
histories, memories and experiences to enter into present conversa
tions on revolution, freedom and our cultural sense of belonging"
(ibid.: 18).
In a more sociologically inspired effort, the anthropologist
Ghassan Hage contends that we need to conceptualize societies as
"mechanisms for the distribution of hope," arguing that "the kind
of affective attachment (worrying or caring) that a society creates
among its citizens is intimately connected to its capacity to distrib
ute hope," and that neoliberal regimes have contributed to the
"shrinking" of this capacity (Hage 2003: 3).
Although I am sympathetic to these efforts to reclaim hope in
progressive thought, the focus of my investigation in this book does
not concern either the ethical question of what the proper object of
hope should be or the sociological question of what social condi
tion increases or decreases actors' capacity to hope. Rather, I
approach hope as a methodological problem for knowledge and,
ultimately, as a method of knowledge deployed across a wide spec
trum of knowledge practices, as well as of political persuasions. It
is my conviction that any effort to reclaim the category of hope for
a greater cause must begin with an examination of the predication
of knowledge, academic or otherwise, on hope, and vice versa.
My investigation into hope draws on a comparative examina
tion of very specific hopes in particular knowledge practices. The
book is first of all my own response to the long-standing hope kept
alive by the Fijians I came to know during ethnographic fieldwork
in Suvavou, Fiji. Since the late nineteenth century, Suvavou people,
the descendants of the original landowners of the Suva Peninsula,
where the city of Suva stands today, have sought proper compen
sation from the government for the loss of their ancestral land.
Because of its economic and political importance, the government
has repeatedly maintained that the case cannot be reopened. De-
Hope b Method
3
spite this repeated rejection, Suvavou people have continued to pe
tition the government.
For Suvavou people, seeking this compensation has been more
than a matter of either monetary gains or identity. The long series
of petitions that they have sent to the government, I argue, repre
sent an enduring hope to confirm their self-knowledge, the truth
about who they really are. In the Fi j i an context, what i s true ( dina)
is effective ( mana) , and vice versa. For Suvavou people, to receive
a l arge amount of compensation from the government for their
ancestral land would be an effect of and proof of the truthfulness
of their knowledge about themselves. In this book, I seek to answer
a seemingly self-evident questi on: How have Suvavou people kept
their hope al ive for generation after generation when their knowl
edge has continued to fai l them? In order to answer this simple
question, the book i nvestigates the work of hope across di fferent
genres of Suvavou people's self-knowledge, ranging from archival
research to gift-giving, Christian church rituals, and business prac
tices. An investigation of the semantic pecul i arity of the Fi j i an term
i nuinui ( hope) and its relationship to Christian and more secul ar
discourses of hope would be an important ethnographic exercise
( cf. Crapanzano 2003 : rr-14; Franklin 1997; Good et a!. 1990;
Verdery r 99 5 ) , but as I discuss below, the goal of the present study
is to shi ft from hope as a subj ect to hope as a method.
Ultimately, thi s book i s an enactment of Suvavou people's hope
on another terrain, that of anthropological knowledge. In this sense,
the book is also an effort to bring into view the place of hope i n aca
demic knowledge. Some readers may find this j uxtaposition contro
versi al . As discussed i n chapter 2, by the time of my field research
( 1994-96), Suvavou people's struggle had been entangled with Fij i 's
rising ethnic nationalism; moreover, the compensation Suvavou peo
ple had demanded from the government might also be seen as hav
ing potentially serious consequences for the country's economy ( cf.
M. Kaplan 2004: 18 5 , n. 7). How is it possible, the reader may ask,
to equate Suvavou people's hope with academic hope ? My response
is to draw attention to a parallel between the ways in which Suva
vou people, on the one hand, and philosophers such as Ernst Bloch,
4 Hope b Method
Walter Benj amin, and Richard Rorty, on the other, generate hope,
or prospective momentum. In other words, my focus is not so much
on the divergent objects of these hopes as on the idea of hope as a
method that unites di fferent forms of knowing.
I did not go to Fij i to study hope, and neither did I have the
philosophies of Bloch, Benj ami n, and Rorty i n mi nd when I went
there. The way my research focus shi fted points to a broader theo
retical issue that defines the character of my approach to the sub
j ect of hope. I arrived i n Fij i i n early August 1994 intending to con
duct ethnohistorical research into contemporary Fij i an perceptions
of turaga ( "chiefs " ) and vanua ( " land" and "people" ) . The ritual
complementarity of turaga and vanua has long been a central con
cern i n Fij ian ethnography ( Hocart 1929; M. Kaplan 1988; M.
Kaplan 199ob: 8; M. Kaplan 1995; Sahlins 1985; Toren 1990,
1999), and my ambition was to follow Marshall Sahl i ns's lead
( Sahl i ns 1981, 1985, 1991) to examine this ritual relationship i n
the context of Fij i an conceptions of the past ( cf. M. Kapl an 199 5 ) .
More specifically, my proj ect concerned the character of the rela
tionship of turaga to vanua as a context and consequence of l and
alienation during the mi d nineteenth century.
I began archival research at the National Archives of Fij i i n
August 1994. My target was the extensive body of government
records concerning land al ienation during the nineteenth century,
and in particular the so-called Land Cl ai ms Commission's reports
( hereafter LCC reports ) on the history of each tract of land origi
nal l y claimed by European settlers. My archival research led, how
ever, to the unexpected discovery of something more intriguing
than archival records. Each day, I noticed a number of Fi j i an re
searchers at the archives who requested and read the same LCC re
ports as I did. Some were heads of mataqali ( cl ans ) , and others
were i nterested persons from throughout Fij i , including a number
of Fij i an lawyers and "consultants " i n Suva who specialized i n pro
viding legal advice on l and disputes. My proj ect turned to archival
research and its associated evidential practices, and, ultimately, to
the hope that the researchers, including myself, al l shared i n our re
spective pursuits of documents. Numerous lawyers and consultants
Hope b Method 5
and Suvavou people had themselves conducted extensive archival
research i nto the Suva l and case, and Suvavou emerged as the focus
of my ethnographic proj ect.
The parallels among the divergent Fi j i an, philosophical, and
anthropological forms of kno.vledge, and the unity I seek to bring
to l ight, rest on a particul ar notion of hope. In the terms of this
book, hope is not an emoti onal state of positive feeling about the
future or a religious sense of expectation; i t is not even a subject of
analysis. Rather, following Bloch, Benj ami n, and Rorty, I approach
hope as a method. In these philosophers' work, hope serves as a
method of radical temporal reorientation of knowledge. My i nsis
tence on using the category of hope derives precisely from this
potential of hope as a method. As subj ects of anal ysis, desire and
hope are not easily distinguishabl e from each other, and the cate
gory of hope can easily be collapsed into the more thoroughly the
orized category of desire. 1 Anthropologists have recently adopted
desire as a cornerstone of analytical perspectives ranging from psy
choanalysis to structural Marxism (see, e. g. , Allison 2ooo; Sangren
2000) . Unlike the subj ect of desire, which i nherently i nvites one to
analyze it with i ts i nfinitely deferrable qual i ty, I argue, the concep
tualization of hope as a method i nvites one to hope.
My investigation of hope as a common operative and method in
Fi j i an, philosophical , and anthropological knowledge practices
owes a particular debt to Marilyn Strathern's consci ous efforts to
j uxtapose Melanesi an knowledge and anthropological knowledge
as comparable and parallel " analytical " forms (see Strathern 1 988,
1 990, 1 99ra, r99rb, 1 997) . Strathern has drawn attention to a
series of aesthetic devices such as decomposition and substitution
through which, according to her, Hageners i n Papua New Gui nea
make visi ble their " inner capacities" ( Strathern 1 99ra: r98) .
Strathern has made use of the parallel and contrast between
" indigenous" and social anal yses i n her efforts, not only to ques
tion assumptions behind anthropological analytical constructs such
as gender and part-whole relations (Strathern 1 997; see also chap
ter 3), but also to extend Hageners' analytical devices to the shape
of her own analysis (see Crook, i n press) .
6 Hope b Method
Annelise Riles's work The Network Inside Out extends Strath
ern's concerns with analytical forms to analytical forms that resem
ble forms of social analysis such as the network form ( Ri les 2000) .
Whereas the distance and contrast between indigenous and soci al
analyses has enabl ed Strathern to extend the former to the latter,
the formal affinity and lack of distance between the knowledge
practices of NGO workers and those of social analysts has led Riles
to other analytical possi bi l i ties, not predicated on the existence of
distance. Here Riles tackles the broader analytical issues at stake i n
divergent efforts to reinvent ethnography after the crisis of anthro
pological representation (see, e. g. , Cl i fford 1 9 8 8; Cl i fford and
Marcus 1 9 8 6; Comaroff and Comaroff 1 992; R. G. Fox 1 9 9 1 b;
Marcus and Fischer 1 9 8 6; and see also Rabi now 1 999: 1 67-8 2),
and, in particul ar, in ethnographic studies of expert knowledge
where the idea of di fference, whether cultural , methodological , or
even epistemological , cannot be sustained as a useful anal ytical
framework (see Boyer 2001 ; Brenneis 1 999; Holmes and Marcus,
i n press; Jean-Klein, i n press; Marcus 1 998, 1 999; Maurer 2002,
2003; Miyazaki and Riles, in press; Reed 2003; Strathern 2000) .
I n this book, I seek t o contribute t o this broader debate by
proposing a somewhat di fferent ethnographic possi bi l ity. Speci f
ically, my i nvestigation of the character of hope across di fferent
forms of knowing, Fi j i an, phi losophical, and anthropological ,
points to replication as an anthropological technique ( cf. Strathern
1 9 8 8 ). By replication, I mean to al l ude to both the structural ist
notion of formal resemblance across di fferent domai ns of social l i fe
(see Faj ans 1 997: 5-6, 267) and the notion of replication as proof
i n scientific methodology. Although Harry Col l i ns and other sci
ence studies scholars have complicated our understanding of the
latter (see Col l i ns 1 9 8 5 ; Dear 1 9 9 5 : 9 5 ; M. Lynch 1 993: 2 1 2; Sha
pi n 1 994: 2 1 ; and see also Gooding et al. 1 98 9), I hope to demon
strate during the course of my argument that replication is a useful
analytical metaphor for the present i nvestigation into the character
of hope. Throughout the book, I have consciously sought to repli
cate Suvavou people's hope as a modality of engagement with one
another, with their God, and with their government i n my own
Hope b Method 7
ethnographic engagement. In this sense, the book seeks to present
a modality of ethnographic engagement that i s predicated not so
much on obj ectification, i n the sense of analysis or critique, as on
reception and response. It was once again through Strathern's work
that I learned how acts of receiving and responding can be creative
work ( see, i n particular, Strathern's response to Annette Weiner's
critique in Strathern 1 9 8 1 ) . It is equally important to note that my
discussion of Suvavou people's hope shoul d not be mistaken as an
effort to draw attention to a seemingly more general mode of en
gagement with the world that di spossessed people seem to exhibit
el sewhere i n the worl d. What i s at issue for me is at once both more
personal and more universal . More specifically, in this book, I seek
to develop an account of hopeful moments whose shape replicates
the way those moments are produced and experienced. Indeed, ulti
mately, I hope to generate a hopeful moment.
Hope as a Methodol ogi cal Probl em
Hope first of al l emerged for me as a methodological probl em. In
the course of Fi j i an gift-givi ng, characterized by the interaction of
two parties "facing" ( veiqaravi) each other, there is a moment at
which the gift-giving "side" subj ects itself to the gift-receivers'
eval uation, and qui etly hopes that the other side will respond pos
itively. After finishing a speech consisting of a series of apologies
for the i nadequacy of gifts, the spokesman for the gift-givers
remains motionless holding a tabua ( whal e's tooth) i n front of him
until a spokesman for the gift-receivers takes it from him. In this
moment of hope, the gi ft-givers place i n abeyance their own
agency, or capacity to create effects i n the world ( cf. Strathern
1 987: 23-24; Strathern 1 9 8 8 : 268-74), at least temporarily ( see
Miyazaki 2oooa) . But what i nterests me most for present purposes
i s that once the gift-receivers accept the gifts, they deny the impor
tance of the act of gift-giving among humans and collectively pre
sent the gifts to God. I have, for example, heard a spokesman for
gift-receivers say, in accepting gifts: "Your valuables have been
offered to Heaven so that we all may be given Heavenly blessing.
8 Hope b Method
May [your chief] be blessed. May your descendants be blessed . . . .
May God love us and may our duties be possible. Our love is the
only val uable. " At the moment at which the gift-givers' hope i s ful
fil led, it is replaced by another hope, hope of God's blessing on al l
those involved. My interpretation is that this second moment of
hope is an echo of the first ful filled hope: The first moment of ful
fillment in ritual is an intimation of God's ultimate response. The
production of hope of God's blessing, then, is a product of a care
ful l y orchestrated discursive play of human agency.
It soon became clear to me, however, that my own anal ytical
treatment of hope as the product of a ritual process was temporal
ly incongruous with the prospective orientation of hope itself ( see
Miyazaki n. d. ) . The analysis was predicated on the assumption that
the manipulation of ritual l anguage produces something (a sense of
collectivity, religious faith, hope, etc. ) . The retrospective treatment
of hope as a subj ect of description forecloses the possibility of
describing the prospective momentum inherent in hope. As soon as
hope is approached as the end point of a process, the newness or
freshness of the prospective moment that defines that moment as
hopeful i s lost.
I am seeking here to ask a somewhat different set of questions
than those long explored in anthropological studies of the gift since
Bronislaw Malinowski and Marcel Mauss ( Malinowski 1 9 22;
Mauss 1 9 66 [ 1 92 5 ] ) . First of al l , the focus of my attention is not
so much on the question of reciprocity and the Maussian notion of
hau, or the "spirit of the thing given, " that prompts a return gift,
which have preoccupied generations of anthropologists ( see, e. g. ,
Godelier 1 999; Sahl ins 1 972: 1 49- 83; A. Weiner 1 992) . Second,
my attention to the temporal dimension of gift-giving may recal l
Pierre Bourdieu's attention to temporal strategies in gift-giving in
the context of his critique of Claude Levi-Strauss's structuralist
treatment of exchange ( Bourdieu 1 977: 4-6) , but, unlike Bourdieu,
the methodological problem at stake for me is not the tension
between subj ective and obj ective standpoints but the interconnec
tion between the hope entailed in gift-giving and the hope entailed
in its analysis.
Hope b Method 9
The argument of this book is that hope presents a set of method
ological problems that i n turn demand the temporal reorientation
of knowledge. Looking at hope as a methodological problem, and
ultimatel y a method, rather than a product or a strategic moment
i n a l anguage game or a semiotic process, leads us to reconsider
hope as a common operative i n al l knowledge formati on. My claim
i s that thinking through hope as a method allows us to begin to
confront the most fundamental problem-what knowledge is for.
My encounter with Fij i an hope resonates with the German
Marxist philosopher Ernst Bloch's discussion of a "not-yet" ( Noch
Nicht) consciousness at the very moment at which hope i s fulfilled
i n his philosophy of hope ( Bloch 1986) . I first encountered Bloch's
concept of the not-yet through the work of the Japanese anthro
pologist and cultural theorist Naoki Kasuga, who has conducted
extensive ethnographic and historical research i n Fij i . In an article
published i n Japanese, Kasuga seeks to explain how Fi j i ans mai n
tai n thei r faith i n l and as the ultimate source of everything good
even when land conti nual l y fails to ful fi l l this faith. According to
Kasuga, "Fij i ans' persistent attachment to land is a daily reminder
of what has ' not-yet' come, to borrow Ernst Bloch's phrase ( Noch
Nicht) , and of its immanent arrival . In the midst of disappoint
ment, [the attachment to land] once again allows them to discover
that real ity is still i n a state of not-yet. This cycle i n turn sustains
Fi j i ans' persistent attachment to l and" ( 1999: 386; my translation) .
I shall return to this repetitive quality of Fij i an hope later i n the
book.
Bloch's best-known work, The Principle of Hope ( 1986) , has
received enthusiastic praise ( e. g. , Hobsbawm 1973: Steiner 1967:
90
-
91) , as well as criticism ( e. g. , Habermas 1983; Ricoeur 1986:
xi v) , from i nfluential thinkers. 2 Bloch's argument has arguably had
its most prominent i nfl uence i n the German theologian Jirgen
Moltmann's Theolog of Hope ( 1993a [1967]) .3 Nevertheless,
although there have been numerous efforts to recuperate the
contemporary relevance of Bloch's philosophy ( see, especi al l y,
Daniel and Moylan 1997; Hudson 1982; Jameson 1971; Jay 1984;
Levinas 1998: 33-42; Roberts 1990) ,4 unlike much-cel ebrated con-
10
Hope b Method
temporaries and close friends of his such as Theodor Adorno,
Walter Benj amin, and Georg Lukacs,5 Bloch ( 1 8 8 5-1 977) remains
a marginal figure i n anthropology and in social theory more gener
al l y ( see Mal kki 2001 for a notable exception) . 6
From my point of view, what emerged at the intersection of
Bloch's philosophy of hope and my ethnographic encounter with
Fij i an hope was a methodological problem. In The Principle of
Hope, Bloch focuses on the question of how to overcome the incon
gruity between the retrospective orientation of philosophy as a con
templative form of knowledge and the prospective orientation of
hope. According to Bloch, it i s this temporal incongruity that has
prevented phil osophy from apprehending the nature of hope. In
Bloch's view, therefore, hope is a methodological problem, that i s, a
problem of the retrospecti ve character of contemplative knowledge. 7
Bloch's methodological framing of the subj ect of hope prompt
ed me to rethink the temporal orientation of my analysis of Fij ian
gi ft-giving, referred to earlier ( Miyazaki 20oob; Miyazaki n. d. ) . To
the extent that my analysis foll owed the flow of the gift-giving
event, tracking every step of the ritual, i n sequence, the temporal
orientation of my analysis mirrored that of the gift-giving event
itself. However, this prospective orientation was enabled by a ret
rospective perspective of my own. My analysis was predicated on
the assumption that the moment of hope of God's blessing was an
effect of and part of the strategic manipulation of ri tual language,
that is, it foregrounded what was analytical l y conceived as an end
point, or result. More precisely, my focus on the production of
hope fol lowed the studies of Michael Herzfeld, Webb Keane, and
others of how actors' mani pul ation of the formal properties of rit
ual l anguage results i n the emergence of certai n particul ar forms of
consciousness ( Herzfeld 1 990, 1 997; Keane 1 997c) . From thi s
point of view, I understood the exchange of words and obj ects in
Fi j i an gift-giving as carefully designed to generate hope of God's
blessing among ritual participants ( see chapter 5 ) . The focus of my
analysis, i n other words, was on the ritual process as seen from the
vantage point of its effects. As I would later come to understand,
any analysis that foresees its own end point loses its open-ended-
Hope b Method I I
ness. The temporal orientation of this analysis and that of the ritu
al practices it described were incongruous. However, where the
focus on production demands a retrospective perspective from the
point of view of what is produced, ritual participants mai ntained a
forward-looking orientation at every step of the ritual . More pre
cisely, from ritual participants' point of view, the mai ntenance of a
prospective perspective was at the heart of ritual performance. This
was true even though the same participants engaged i n the same rit
ual form repeatedly, and hence could be said to know the ritual 's
outcomes or effects ( cf. Bourdieu 1 977: 5 ) .
Upon di scovering this temporal incongruity, my initial urge was
to pursue a framework of analysis that would replicate the tempo
ral ity of every moment i n the gift-giving event. In approximating
the structure of the ritual moment, analysis would i n a sense be in
that moment. A framework of analysis that is completely synchro
nous with a present moment is an ill usion, however. The chal lenge
I faced i s pertinent to a more general problem of how to approach
the i nfi nitely elusive qual ity of any present moment. As Wil l i am
Hanks has noted, "To say ' now' i s al ready to have lost the moment.
To say ' here' i s to obj ectify part of a lived space whose extent is
both greater and lesser than the referent" ( Hanks I 996b: 29 5 ) .
This paradox of the present, according to Hanks, "produces a syn
chrony, only to be superseded, overtaken by its own momentum,
unabl e to stop the motion of meaning" ( i bid. : 295-96) .
My investigation of hope i n this book begins with the impossi
bi lity of achieving analytical synchronicity. Here, I once again turn
to Bloch, whose solution to the problem of the incongruity between
the direction of philosophy and that of hope i s to reorient philoso
phy toward the future. In his view, hope can only be apprehended
by hope. On the face of thi ngs, this move would seem to come up
against the same limit. However, I argue below that the difference
lies i n the fact that Bloch's proposal does not treat hope as a sub
ject of knowledge. Rather, it is a proposal to regard hope as a
method. From this point of view, the impossibil ity of achieving syn
chronicity foregrounded i n Bloch's concept of the "not-yet" be
comes the means of apprehending hope itself. The remainder of this
I 2 Hope b Method
chapter i s devoted to explicating this idea and examining its theo
retical implications for anthropology and social theory more gen
erally. For anthropology, this idea takes on the relevance of prob
lems of agency and temporality. For social theory, it suggests an
unexpected point of confluence between German social thought
and American pragmatism as exemplified by the work of Bloch,
Benj ami n, and Rorty. The ultimate goal of this exercise, however,
is not to theorize hope but to construct an analytical framework for
approaching concrete moments of hope that I encountered across
di fferent domains of knowledge i n Suvavou, ranging from archival
research to religious discourse to gift-giving rituals to business. I
first turn to philosophical arguments about the temporal orienta
tion of knowledge entailed i n efforts to capture hope as a subj ect
of contemplation. The question of hope i n turn naturally invites the
question of God, that is, of the problem of the limits of human
agency. The next section therefore turns to questions of agency to
show how, for Bl och and others, questions of temporality displace
questions of agency. The chapter concludes that this di spl acement
i s instrumental to hope as a method, that is, to these philosophers'
efforts to deploy hope as a means of apprehending hope. I follow
with an overview of the argument of the book as a whole, as it
unfol ds i n each of the i ndi vi dual chapters.
Reorienting the Direction of Knowl edge
I f there i s l ittle empirical ground for hope, on what grounds and for
what should one hope? For many philosophers, this deceptively
simple observation is at the heart of the problem of hope. 8 Just as
the focus of Christian eschatology shi fted from a concrete hope for
the second coming of Christ to an abstract hope for an afterlife ( see
Bultmann 1 9 5 7: 5 1 ; Kermode 2ooo: 25 ; Moltmann 1 993a [ 1 967] ) ,
the i nsufficient empirical foundation of hope has led many philoso
phers to make a purely moral argument for hope ( see Ricoeur
1 98 6: xv) . I n Critique of Pure Reason, for example, Immanuel
Kant asks the famous question, "What may I hope?" ( 1 9 29 [ 1 78 1]:
635 ) , or "I f I do what I ought to do, what may I then hope?" ( 636) .
Hope b Method 13
Kant's answer to this question derives from his assumption that
"there really are pure moral laws which determine completely a
priori ( without regard to empirical motives, that is, to happiness)
what i s and i s not to be done, that i s, which determine the employ
ment of the freedom of a rational being in general " ( 63 6) . For
Kant, "hope i n the moral progress of human society" comes down
to "moral faith, " or faith beyond knowledge, the phi losopher
Robert Adams observes ( 1 998: xxv, xxvi ) , that is, faith i n the pos
si bility of "a moral worl d" ( Kant 1 9 29 [ 1 7 8 1 ] : 63 7), which is itself
al so the condition of that possibi l ity ( see also Peters 1 993 : 1 4 3 ) .
This understanding of hope i s not s o di fferent from the notion of
"hope agai nst hope" often attri buted to Saint Paul 's comment on
Abraham, who "against hope bel ieved i n hope" ( Rom. 4 : 1 8; see
Muyskens 1 979: 1 3 6) or indeed of Kierkegaard's existenti al i st phi
losophy ( cf. Adams 1 9 87) .
Ernst Bloch's philosophy of hope represents a significant depar
ture from this conventional framework of philosophical contem
plation on the subj ect of hope. In his magnum opus, The Principle
of Hope, Bloch seeks to "bring philosophy to hope" ( Bloch 1 9 8 6:
6) and analyzes a variety of hopeful visions ranging from day
dreams to fantasies about technology to detective stories and the
Bible ( see also Bloch 1 9 8 8 ) . However, I read The Principle of Hope
not so much as a study of various mani festations of hope as an
effort to reconstitute philosophy on what he cal l s the "principle
hope " ( das Prinzip Hoffnung) . In my terms, Bloch's philosophy is
a proposal for hope as a method of knowledge.
In The Principle of Hope, Bloch confronts the li mits of philoso
phy i n its capacity to comprehend "the world [ as an entity] full of
propensity towards something, tendency towards somethi ng, laten
cy of something" ( Bloch 1 9 8 6: r 8 ) . According to Bloch, the l imits
of philosophy derive from its retrospective character: "Contempl a
ti ve knowledge [such as phi l osophy] can only refer by defi nition to
What Has Become" ; i n other words, it "presuppose[ s] a closed
world that has al ready become . . . . Future of the genui ne, proces
sively open ki nd is therefore sealed off from and al i en to any mere
contemplation" ( i bid. : 8 ) .
Hope b Method
What Bloch points out here i s the incongruity between the tem
poral orientation of knowledge and that of its obj ect, the world.
According to Bloch, this incongruity has also prevented phi l osophy
from appreciating the character of hope. He proposes to substitute
hope for contemplation as a method of engagement with the world.
Bloch's philosophy of hope i n this sense is a methodological move
to reorient the di rection of philosophy: he thus proposes to turn
philosophy toward the future and to what has " not-yet " become.
Bloch introduces the notion of the not-yet consciousness as the
antithesis of the Freudian notion of the subconscious. If the power
of psychoanalysis is predicated on the rebounding power of the
repressed or suppressed, the power of hope as a method rests on a
prospective momentum entailed in anticipation of what has not-yet
become: "a relatively sti ll Unconscious di sposed towards its other
side, forwards rather than backwards. Towards the side of some
thing new that i s dawning up that has never been conscious before,
not, for example, something forgotten, something rememberable
that has been, something that has sunk into the subconscious i n
repressed or archaic fashion" ( Bloch I 9 8 6: I I ) .
Moreover, according to Bloch, the philosophy that is open to the
future entails a commitment to changing the worl d: " Onl y think
ing di rected towards changing the world and i nforming the desire
to change it does not confront the future ( the unclosed space for
new development in front of us) as embarrassment and the past as
spel l " ( Bloch I98 6: 8 ) .
The German Marxist philosopher's intense concern with hope
resonates, al beit i n an unexpected manner, with the American prag
matist Richard Rorty's own turn to hope. 9 In a series of essays enti
tled " Hope i n Place of Knowledge, " Rorty reads John Dewey's
pragmatism as a proposal to replace knowledge with hope. As i n
the case of Bloch, this turn to hope demands shi fting the temporal
orientations of philosophy. According to Rorty, Dewey's criticism
of metaphysical philosophy for simply being "an attempt to lend
the past the prestige of the eternal " ( Rorty I 999: 29) sought to sub
stitute "the notion of a better human future for the [metaphysical ]
noti ons of ' reality, ' ' reason' and ' nature. ' . . . [Pragmatism] is 'the
Hope b Method
apotheosis of the future' " ( i bid. : 27) . The resonance between Bloch
and Rorty derives from their efforts to anchor their critique of phi
losophy i n the problem of the temporal direction of knowledge.
More concretely, their shared pursuit of a transformative philoso
phy leads them to a shared concern with the future, that i s, with the
direction of knowledge. American pragmatists' commitment to the
task of changing the world ( that is, making it more democratic)
could al so be described as a future-oriented faith in themselves.
Rorty emphasizes that Dewey sought to make philosophy "an
instrument of change rather than of conservation, " even denying
that "philosophy is a form of knowledge" ( i bid. : 29 ) . "American
pragmatism is a diverse and heterogeneous traditi on. But its com
mon denominator consists of a future-oriented i nstrumental i sm
that tri es to depl oy thought as a weapon to enable more effective
action, " Cornel West observes ( 1 989: 5 ) .
Underlying Bloch's and Rorty's turn to the future is their critique
of the philosophical understanding of essence, or truth about
humanity that i s given but i s hidden from humans, captured i n the
Greek notion of history as a teleological course of disclosure of this
essence. Bloch notes, for example, that "essence i s not something
existing i n fini shed form . . . [ but] is that which i s not yet " ( Bloch
1 98 6: 1 373; emphasis removed) . As Wayne Hudson puts it, Bloch
"replaces any conception of a settled world with the thought exper
iment of a world kept open by the presence of futuristic properties
within i t" ( Hudson 1 9 82: 92) . Rorty similarly says: "What [prag
matists] hope is not that the future will conform to a pl an, will ful
fi ll an immanent teleology, but rather the future will astonish and
exhilarate . . . . [ What pragmatists share] is thei r principled and
deli berate fuzziness" ( Rorty 1 999: 28 ) . Underlying Bloch and
Rorty's turn to the future is thei r critique of the Greek idea of
anamnesis and i ts associated teleological course of the worl d taken
for granted i n metaphysics. For both, therefore, there is no God's
pl an, no essential disposition of the world that wi l l automatically
unfol d. Both stress the i ndeterminate character of the di rection of
the world; both abandon the notion of a predetermined end.
At the i ntersections of Bl och and Rorty's philosophy, therefore,
1 6 Hope as a Method
hope emerges as a method of engagement with the world that has
particular implications for the temporality of knowledge forma
tion. In their view, hope invokes the l i mits of the retrospection of
phi l osophi cal contemplation and serves as a method for a philoso
phy that is open to the future. In other words, the introduction of
hope to philosophy reorients phil osophy to the future. This reori
entation of knowledge has some significant consequences for a
range of issues that are central to the current concerns of social and
cultural theory. I wish to focus here, in particul ar, on the problems
of agency and temporality.
Sources of Hope: The Problem of Agency
The predication of hope on an understanding of the world as inde
terminate is for both Bloch and Rorty preconditioned by a rejection
of the possibil ity of God. This raises a question about the source of
hope. For Rorty, that source is human agency. Rorty's self-con
sciously aggrandizing concept of human agency explicitly rej ects
humi l ity as instrumental to the production of hope.
The notion of humi l ity "presupposes that there is, already i n
existence, something better and greater than the human, " accord
ing to Rorty, who proposes instead the notion of fi nitude, which
"presupposes only that there are lots of things which are di fferent
from the human. " He adds: "A pragmatic sense of l i mits requires
us only to think that there are some proj ects for which our tools are
presently inadequate, and to hope that the future may be better
than the past i n this respect " ( Rorty 1 999: 5 1-p) .
Underlying Rorty's preference for the notion of finitude over
humi l ity is his anti-essential i st rej ection of the pursuit of the essence
of humanity as the goal of philosophy: "humanity i s an open-ended
notion, that the word 'human' names a fuzzy but promising proj ect
rather than an essence" ( Rorty 1 999: 5 2) . This rej ection of the
notion of essence i n turn leads him to emphasize human agency ( or
human capacity to create a better future) i n place of God's agency:
pragmatists transfer to the human future the sense of awe and mystery
which the Greeks attached to the non-human; it is transformed i nto a
Hope as a Method
1 7
sense that the humanity o f the future wi l l be, although linked with us
by a continuous narrative, superior to present-day humanity in as yet
barely imagi nabl e ways. It coalesces with the awe we feel before works
of imagination, and becomes a sense of awe before humanity's abi l ity
to become what i t once merely imagined, before its capacity for self-cre
ation. ( Rorty 1 999: 5 2 )
For this reason, following Christopher Lasch's di stinction
between hope and optimism ( I 99 I ), Patrick Deneen has argued
that Rorty's ( and Dewey's ) "hope" cannot be called hope. Rorty's
hope is simply "optimism without hope, " that i s, "the disposition
that human problems are tractable without needing to resort to any
appeals to transcendence or the divine in their solution, " according
to Deneen, who contrasts Rorty's optimism without hope with
Vaclav Havel 's "hope without optimism, " which, he says, i s based
on "a fundamental mistrust i n the belief that humans have the abil
ity to solve political and moral problems, but that the appeal to a
transcendent source-through hope-can serve as a guiding stan
dard, as well as an encouragement to action" ( Deneen 1 999: 5 78 ) .
I n other words, for Deneen, Rorty's optimism cannot be considered
hope, because hope i s predicated on a concept of God, that i s, of
transcendent agency, whi ch i n turn i mpl i es limits to human agency.
Rorty's move to eliminate the notion of transcendence from his
hope i s deli berate and strategic. In fact, Rorty anticipates Deneen's
line of criticism:
A typical first reaction to antiessenti al i sm is that i t is too anthropocen
tric, too much inclined to treat humanity as the measure of all things.
To many people, antiessential ism seems to lack humi l ity, a sense of mys
tery, a sense of human fi ni tude. It seems to lack a common-sensical
appreciation of the obdurate otherness of things of this worl d. The
antiessential i st reply to this common-sensi cal reaction is that common
sense is itsel f no more than the habit of using a certain set of descrip
tions. In the case at hand, what is called common sense i s simply the
habit of using l anguage inherited from the Greeks, and especi al l y from
Pl ato and Aristotle. ( Rorty 1 999: 5 1 )
Bloch's hope surfaces as an i nteresting counterpoint to both of
these positions. The question for Bloch as a committed atheist is
how to hope after the death of God ( cf. Habermas 1 9 8 3) . Bloch's
18
Hope as a Method
starting point i s that God i s not a possible soluti on. "[N]o one, not
even the most religious person, today sti l l believes i n God as even
the most lukewarm, indeed the doubters, believed i n hi m two hun
dred years ago, " he observes i n The Principle of Hope ( 1 9 8 6:
1 29 1 ) . He therefore seeks to decouple the problem of hope from
the question of agency ( human versus God) per se. More precisely,
for Bloch, hope actually replaces the problem of agency: imagined
nonhuman agents such as God are simply a mani festation of hope.
From this point of view, it i s not God that i s the source of hope but
hope that is the source of God:
The place that has been occupied i n i ndi vi dual rel i gi ons by what is con
cei ved as God, that has ostensi bl y been fi lled by that whi ch is hyposta
tized as God, has not itself ceased after it has ceased to be ostensi bl y
fi l l ed. For it is at al l events preserved as a place of projection at the head
of utopi an-radi cal i ntenti on; and the metaphysical correl ate of this pro
j ection remains the hidden, the sti l l undefi ned-underdefi nitive, the real
Possi bl e i n the sense of mystery. The place al located to the former God
is thus not i n itsel f a void; it would only be this i f athei sm were ni hi l i sm,
and furthermore not merel y a ni hi l i sm of theoretical hopelessness but
of the universal-material anni hi lation of every possible goal - and per
fection-content. ( Bloch 1
9
8
6
: II
99
)10
For Bloch, in other words, the important choice is not so much
between God and humans as between nihilism and hope. Upon the
death of God, the question of agency, whether human or nonhu
man, fades into the background to the extent that it i s understood
as a simple mani festation of human hope. For Bloch, the source of
hope is neither faith i n God nor faith i n humans. Hope i s the source
of such faith.
Moments of Hope: The Problem of the Present
Bloch thus practically substitutes the question of temporal ity for
the question of agency. Underlying Bloch's turn to hope is his con
cern with the problem of the present.11 In a series of essays entitled
" On the Present i n Literature, " for example, Bloch confronts the
di fficulty of accessing the present. For Bloch, the di fficulty arises
from the lack of di stance between oneself and the present moment
Hope as a Method 1 9
i n which one finds oneself:
Without di stance . . . you cannot even experience something, [ much]
less represent it or present it in a right way . . . . In general i t is like this:
al l nearness makes matters di fficult, and i f it is too close, then one is
bl inded, at least made mute. This is true in a strict sense only for a pre
cise, on-the-spot experience, for the immedi ate moment that is as a dark
" right-now" lacking all di stance to itself. But this darkness of the
moment, in its uni que di rectness, is not true for an already more medi
ated right-now, which is of a di fferent kind and which is a speci fic expe
rience cal l ed " present. " . . . Nevertheless, something of the darkness of
the immediate nearness is conveyed . . . to the more medi ated, more
widespread present by necessity, i . e. , an increased di fficulty to represent
it. ( Bloch 1 998 : 1 20)
For Bloch, therefore, the problem of the present is emblematic of
the probl em of one's al ienation from self-knowledge. In his first
maj or work, The Spirit of Utopia, origi nal l y publ ished i n 1 9 1 8,
Bloch points out that our knowledge about who we are "represents
only an untrue form, to be considered only provisi onal l y. We . . .
are located i n our own blind spot, i n the darkness of the lived
moment " ( Bloch 2000: 200) . For Bloch, hope emerges from this
condition of al ienation from self-knowledge. Hope, according to
Bloch, "is in the darkness itself, partakes of its impercepti bi l ity"
and "l i fts itself precisely out of the Now and its darkness, into
itself" ( i bid. : 201, 202) .
The problem of how t o approach the present has been one of the
most di fficult puzzles i n phil osophy and exempl i fies the problem of
the lack of anal ytical distance more generally. One sol ution has
been to move away from the idea of linear and clocklike temporal
flow that treats the present as an instant and to introduce uneven
ness into the past-present-future relationship, of which the present
is the focal point ( cf. Munn 1 992: 1 1 5 ) . The phenomenologist
Edmund Husser!, for example, understands actors' perception of
the present as an intersection of what he terms retention, or the
accumulation of past actions and their consequences, on the one
hand, and protention, or pl ans for future actions ( Husser! 1 964
[ 1 8 87] ; see also Schutz 1 970: 1 37-38 ) . From this perspective, Al
fred Gell observes, as against the phil osophical problem of the
20
Hope as a Method
"nothingness " of the present ( Sartre I 9 5 6: I 7 5-79 ), Husserl sug
gests that the present has its own "thickness " ( Gell I 992: 223) . The
pragmatist Charles Sanders Peirce calls the present "inscrutable, " a
"Nascent State between the Determinate and the Indetermi nate, "
adding, "the consciousness of the present is . . . that of a struggle
over what shall be; and thus we emerge from the study with a con
fi rmed belief that it i s the Nascent State of the Actual " ( Peirce
I 9 6o: 5 : 4 5 9, 462, quoted i n E. V. Daniel I 996: I 25-26) . Wi l l i am
James's theory of the consciousness of self also draws on his redef
inition of the notion of the present: "the practically cognized pre
sent i s no kni fe-edge, but a saddle-back, with a certai n breadth of
its own on whi ch we sit perched, and from whi ch we look i n two
di rections into time" (James I 9 8 I [ I 89o] : 5 74) . In a si mi l ar fash
ion, George Herbert Mead famously develops the notion of the
present as "the locus of reality" i n his theory of the emergent self:
A present then, as contrasted with the abstraction of mere passage, is
not a piece cut out anywhere from the temporal di mensi on of uni form
ly passi ng reality. Its chief reference is to the emergent event, that is, to
the occurrence of something which is more than the processes that have
led up to it and which by its change, conti nuance, or di sappearance,
adds to later passages a content they woul d not otherwise have pos
sessed. ( Mead 1959: 23 )
Nancy Munn ( I 990) shows that the present as a site of real ity con
struction contains i ntersecting temporalities that actors seek to
control .
In contrast to these efforts to develop a general theory of actors'
apprehension of the present, Bloch and Benj ami n theorize the prob
lem of how to apprehend a particul ar ki nd of present that they call
the "now" Uetzt]. "The now Uetzt] moves and propels itself
through each day, whenever. It beats i n all that happens with its
shortest time span, and it knocks on the door, " Bloch writes ( I 99 8 :
I 27) . Yet, a s he notes, the now i s not always accessi bl e:
[ N] ot every present opens up for i t. The actual i mpul ses, the soci al l y
dri vi ng pulses, do not beat i n each present fresh and vi tal . Not every
time opens up for the now and the next now that stands exactly at that
moment in front of the door and that has never "entered" before. It has
Hope as a Method
2 1
not unloaded i ts true contents with which and toward which it is on its
way . . . . That which we cal l the propel l i ng now evidently does not
mean anything other than the tendencies within al l that exists proj ect
ed onto and atomized within the course of time. ( Bloch 1998 : 127)
Access t o the now, i n other words, demands another "now, " that
i s, a moment of hope.
The problem of the now is precisely the problem Walter
Benj ami n tackles i n his famous "Theses on the Philosophy of
History" ( 1 992 [ 1 968 ] : 245-5 5 ) . Let us consi der for a moment
Benj ami n's discussion of "hope i n the past" to which Peter Szondi
has drawn attention ( 1 9 8 6; see also Didi-Huberman 2ooo: 99) .
Benj ami n was once a close friend of Bloch's, and the two thinkers'
i nterests intersected ( cf. Kaufmann 1 997; Geoghegan 1 996) . In
"Theses on the Philosophy of History, " Benj ami n criticizes the idea
of history as a chai n of cause and effect ( see Weber 200 1 : 201 ) by
pointing to the messianic role of the histori an:
To arti cul ate the past historical l y does not mean to recognize it "the
way it real ly was" ( Ranke) . It means to seize hold of a memory as it
flashes up at a moment of danger. Historical materi al ism wishes to
retai n that i mage of the past which unexpectedly appears to man si n
gled out by history at a moment of danger. The danger affects both the
content of the tradi ti on and i ts receivers. The same threat hangs over
both: that of becoming a tool of the rul i ng classes. In every ear the
attempt must be made anew to wrest tradition away from a con
formism that is about to overpower it. The Messi ah comes not onl y as
the redeemer, he comes as the subduer of Antichrist. Onl y that histori
an wi l l have the gi ft of fanni ng the spark of hope in the past who i s
fi rml y convinced that even the dead wi l l not be safe from the enemy i f
he wi ns. And this enemy has not ceased to be victorious. ( Benj ami n
1992 [ 1968 ] : 247; my emphasis; ori gi nal emphasis removed)
Benj ami n's messianic historian searches for unful filled hope in the
past and facil itates its fulfi l l ment. We might call this attitude
toward the now retrospective from the perspective of the past's
future moment of its own salvation. 1 2
In Benj ami n's "hope i n the past, " Szondi sees the "j oi ni ng of
hope and despai r" ( 1 9 8 6: 1 5 6) . In other words, the histori an's self
assigned messianic mission becomes the basis for hope of the his-
22
Hope H H Method
tori an's own salvati on. The histori an's messianic retrospection is
the source of hope i n the future messianic historian even at a mo
ment of despair. Benj ami n therefore carves out a space for hope by
changing the character of the direction of historical knowledge. We
might say that Benj ami n's hope i s predicated on a di al ecti c of the
past and the present, defined as the past's eschatological future
moment ( cf. Szondi 1 986: 1 5 7) .
According t o Benj ami n, this dialectic of the past and its own
eschatological moment is conditioned by the past itself: "the past
carries with it a temporal index, according to which it i s assigned
to salvation" ( Benj ami n 1 9 80, vol . 1` 49 5, quoted in Szondi 1 98 6:
1 5 7) . In other words, the past points to the future moment of its
own salvati on. This view of the past is predicated on a view of the
present as having an internal drive toward its own end point. What
fans "the spark of hope in the past" is the histori an's retrospective
attention from the past's future end. The past has its own direc
tionality, i n other words, that i nvites the historian to participate in
its internal drive toward its own ful fillment.
What Benj ami n's critique of history and Bloch's critique of phi
losophy have i n common are precisely this attention to the di rec
tion of knowledge and its associated reorientation of knowledge.
Just as described in the previous section, Bloch introduces a
prospective perspective to philosophy's retrospective contempla
tion, Benj ami n reverses the direction of historical knowledge, and
counters the linear temporality of conventional historical writing
that relates past and present as cause and effect with a retrospec
tive intervention that relates past and present as the past's eschato
logical future.
More important, both Bloch and Benj ami n draw attention to the
character of a hopeful moment. For both, hope is always disap
pointed. Yet, i n Benj ami n's view, hope in the present poi nts to its
own future moment of salvation. Likewise, Bloch draws attention
to unful filled hope as "the repressed, the interrupted, the undis
charged on which we can in one and the same act fal l back upon
while it reaches forward to us in order to develop in a better way"
and poi nts to how in this unful filled hope, "the corresponding
Hope b Method 23
points of the now sparkle and transmit each other" ( 1 998 : 1 29,
1 3 0) . Both seek t o apprehend a moment of hope, in other words,
by striki ng it with a perspective whose di rection is opposite to that
of the moment. In other words, to borrow Benj ami n's expression,
the spark of hope fl ies up i n the midst of the radical temporal reori
entation i n their own analyses.
For both Bloch and Benj ami n, therefore, moments of hope can
only be apprehended as other moments of hope. Any attempts to
obj ectify these moments and turn them into outcomes of some
process, as both philosophy and history tend to do, are destined to
fail to capture the temporal ity of these moments. Bloch and
Benj ami n succeed in recapturing the temporality of these moments,
rather, by reproducing another hopeful moment, the moment of
hope i n thei r own wri ti ng. According to Bl och, the hopeful
moment, or the now-time, i s "a turning point [that] gathers all the
undischarged corresponding elements within this time that is to be
shaped . . . [and that] is the resource that enables now-time to be
seen and yet not contemplated, thus without the loss of goal, with
out the loss of its frontier characteristic" ( Bloch 1 998 : 1 3 1 ) .
From this perspective, I now wish to revisit my own initial
i mpul se for synchronicity between the temporality of my anal ytical
framework and that of the hope of Fijian ritual partici pants for
God's blessing. I mentioned at the outset that my initial response to
Fi j i ans' ritual production of hope was an impulse to construct an
analytical framework that would be synchronous with the tempo
ral ity of every moment of hope i n the ritual . Note that this hopeful
i mpul se for synchronicity emerged for me at the moment of my
apprehension of the temporal incongruity between my anal ytical
attention and its obj ect, that i s, others' hope. In other words, for
me, hope was simultaneously a cause and an effect of that incon
gruity.
In light of the above discussion, the problem of incongruity
between the retrospective framework of production and that of
hope becomes a methodological opportunity. It was precisely at
that moment of incongruity that hope emerged as a driving force
for my own i nqui ry. At the moment when I apprehended the ter-
Hope 5 Method
poral incongruity between my own analysis of the ritual produc
tion of hope and Fi j i ans' hope, i n other words, I replicated Fij i ans'
hope on a methodological terrai n. My poi nt i s that the real chal
l enge posed by moments of hope i s not so much the impossi bi l ity
of achieving the temporal congruity between knowledge and its
obj ect as the immediacy of hope thus engendered, that is, hope's
demand for its own ful filment. In the method of hope, this hope for
synchronicity is a "representation" of the hope to which it i s
depl oyed. Moments of hope can only be apprehended as sparks on
another terrai n, i n other words. The sparks provide a simulated
view of the moments of hope as they fade away.
In the five ethnographic chapters that follow, I wish to recapture
what Benj ami n calls the sparks of hope that have flown up from
my encounter with the hope of Suvavou people. As I already have
suggested, these sparks are mostly products of incongruities
between the temporal di rection of my own anthropological inter
vention and that of Suvavou people's hope as a method of self
knowledge. The challenge I face is how to preserve these sparks
while resisting the immediate demand of hope for synchronicity
that emerges in these incongruities. In these chapters, I examine the
work of hope across di fferent domains of Fij i an knowledge rang
ing from archival research ( chapter 2) to distribution of rent money
( chapter 3) to petition writing ( chapter 4) to religious and gift-giv
ing rituals ( chapters 5 and 6) and to business activities ( chapters 3
and 6) .
An Overvi ew of the Book
Underlying my turn to Bloch's philosophy i s my hope to carve out
a space for a new kind of anthropological engagement with philos
ophy. Recently, against earlier efforts to deploy non-Western
thought to challenge Western metaphysics ( e. g. , Levi-Strauss 1 962),
anthropologists have begun to engage in a more substantial man
ner with the work of philosophers such as Wittgenstein ( Das 1 998 ),
Heidegger ( J. F Weiner 1 992, 1 993, 200 1 ), Peirce ( E. V. Daniel
1 984, 1 996; Lee 1 997), and Charles Taylor ( Geertz 2000) . AI-
Hope b Method 25
though I am sympathetic to these anthropological attempts to tack
le phi losophical problems, this book i s not such an attempt. 13 That
i s, I am not interested i n either extending Bloch's theoretical con
structs to anthropology or reinterpreting the location of hi s work
i n social and cultural theory.14 To do so would violate the spirit of
Bloch's work. In other words, Bloch's parti cul ar concept of hope as
a method has consequences for the character of the relationship
between knowledge and its obj ect that i n turn demand a particular
ki nd of response. That i s, i f as suggested above, the conception of
hope as a problem has led many philosophers to look to moral
faith for a solution, I argue that the reconceptual ization of hope as
a method simply demands its application and replication on a new
terrai n.
My investigation i nto the character of Fi j i an hope is therefore
not so much a study of the hope of others as an effort to recapture
that hope ( Fi j i ans' as well as Bloch's) as a method for anthropolo
gy. This general aim of the book mani fests itself i n the traj ectory of
my investigation as unfolded i n the next six chapters. In this chap
ter, I have j uxtaposed my encounter wi th hopeful moments i n
Fij i an gift-giving wi th Ernst Bloch's conceptual ization of hope as a
methodological problem. Ultimately, I have suggested that a solu
tion to this problem inheres i n turning hope into a method of my
i nquiry, that i s, i n retrospectively making explicit my own anal yti
cal hope as a replication of the hope as an analytical obj ect that had
prompted me to strive for temporal congruity between knowledge
and its obj ect at the outset. In the following five chapters, with this
hope i n mind, I retrospectively i nvestigate hopeful moments across
di fferent genres of Suvavou people's knowledge practices. My hope
is that the constellation of "sparks of hope " i n this zigzag j uxtapo
sition between my own analytical hope and Suvavou people's hope
will i n turn point to yet another moment of replication, that is,
hope latent i n the present of anthropological knowledge of which
this work is part. In this sense, the book i s an ethnographically
i nformed speculation about what comes after hope. This seems to
be a particularly appropriate response to Bloch's philosophy of
hope gi ven that it i s "a doctrine of hope and ontological anticipa-
Hope 5 Method
tion, i s itself an anticipati on, " as Fredric Jameson puts it ( r97r:
r
s
8
-
s
9)
.
In more concrete terms, in the chapters that follow, I demon
strate that for the Fij ians I knew, as for Bloch, hope was a method
of knowledge. More concretely, it was a method of self-knowledge,
that is, knowledge about who they were. As a method of knowl
edge, I shall show, hope consistently introduced a prospective
momentum that propelled their pursuit of self-knowledge. I wish to
show how hope al l owed the Fi j i ans I knew to experience the limits
of self-knowing without abandoning the possibility of self-knowing
altogether.
Chapters 2 and 3 comprise an ethnographic introduction to Su
vavou and also seek tb situate Suvavou people's hope at the i nter
section of their pursuit of compensation for the loss of their ances
tral l and and their effort to confirm their knowledge about them
selves. In chapter 2, "A History of Thwarted Hope, " I discuss the
shifting location of Suvavou people's hope i n Fij i 's political econo
my. My focus is on a hi story of Suvavou people's engagement with
the government since the l ate nineteenth century and, i n particul ar,
on the government's evaluation of Suvavou people's knowledge
about themselves. At the time of my research, the government
treated Suvavou people with a certai n degree of sympathy and also
perceived Suvavou people's affairs to be " sensitive" because of
their history. However, both colonial and postcol oni al government
offici al s approached Suvavou people with a patronizing and even
condescending attitude. In these offici al s' view, Suvavou people
were "i ll i terate" and " ignorant" ; moreover they were not authen
tic traditional Fi j i ans because of the negative effects of their long
time exposure to city l i fe. Following the two mil itary coups i n 1987
that toppled the democratical l y elected coalition government of the
multi-ethnic Labour Party and the Indo-Fi j i an dominated National
Federation Party, however, Suvavou sympathizers emerged within
and outside of the government owing to their status as an arche
typical disenfranchised and dispossessed indigenous people. Yet
even these sympathizers expressed some doubt about the authen
ticity of Suvavou people's self-knowledge. The ultimate goal of this
Hope 5 Method 27
chapter i s to point to gaps between these sympathizers' hope for
Suvavou people, as dispossessed indigenous people, and Suvavou
people's own hope. This incongruity i n turn sets the stage for my
examination of the incongruities between the direction of anthro
pological intervention and that of Suvavou people's hope i n the
chapters that follow.
If chapter 2 situates Suvavou people in the wider politics of
i ndi genous knowledge, i n chapter 3, "A Politics of Self-Knowl
edge, " I turn to the internal pol itics of Suvavou. My focus is on the
character of reorientation of knowledge i n the context of disputes
among Suvavou mataqali over the method of distribution of rent
money received from the government for the use of their l ands. The
disputes revolved around a contest between two notions of a
whole: the whole defined by the act of combination of parts, and
the whole defined by the act of di vi si on. In recent years, the emer
gence of a village company and associated concepts of company
shares had introduced a new notion of a whole defined by
exchangeable parts ( shareholders ) . My argument is that these com
peting conceptions of wholes had di fferent temporal implications
for the politics of self-knowledge.
In chapters 4, 5 , and 6, I address the question of how Suvavou
people have kept al ive their hope. My focus i s on the interplay of
agency and temporality i n the production of hope. Drawi ng on my
discussion of the pol itics of self-knowledge i n chapters 2 and 3, I
i nvestigate how Suvavou people have striven to introduce a
prospective momentum to a present moment constantly invaded by
retrospecti on. In these three chapters, I also address three themes
that are central to Bloch's philosophy of hope, that i s, ( 1 ) i ndeter
minacy as a condition of the possibi lity for hope; ( 2) the back
groundi ng of the problem of agency i n the production of hope; and
( 3) the repetitive quality of hope.
I n chapter 4, "Setting Knowledge i n Motion, " I draw attention
to the predication of Suvavou people's hope on a del icate bal ance
between an emphasis on future-oriented openness and an anticipa
tion of a moment of closure. My focus is on the content and form
of petitions that Suvavou people have sent to the government over
Hope b Method
the past hundred years. Fi j i an land officially known as "Native
Land" i s registered to mataqali. The mataqa/i's ownership is found
ed on the records kept by the Native Lands Commission, a division
of the government that created and has mai ntained these records.
Access to these records i s tightly controll ed and is rarel y granted to
members of the publ i c. In this sense, Fi j i ans are al ienated from their
own self-knowledge. This al ienation has conditioned the character
of Suvavou people's petiti ons to reopen inquiry into their landown
ership. The problem the authors of these petitions have faced, I
argue, is how to set in motion their self-knowledge. This has
entailed an effort to render the frozen present of Fij ian self-knowl
edge i ndeterminate, while at the same time indicating a method for
alternative closure. My argument, contra the currently dominant
treatment of reality, is that i n this context, i ndeterminacy has been
an achievement, not a given condition, and that the problem of
i ndeterminacy has been inseparable from the probl em of how to
bring into vi ew a point of cl osure.
In chapters 5 and 6, I turn to Suvavou people's religious and gi ft
giving ritual s. On its surface, the highly religious qual ity of Fij i an
social l i fe woul d seem to constitute such a contrast wi th the secu
l ar philosophical efforts to apprehend hope as to render them in
apposite. Because most Fij ians, including Suvavou people, are Chris
tians, for them, unlike for Bloch and Rorty, God's presence is
unquestionabl e. 1 5 At another level, however, certai n paral l el s
emerge. As in the case of the phi l osophi cal debates about hope
mentioned above, Fij i an hope entailed a discursive game i n which
conceptions of human and nonhuman agency were negotiated and
redefi ned. Chapter 5, "Intimating Ful fillment, " focuses on these
moments of what I cal l the abeyance of agency. A comparison of
Chri sti an and gift-giving ri tual s draws attention to moments i n
these ri tual s at whi ch the agency of some or al l ritual participants
was l eft i n abeyance. I argue that these moments are instrumental
i n the production of hopeful moments.
In chapter 6, "Repeating Without Overlappi ng, " I demonstrate
the predication of hope as a method on replication, that is, on the
effort to reproduce prospective momentum to knowledge from one
Hope 5 Method 29
domain to the next. In the first hal f of the chapter, I examine a
series of events surrounding a Suvavou village company's construc
tion proj ect i n order to draw attention to di fferent kinds of retro
spective perspectives that constantly invaded moments of hope. My
focus i s on the way Fi j i ans reintroduced a prospective perspective
to these moments. Fi j i ans accomplish this task by redefining and
reconfiguring the relationship between humans and God i n order
to repeatedly recapture the prospective momentum latent i n retro
specti on. In the second half of the chapter, I turn to the publ ic
debate engendered by an apology Prime Mi ni ster Sitiveni Rabuka
del ivered to the nati on for his past conduct. My focus here i s on the
limits of hope as a method. In this debate, i n response to Rabuka's
critics, Christian defenders of Rabuka poi nted to those critics' fai l
ure to appreciate the moment of hope i n the pri me mini ster's act of
apol ogy. I argue, however, that i n engaging in this ki nd of rhetoric,
Rabuka's defenders failed precisely to recapture the hopeful con
tent of Rabuka's apology. My point i n this chapter is to demon
strate that hope can only be represented by further acts of hope. I
conclude chapter 6 by considering the implications of the repetitive
qual ity of hope for my own endeavor to recapture hopeful
moments.
Chapter 7, "Inheriting Hope, " concludes the book with a reflec
tion on hopeful moments i n anthropology si nce the 1 980s. I focus
on two examples of temporal incongruity between anthropological
theory and its obj ect: the problem of colonial legacies ( Asad 1 973 ;
Cl i fford 1 98 8 ; Thomas 1 99 1 ; cf. Sai d 1 978 ) and the problem of
what Mi chael Fischer has termed "emergent forms of l i fe" ( Fischer
1 999; see also Appadurai 1 996; Strathern 1 992) . In both cases,
anthropological knowledge has been imagined to lag behind what
is emergent i n its subj ect. The apprehension of these temporal
incongruities has i n turn prompted anthropologists to attempt to
correct them. 16 This sense of belatedness, in other words, generat
ed i n anthropologists a hope of synchronicity. In light of my dis
cussion above, however, this synchronicity must be understood as
an illusion. If anthropologists have focused on the question of how
to make their knowledge synchronous with the present moment of
3 0
Hope 5 Method
its subj ect, my discussion of hope begins with the limit of such syn
chronicity. The argument of this book i s that hope as a method
does not rest on an impulse to pursue anal ytical synchronicity but
on an effort to inherit and replicate that impulse as a spark of hope
on another terrai n. The ultimate goal of this book, i n other words,
i s to ignite sparks that i l l uminate the here and now of anthropol
ogy.
My turn to hope i s a turn away from the now fashionable effort
to pursue "new" subj ects for ethnographic i nquiry. Hope is a new
subj ect for anthropol ogy i n a sense, but I do not approach hope as
a subj ect. For me, as for the Fi j i ans I knew ( and Bloch) , hope i s a
method. As a method, hope is not new, because it is latent in al l
academic ventures.
2 F A History of Thwarted Hope
Money the government has reserved for you is l arge. It is
j ust l i ke water wrapped up i n a taro leaf. If something pricks
it, the money wi l l pour out to you.
Suvavou people attributed the above statement to Ratu Si r Lala
Sukuna ( commonly known as Ratu Sukuna ) , a high chief of Bau,
Fij i 's most prominent i sl and, and the architect of the modern Fi j i an
administrative system ( see Scarr r 9 8o) . Suvavou people did not
know the exact circumstance under which Ratu Sukuna made this
statement, but they regarded it as evidence that the government has
kept money aside to compensate the descendants of Suva people,
the original l andowners of the Suva Peninsul a, where the city of
Suva stands today.
In r 8 8 2, in order to make room for the newly established colo
ni al capital city, the government relocated Suva people to a tract of
l and across the Suva Harbor. The newl y established vi l lage was
named "Suvavou" ( "New Suva " ) . In a colony where the govern
ment ostensibly made great efforts to preserve indigenous popula
tions' l and and customs ( France 1 969) , the government i n this way
explicitly deprived Suva people ( and later Suvavou people) of their
l and and their link with the past. 1 Since then, Suvavou people have
made a living on the margins of city l i fe by selling souvenir articles
to tourists or by working at the wharf, i n the factories, or as "house
girl s" i n expatriates' residences i n Suva. 2
Over the past hundred years, however, Suvavou people have
repeatedly demanded proper compensation from the government
for the loss of their ancestral land. The government has repeatedly
rejected these requests. Despite the government's rej ecti ons,
Suvavou peopl e have conti nued to petition it. For the Suvavou peo
ple I knew, Ratu Sukuna's statement summarized thei r mission:
over the past hundred years, they have deployed a variety of strate-
3 2 A Hi story of Thwarted Hope
gies in their petitions to the government and have searched for the
exact place to "prick the taro leaf" once and for al l .
The image of a sudden flow of water out of a taro l eaf i n Ratu
Sukuna's statement may resonate with the "episodic" conception
of time that anthropologists have taken to underlie "cargo cult
thought" i n Melanesia that cul mi nates i n a sudden arrival of a uto
pi an world of abundance ( see Errington 1 974; McDowell 1 9 8 5 ;
Trompf 1 990: 1 8 8-2 1 1 ; cf. Lindstrom 1 993: 5 9) . It would be a
mistake, however, to reduce Suvavou people's pursui t of the prom
ised money to simply either a quest for monetary gains or a quest
for identity. For Suvavou people, getting the promised money de
pended on fi nding the correct manner by which to convey their
grievances to the government. The promised money would be an
effect of and a response to the correct manner of presentation.
The Suva Land Case
In 1 8 68, the most powerful Fij i an chief of the day, the Vuni val u of
Bau,3 Ratu Seru Cakobau, sold the Suva Peni nsul a to the Polynesia
Company of Melbourne, Australia, set up to attract potential set
tlers to Fij i . Prior to the cession of the Fij i islands to the British
Crown, Cakobau's government owed Washington U. S. $42, 248 for
damages caused by some Fi j i ans to some U. S. citizens,4 and the
Polynesia Company offered to pay this i n exchange for the Suva
Peninsul a and other l arge tracts of l and, whi ch together amounted
to approximately 9o,ooo acres. 5 Cakobau offered the Suva Penin
sul a l and for sale to the Polynesia Company on the strength of his
close kinship to Suva's chiefly line6 ( France 1 969: 83) . After the
sale, the Polynesia Company subdivided approximately 27,000
acres of the Suva Peninsula l and for sale to individual European
settlers. Apparently, Suva people nevertheless remained on their
l and and resisted some European settlers' attempt to occupy the
tracts of land they had purchased. 7
Following the cession of the i sl ands by Cakobau and other high
chiefs, the British government paid the Polynesia Company 9,000
and annulled all property transactions between the Cakobau gov-
A History of Thwarted Hope 3 3
ernment and the Polynesia Company ( Whitelaw I 9 66: 39) .
8
The
government upheld the claims of European settlers who could
show that they had occupied and made use of lands purchased
from the Polynesia Company regardless of the conditions of the
original sale ( i bid. ) . However, the government managed to reclaim
at least hal f of the titles it al lowed, because many of the European
cl ai mants owed money to a certain James McEwan & Co. , from
which the government acquired their land without payment. 9
On the face of it, the government's actions wi th regard to Suva
l and seem to have conformed to its wider pol icy of protecting
Fij ian i nterests i n l and. In I 87 5, the government established a com
mission to investigate European settlers' claims in Fij i ( France
I 969: I J 4-I 5, 200) . Following the recommendations of this com
mission, the government rej ected the maj ority of the European
claims; as a result, Fij ians retained approximately 83 percent of the
total area of the Fij i Islands ( see Ward I 969) . The remai ni ng I 7
percent o f the land was owned by European settlers a s freehold
property or by the government as Crown property ( Ward I 969,
I 99 5 ) . Where European claims to Suva land were rej ected by the
government, however, the land was not returned to Suva people,
unlike everywhere else i n Fi j i . The government kept al l Suva l and,
except for those tracts al ready occupied by European settlers, as
well as approximately three hundred acres of l and that the
Polynesia Company had set aside as a "Native Reserve. "
In fact, a number of facts suggest that the government never
intended to return the land to Suva people. 1 0 Some time between
I 8 8o and I 8 8 2, the government began to construct public faci l ities
i n Suva such as a j ai l , an immigration depot, a hospital , a cemetery,
and an asyl um. 1 1 The government al so subdivided the l and
acqui red from James McEwan & Co. and sold some of it to gov
ernment officials. 1 2 When the capital of Fij i was relocated from
Levuka, on the island of Oval au, to Suva in I 8 8 2, the i nhabitants
of the "Native Reserve" known as Ol d Suva Vi llage or Naiqasiqasi
were removed to Narikoso, a tract of land located diagonally
across the Suva Harbor from Suva, where Suvavou is located
today. 1 3 In I 8 8 2, the government arranged to pay Suvavou people
LA

, , _
Map 1 - The Suva Peninsula ( based on map of Suva City, Lami Town, and Environs, FMS 1 g 2d ed. ,
Department of Lands and Surveys, 1986) .
''
C
:
Methodist Church
S U V HA R B O R
Map 2. The Suvavou and Lami area ( based on map of Suva City, Lami Town, and Environs, FMS 1 2d ed. ,
Department of Lands and Surveys, 1986) .
A Hi story of Thwarted Hope
2oo annual ly, i n what was vaguely framed as a form of compen
sati on, although it was left unclear which lands the money per
tained to, exactly what it was that was being compensated for, and
whether the money was indeed compensation or in fact rent. The
legal significance of this payment later became the subj ect of dec
ades of debate between the government and Suvavou people.
It is important to note that Suvavou people did not chal lenge this
arrangement until November 1 898, sixteen years after they were
removed from the Suva Peninsul a. The timing is interesting, because
it coincides with the conversion of the Roko Tui Suva, Ratu Avorosa
Tuivuya, and some of Suvavou people to Seventh-Day Adventism
earlier that year. 1 4 Since the fi rst group of Fij ians had converted to
Christianity in 1 8 3 5 , the maj ority of Fi j i an Christians had been
Methodists . 1 5 Suvavou was no exception: according to Methodist
missionary records, Ratu Avorosa's father, Ratu Ravulo, converted
to Christianity in 1 840 ( Cargill 1 977: 1 79; Jaggar 1 98 8 : 4 5 ) . Suva
vou was the first Fi j i an vil lage to embrace Seventh-Day Adventism,
and the village remains the SDA Church's mission base in Fij i . 1 6 Ra
tu Avorosa's conversion to Seventh-Day Adventism must i n itself
have constituted a challenge to the authority of the government, be
cause of SDAs American leadership and its explicit rejection of cer
tain aspects of Fi j i an tradition, i n contravention of the government's
policy of preserving Fi j i an customs.
When Ratu Avorosa and eight others wrote to the government
i n 1 89 8 expressing their dissatisfaction with the 20o they received
annual ly and requesting some form of compensation for Suva
l and,
1
7 the government responded sharply. Wi l l i am L. Allardyce,
assistant colonial secretary, summoned those who had signed the
letter. In his minute, Allardyce described a meeting with them in
which he had first confronted them by reading it al oud: "I read
them their letter enclosed and asked them i f they really intended me
to take the matter up seriously. They said they did to which I
replied ' Very well but you will first of al l answer me the following
questions. "' All ardyce then asked them:
Why have you wai ted for the last 20 years and not brought forward
your cl ai m until now? You have had many opportunities of doing so.
A History of Thwarted Hope 3 7
You admi t to receiving and havi ng received for many years past the sum
of 200 annually on account of the l ands wi thi n the yel low mark
[ i ncl udi ng the entire area of the Suva Peni nsul a] on the accompanyi ng
sketch exclusive of lands granted to Europeans. 1 8
In response, representatives of Suvavou asserted that the 2oo
was only compensation for the taking of the Native Reserve l and
origi nally al l ocated to them by the Pol ynesi a Company, on which
Government House was built, and was not compensation for the
whole of the Suva Peni nsul a. Allardyce's response was unsympa
thetic. In his mi nute, he wrote:
It was too utterly preposterous, that as a matter of fact the whole block
on the sketch had little or no val ue until Government came to Suva,
that they were now j eal ous because they saw the houses of the
Europeans scattered all over what was once their lands, and I had
besides been led to bel ieve from what I had heard that they were being
prompted by an [sic] European to put in a claim for the l and,-that as
a matter of fact the 200 pai d to them annual l y and promised to them
i n perpetuity was, at the present very low rate of back interest, equal to
about I o,ooo,-that this then was the sum which was paid for their
lands by Government at a time when they had but very little value, thus
showing the l i berality of Government; and as it appeared to me that
they had come to discuss a subj ect which they did not know anything
whatsoever about I recommended their returning at once to Suvavou
which they appeared somewhat anxi ous to do. 1 9
The unsympathetic nature of the government's response t o Suva
vou people's petition is noteworthy i n itself, considering that the
government had ostensibly been concerned about the protection of
Fi j i ans' l and rights si nce the very early stage of colonization. In
1 903 , however, Suvavou peopl e again confronted the government
in a letter demanding:
1 . We wi sh to know who receives the purchase money or rent money
derived from our l and.
2. We are the true and onl y owners of the l and, and we know the
boundaries of it perfectly wel l . The reason for our enqui ry is that there
are a number of Indi ans bui l di ng houses on the land, and we, who are
the true owners, do not know to whom they pay rent. Please be of a
good mi nd and assist us to obtai n relief. We are unhappy because our
l and is being made use of without our knowledge. It i s the wish of the
A History of Thwarted Hope
whole Mataqal i [ cl an] that we be paid rent for our l and according to
custom. 2
0
In response, a government investigation found that a portion of
the land belonged to the government and the rest belonged to
Europeans, and that the annual payment to the vi llagers of 2oo
was for al l Suva l and held by the government, i ncl udi ng the partic
ular portion of land i n questi on. 2
1
The fol l owing year, Suvavou people again wrote to the govern-
ment and this time asked the government questions:
I . Who was the owner of the l and who gave it away?
2. To whom was the land given?
3 For what reason or in payment of what was the l and given?
4 In payment of whose debt was t he l and given?
5 Who arranged for the land being given?
With reference to the al leged sal e of the l and
6. Who was the owner of the l and who sold i t?
7 To whom was it sol d?
8 . What was the price of the l and?
9 Who divided the money?
Every year 200 rent is pai d for the piece of l and on whi ch the
Governor lives, but we get nothing for our land. Why is this ?
Section 5 of the Deed of Cession says "that Her Maj esty shal l have
power, whenever it shal l be deemed necessary for publ i c purposes, to
take any lands upon payment to the proprietor of a reasonabl e sum by
way of compensation for the deprivation thereof. " Section 7 Subsection
3 says "That all claims to titles of land, by whomsoever preferred . . .
shal l i n due course be ful l y i nvestigated and equi tabl y adj usted. " We are
anxious to have our claim adj usted.
When we see the Indi ans' houses we are very unhappy as we do not
know anything about their occupation of our land. Native Regul ati on
3 of I 88o Secti on I, says "Any person planting on l and which is not the
property of hi s Mataqali without the permission of its owners . . . " The
Indians have cut down our frui t trees, i vi s, dawas, vutus and kavi kas
and breadfrui t. It would be di fferent i f we were responsible for our
unhappiness, but we are not. 22
These questions, along with the sophisticated legal argument
presented in the letter, led one government official to question its
authenticity, writing: "I doubt i f there i s more than one writer in
A Hi story of Thwarted Hope
3 9
this case, or perhaps I should be more correct i n saying ' i nditer, '
and that one person is not a Fi j i an. "23 In response, the governor
simply decided that given that Suvavou people had accepted 2oo
every year for Suva land for the past twenty-two years, they had no
good reason to make such a claim. Therefore, " [t] he question
which was settled so long ago cannot now be reopened. "24 A brief
letter to this effect was sent to Suvavou. 25
In 1 907, despite the government's repeated rej ection of Suvavou
people's claim, a series of letters from Suvavou once again flooded
the government office. This time, Suvavou people adopted a new
strategy. Assuming that it was impossible to determine the status of
the yearl y payment, Suvavou peopl e requested that the government
purchase Suvavou people's interest in whatever the government
believed it had been paying 200 per annum for.
We the people of Suvavou make appl ication to the Government to buy
the land outright [ volia vakadua] on which Government House stands.
We are al l of one mi nd i n the matter.
The rent money is really not of much use to us now, it has to be spl i t
up i nto so many di vi si ons. We want money to buy houses etc. wi th. 26
This move neatly avoided the question of whether the government
was paying for the whole of Suva Peninsula or for the Government
House land only and simply asked that the government purchase
the Government House land.
The governor at the time, Everald Im Thurn, was himself a crit
ic of the early colonial government's policy of preserving Fi j i ans'
l ands, and he had changed existing l and pol i cy to make room for
new European settlers. 27 It was Im Thurn's opinion that the gov
ernment should not accept Suvavou people's offer to sell the land
outright: "I have l i ttle hesitation in saying that we should decline
this offer-unless we have to accept it for a reason which will
appear presently . . . . The real l y important question on the papers
i s not whether we shoul d or shoul d not buy the land but on what
tenure, i f any, we hold it and must continue to hold it. "2 8
Im Thurn regarded this case as " important" and "very delicate, ''
and he referred the matter to the Executive Council, which in turn
decided to ask for legal advice from the acting chief j ustice and act-
A Hi story of Thwarted Hope
ing attorney general . 29 Gilchrist Alexander, acting attorney general ,
in turn referred to another documentary source, an r 8 87 opi ni on
of a former acti ng attorney general , Si r Franci s Winter, concerning
the government's legal position that it had " absolute proprietor
ship" of the Suva land and that it should treat 2oo as an " annu
ity, " 30 and not as " quit rent. "3 1 Al exander echoed the argument,
writing: " Since the date of Si r Francis Winter's minute the position
has been strengthened by the fact that the Crown has been in pos
session of the l and as absolute owner for at least twenty five years
and has exercised rights of absolute ownership with the knowledge
and acquiescence of the natives. "32
Therefore, in Alexander's opinion, "the title of the Crown to the
lands could not now be successful l y attacked. "3 3 Im Thurn was re
lieved. It was the government's belief that the issue had been re
solved through reinterpreting the purpose of the payment of 2oo
yearly.
The legal ambiguity surrounding the annuity money continued
to plague the government every time Suvavou people drew atten
tion to it, however. In his book on the development of government
policy concerning land in Fij i , D. T. Lloyd, who from 1 9 5 4 to 1 9 66
held appointments as director of l ands, mines, and surveys and
chairman of the Native Land Trust Board in Fij i , described what he
perceived to be the del icate nature of the Suva land case. According
to Ll oyd, the government had i n fact purchased a portion of Suva
land from Suva people. In Lloyd's understanding, however, al
though "a generous purchase price was amicably agreed" between
the government and Suva people, according to the strict i nterpreta
tion of government policy to protect Fi j i an land rights, the govern
ment could not al i enate any Fi j i an land, and therefore it was decid
ed that "any capital sums arising from the sale of mataqali land to
government should be treated likewise and invested on behal f of
the mataqali, the i nterest accruing being distri buted annual l y
amongst the survi vi ng members" ( Lloyd 1 9 8 2: r 84) . Ll oyd claims
that this was the origin of the annuity money Suvavou people have
received since r 8 8 2. However, according to Lloyd, when Suvavou
people sought an increase of the annuity money i n 1 960, a delicate
A History of Thwarted Hope 4 1
legal issue was raised:
The petition rai sed not onl y those very compl ex and vi rtual l y fathom
less fi nanci al issues of estate management associated with annuities, the
i ntricacies of which were beyond the comprehension of the Fi j i ans con
cerned, but it al so brought to the notice of government and the Fij i an
admi nistration that the di sbursement of the money had hi therto not
been effected i n accordance with the stipulations laid down by the
British government in 1 905 and later enshrined i n l aw by the regul a
tions made in 1 94 1 under the provisions of the Nati ve Lands Trust
Ordi nance for the di sbursement of interest and rents accruing from
mataqal i -owned l and. Nevertheless, after protracted and patient di s
cussions with the reci pients, and with the assi stance of the Fi j i an admi n
istration and the petitioners' own private l egal advi sers, the offici al
expl anati on as to why the quantum coul d not be changed was accept
ed and the sum of f2oo continued to be pai d. ( Lloyd 1 98 2: 1 8 5 )
The details of the discussions held with the government during
the 1 96os were not available to either Suvavou people or myself at
the time of my fieldwork. What is important for current purposes
i s that, as Lloyd put it, the government has dismissed Suvavou peo
ple's request by regarding them as not understanding "the intrica
cies " of legal and financial implications of the Suva l and case. The
government's initial unsympathetic treatment of Suvavou people's
request was therefore symptomatic of a more general condescend
ing and patronizing attitude toward Suvavou people. In the opin
ion of many government officials, Suvavou people simply did not
understand the nature of the problem they were raising. In more
practical terms, extensive commerci al and state i nterests are at
stake i n the Suva l and case, and over the past century, the colonial
and postcol oni al governments have mobilized considerable legal
and administrative resources to rej ect Suvavou people's request.
The government's condescendi ng attitude toward Suvavou peo
ple continued even after the 1 9 8 7 coups d' etat replaced the exist
ing coalition government with a nationalist government ostensibl y
dedicated to " indigenous rights, " i n which Suvavou people found
vocal sympathizers. 34 For many Fi j i an government offici al s, the
case of Suvavou people epitomized the plight of commoner l and
owners, and they l ooked upon Suvavou peopl e wi th compassion
42 A Hi story of Thwarted Hope
and pity. But they also had inherited the colonial view that because
of their long exposure to city l i fe, Suvavou people were not authen
tic traditional Fij ians, 35 and they referred to Suvavou people as
" ignorant" in terms of their own heritage. Several government offi
ci al s even warned me to be careful of Suvavou people, because they
would tell me all kinds of "l ies, " albeit out of " ignorance. " This
image of Suvavou people as, on the one hand, exemplary victims of
colonial and chiefl y pol itics, and, on the other, acculturated Fij i ans
who did not know who they were triggered intense ambivalence
after the 1 98 7 coups d' etat.
In the post-coup era, as part of the celebration of indigenous and
commoner rights, a number of Fij i an groups sought to recl aim land
that had been al ienated by high chiefs during the nineteenth centu
ry,36 and, as a result, many confl icts between the government and
high chiefs, on the one hand, and lesser chiefs and commoner Fi j i
ans, on the other, had ari sen. 37 These cl ai ms provided a fi nancial
opportunity for a number of Fi j i an lawyers and so-called consul
tants in Suva who specialized in providing rural Fi j i ans with legal
advice on land di sputes. These consultants' principal role was to
prepare documents for submission to the government on their cl i
ents' behalf, in return for a porti on of any resulting compensation.
During this period, Suvavou people also intensified their com
pensation campaign. The chief of Suvavou, the Tui Suva, Ratu Epe
li Kanakana, began to make use of diverse styles of campaigning to
advance Suvavou people's long-standing claim to Suva l and. At my
fi rst meeting with the Tui Suva in November 1 994, he compared
the Suva land case with the cases of the Austral i an Aborigines and
New Zealand Maoris, and he seemed very much inspired by the re
cent successes of i ndigenous peoples abroad in reclaiming their
lands. In 1 993, he publ ished a full -page newspaper advertisement
in the Fiji Times concerning his claim to the Suva land, entitled "To
Commemorate the International Year for the Indigenous People. " 38
He also publ icly insisted that anyone who wished to avoid offend
ing the spirits of Suva land should pay tri bute to him before under
taking any maj or proj ects in the city. 39 In early 1 994, the Tui Suva
A Hi story of Thwarted Hope 43
even occupied a piece of recl aimed state foreshore land in Muani
kau and settled his relatives from Rewa there i n order to demon
strate his authority over the land. 40 Ratu Epeli also worked closely
with nationalist leaders and politicians, including a former presi
dent of the Methodist Church, Rev. Manasa Lasaro, and the Fi j i
Nationalist Party l eader Saki usa Butadroka. During the period of
my research, the Tui Suva and his peopl e also repeatedly visited the
residence of Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka to convey their desire
for compensati on.
As part of this campaign, Suvavou peopl e engaged Anare Mata
hau, principal of one of the more successful consulting firms in
Suva, Anare Matahau and Associates, to press their case. Matahau,
a former Ministry of Fij ian Affairs offici al , had studied law and
land management in England before returning to Fij i to participate
in a review of the Fi j i an admi nistrative system during the mid
1 9 8os. 41 Matahau had become a controversial figure in the 1 990s
after establishing the Foundation of the Indigenous People of Fij i ,
commonl y known among Fi j i ans as YavutuY The organization's
principal demand was the return of al l state land to its original
owners. Its establi shment in 1 993 coincided with the International
Year of the World's Indigenous People, when Matahau organized a
march through Suva that attracted a number of chiefs from west
ern Viti Levu and from other lesser chiefdoms who were not con
tent with the post-coup pol itical situation. 43 The Tui Suva, Ratu
Epeli Kanakana, was deeply involved in Matahau's movement, and
even served as one of the Yavatu's di rectors.
Matahau collaborated with another former Ministry of Fij ian
Affairs offici al , whom I shall call Inoke Vuki , to research the Suva
land case. Together they prepared a 222-page report entitled Suva
State Land: "Land of My Fathers. " In July 1 99 1 , the Tui Suva,
Ratu Epeli Kanakana, signed and submitted this report to the gov
ernment. The report claimed that al l 2,ooo acres of state land in the
Suva Peninsula should be returned to Suvavou people. The princi
pal argument of the report was founded on a Ministry of Fij ian
Affairs confidential fi le from 1 963 that Vuki di scovered at the min-
44
A History of Thwarted Hope
Figure 1 . Tui Suva Ratu Epeli Kanakana signing a report prepared by
Anare Matahau at hi s residence i n Suvavou on July 1 5 , 1 99 1 . Courtesy
Fiji Times.
istry. In this file, the secretary for Fij i an affairs speculated that the
government's acquisition of Suva land had been legall y based on
Clause 4 of the Deed of Cession. 44 The clause i n question reads:
That the absol ute proprietorshi p of al l lands, not shown to be now
al ienated, so as to have become bona fide the property of Europeans or
other Foreigners, or not now i n the actual use or occupation of some
Chief or tribe, or not actually required for the probable future support
and mai ntenance of some Chief or tribe, shall be and i s hereby declared
to be vested i n Her sai d Maj esty, Her Heirs and Successors. 45
Upon identifying Cl ause 4 of the Deed of Cession as the govern
ment's principal j ustification for the taking of Suva land, the report
claimed that Fij i 's first governor, Si r Arthur Gordon,46 had not re
garded it as a workable clause.47 If one took Gordon's view that
Clause 4 should not be implemented, the report argued, then that
clause did not provide a valid basis for the acquisition of Suva land,
as suggested in the secretary for Fi j i an affairs' interpretation i n 1 963 .
A History of Thwarted Hope 4
5
The report also presented an alternative argument. It further
noted that in a speech delivered to Fi j i an chiefs in 1 908, Governor
lm Thurn had suggested that the government should use Clause 4
to make Fi j i ans' unused land avai l abl e for European settlement. In
that speech, Im Thurn had offered to pay Fi j i an owners two-thirds
of the rent derived from l and taken under Cl ause 4 Based on Im
Thurn's interpretation of the uses of Cl ause 4, the report argued,
then Suvavou people were owed two-thirds of the rent received by
the government for properties i n Suva since the founding of the
capital . Under either i nterpretation of Clause 4, the report con
cluded, Suvavou people were entitled to compensati on. 48
Despite thei r support for Suvavou peopl e, Vuki , Matahau, and
many government officials believed that most of Suvavou people
were uneducated and knew little of their own history. In his fore
word to Suva State Land: "Land of My Fathers, " the Tui Suva
admitted that he and hi s people did not know much about their
own past. Vuki and Matahau believed that the truth could be
found i n the archives, but not in Suvavou, because Suvavou people
lacked self-knowledge, and the purpose of their report was there
fore to restore lost i nformation about Suva l and. There i s a certain
ironic continuity, i n other words, between colonial and postcolo
nial government official s' conceptions of the rel i abi l ity of Suvavou
people's knowledge about their own past. From this point of view,
the researchers' location of truth in the archives was emblematic of
Fi j i ans' wi der alienation from knowledge about themselves.
The Hi dden Document
As discussed i n chapter 4, some Suvavou people, especi al l y those
who had conducted archival research on the Suva land case, op
posed this view. Even critics of the consultants, however, shared
their view that somewhere i n the government archives, there was a
document that would val i date their cl aim once and for al l . In dis
cussing their research, they often complained that they had not
been abl e to have access to crucial documents at government offices
and i n the archives. Both the consultants and Suvavou researchers
A History of Thwarted Hope
explained to me that the government had hidden ( vunitaka) crucial
documents concerning the Suva land case and had closed ( sogo
tiko) all the fi les to protect its own interests. In an interview with
me, Yuki 's excitement about the discovery of the key confidential
fi le was tempered by the fact that the crucial map of Suva land
referred to i n the letter was missing from the fil e. 49 One Suvavou
researcher even sued the government for fai l i ng to release docu
mentary evidence to her. This woman claimed that her mother was
a descendant of the original chiefly line of Suva, which now was
extinct, and that her mother's great-grandfather had signed a gov
ernment document that promised his descendants a l arge amount
of rent money for a portion of the Suva land. In the court plead
ings, as in her conversations with me, she cl ai med that she once had
seen this document at the Lands Department. While this woman's
claims concerning her ancestry did not have many supporters in the
village, other Suvavou researchers shared her view that crucial doc
uments about Suva land were "locked up i n a safe" at a govern
ment office. Another researcher told me of the Native Lands
Commission: "They have another ' book' that i s usually locked up
i n a safe. When we discussed our claim with them, they took the
book out and checked our information by comparing it with the
content of the book before putting it back again in the safe. "
The question of Suvavou people's hope must therefore be con
textualized, not only in colonial and postcolonial politics of recog
nition ( see, e. g. , Cohn 1 9 87b; Dirks 2001 ; Rappaport 1 994) , as I
have demonstrated to this point, but also in the epistemological
consequences of archives more generally ( cf. Axel 2002; Dirks
2002; S. Kaplan 2002; Steedman 1 998 ; Stoler 2002a; see also Der
rida 1 99 5 : 9-1 0; Foucault 1 972: 6-7; Grafton 1 997) . At the time
of my fieldwork, government records prior to 1 9 60 were available
to local researchers as well as to overseas research permit-holders
at the di scretion of the government archivist at the National Ar
chives of Fij i . Yet Suvavou people believed that it was di fficult for
them to obtain access to even these "open" government records.
Access to Native Lands Commission records was generally very di f
ficul t for both Fij i an and non-Fi j i an researchers. At the time of my
A Hi story of Thwarted Hope 47
fieldwork, government offici al s as well as local researchers were
under the impression that only chiefs or heads (i liuilu) of vanua
( chi efdoms) could request these records from the Native Lands
Commission ( NLC) . When I asked to see them, an NLC offici al
i nstructed me to present a bundl e of yaqona ( kava, or piper me
thysticum) to the Tui Suva to obtain his written permission. The
NLC offici al explained that the records belonged to chiefs and that
one needed to seek their permission to examine them.
After several months of archival research, I also began to believe
that crucial documents about the Suva l and case must be hidden
somewhere at the National Archives of Fij i . 50 Government records
were classified into numerous separately indexed series, and none
of the available indexes were complete. Many files had not been
transferred to the archives from government offices and request
slips for documents often were returned to me marked "Not avai l
able" or "Missing. " What i s interesting i n retrospect is that, as for
Suvavou people, this experience only seemed to intensi fy my hope
of locating "the lost or missing sheet. " Even the government ar
chivist was concerned about the "sensitivity" of the Suva land case,
because she also believed, she told me, that there might be a "polit
ical bomb" lying hidden somewhere in the archives.
We were not the only ones to become obsessed with the hidden
document. What is clear from the archival record is that this obses
sion al so affl icted generations of government offici al s. From the
beginning of the conflict, the government confronted one problem
atic fact: despite the colonial government's meticul ous documenta
tion of most transactions, no formal deed had been exchanged with
respect to Suva l and. 5 1 There was thus no written evidence to sub
stantiate the government's title. In 1 907, Governor Im Thurn wrote
frustratedly:
Somewhere about 1 8 8 2 we by arrangement with the then nati ve occu
pants took over the l and on whi ch Government House stands and a
good deal el se-but, as I have sai d, I don't know what el se.
It is evi dent from C. S. O. 2908/0
7
that no title to the l and or agree
ment with the Natives i s in exi stence; and that even at that date it was
proposed to remedy the defect by legislation; that this legislation was
never carried into effect is certai n; and that the Government has there-
A Hi story of Thwarted Hope
fore still no title beyond what it may have acqui red by the acquiescence
of the natives i n our possession of the land and by their acceptance of
the rent si nce 1 8 8 2.
No report on t he arrangement made wi t h t he Natives was sent t o the
Secretary of State; and the only reference to the transaction to be found
in despatches i s in paragraph 9 of Si r G. W. Des Voeux' [ s] Despatches No.
2 of 6th January r 8 8 2 i n which, i n commenting on the estimates for
that year, he writes-" ltem 9 rent charge on Suva Native Land, 2oo,
i s an amount whi ch i n the opinion of the Commissioner of Native Af
fairs is the least that wi l l sati sfy the Natives of the Suva peni nsul a, who
in accordance with an arrangement made by Si r Arthur Gordon are to
vacate these lands and to move the site of their principal town . . . . "
It appears probabl e that there never was any written agreement with
the Natives as to our taking over the l and, but that the arrangement,
made i n r 8 8 2, was a mere verbal one between the Native owners ( as
represented by Ratu Ambrose) and a Mr. Cocks[ , ] Clerk of the Pro
vi nci al Office[ , ] and the Commissioner of Lands; that Mr Cocks at the
time made some sort of a written memo as to the nature of the trans
action but that thi s memo has long since been lost. 52
Suvavou people could not have known at the time that precise
ly the point they were pressing in their letters to the government
was sparking such intensive internal debate. In late 1 907, Suvavou
people approached a Suva legal fi rm, Crompton and Muspratt,
which i n turn requested that the government release any documen
tary evidence it might have that Suvavou people had " surrendered"
their right to Suva land to the government. 53 In response, the
Colonial Secretary, Arthur Mahaffy, confidently reiterated that:
" Since the year r 8 8 2 your clients have accepted the sum of 2oo as
an ' annual amount due to the natives of Suva for their removal
from al l lands upon the Suva Peninsula and for their absol ute sur
render to the Crown of al l right titl e and i nterest therein as taukeis
or native owners of the sai d l and' and have signed receipts in that
form. " 54
Behind the scenes, however, Mahaffy expressed frustration at
not being abl e to produce di rect evidence for its position, writing:
"The trouble i s that we can produce no documentary proof of the
transfer of these lands. The letter 'touches the spot. "' 55
In light of the history I have recounted, Suvavou people's repeat
ed fai l ures i n their quest for compensation can be attributed to the
A Hi story of Thwarted Hope 4
9
powerlessness of a margi nal , displaced, and dispossessed people in
both the col onial and postcol oni al worlds. Their capacity to main
tain hope in the val idity of their claim could be understood from
this perspective as a mere lack of appreciation of their own mar
ginality, of the weakness of their position in the wider political
economy of Fij i . It i s al so the case that their enduring effort in the
face of their fai l ure to find the hidden document i n the archives is
an effect of a wider regime of truth: the experience of the col onial
government, of Fij i 's government archivist, of the Suva consultants,
and even myself clearly suggests the inherent capacity of archives
to generate a sense of partial ity and hence to defer the frontier of
the truth.
However, I wish to return at this point to Suvavou people's
repeated invocation of Ratu Sukuna's statement mentioned at the
outset of this chapter and their ongoing search for something that
would "prick the taro leaf. " In contrast to the above explanations,
their own explanations of their past fai l ures focus on their fai l ure
to present themselves in an "effective" manner. Suvavou people
often told me that the moment in which they final l y obtained the
promised money would be the moment in which, i n their own
words, "the truth mani fests itself" ( " basika mai na ka dina " ) . This
mention of the "truth" was not accidental . As A. M. Hocart,
Marshall Sahl i ns, and others have pointed out, in the Fi j i an con
text, what is effective or efficacious ( mana) is truthful ( dina) and
vice versa ( see Hocart 1 9 1 4; Sahl i ns 1 9 8 5 : 3 7-3 8 ), and for Suva
vou peopl e, a search for an effective manner of request has become
a search for the truth and vice versa. From this standpoint, Su
vavou people's long-standing struggle for proper compensation for
the loss of their land has been a quest for the truth, of which the
promised money would serve as proof. It is in this nexus between
money and self-knowledge that I wish to situate Suvavou people's
hope. In the next chapter, I turn to this nexus of money and self
knowledge in the context of Suvavou's internal politics.
3 c A Politics of Self-Knowledge
As mentioned in the previous chapter, the post-coup comi ng to
power of nationalist defenders of i ndigenous rights, together with
the Tui Suva's own intensified campaign, had created an atmos
phere of heightened anticipation among Suvavou people that their
claim might this time finally be recognized. In anticipating the ful
fillment of their long-standing hope, however, Suvavou people were
sharply divided. This was evident from the earliest days of my fiel d
work in Suvavou. Several weeks after I met the Tui Suva for the
first time, I vi sited Suvavou, hoping to talk to him agai n. However,
he was away attending a mortuary ceremony, and so I began to
walk home. As I was leaving the village, a young man approached
me and asked me what I was doing in the village. I explained that
I was conducting research into the history of Suvavou, and that I
had come to see the Tui Suva, but that no one was home. The
young man interj ected that there was no point i n talking to the Tui
Suva, because he di d not know anything. Puzzled by this blatant
criticism of the village chief, I listened to what this young man had
to say. He suggested that I should meet his " uncl e" instead, and
gave me a telephone number to cal l . Several days later, I was taken
by the man's younger brother in darkness to a small house i n one
of several settlements on village land. There, I met a middle-aged
man, who recounted a very di fferent version of Suvavou history.
According to this man, who described himself as a " researcher, "
the Tui Suva was not a "true chief" ( turaga dina) . The researcher
asserted that the Tui Suva's mataqa/i, whom I shall call Mataqali
Kaiwai, had il legitimately assumed the chiefly title after the last
surviving member of the original chiefly line, Mataqali Roko Tui
A Politics of Sel f-Knowledge
Suva, died in 1 9 1 8 . The researcher's mataqa/i, whom I shal l call
Mataqali Koromakawa, had produced a series of "reports " to
prove its version of Suvavou history.
Mataqal i Koromakawa's cl ai m posed a significant chal lenge to
the Tui Suva's campaign. The Mataqal i Koromakawa researcher
asserted to me that hi s ki n would be abl e to stop any efforts to
cl ai m compensation for the loss of Suva land that did not have their
endorsement. According to hi m, the vi l lage company, Nadonumai
Holdings, was destined to fai l because it was based on the wrong
ordering of vanua ( "chiefdom" ) . From the point of view of many
of the Tui Suva's supporters, Mataqal i Koromakawa's chal lenge
was indeed well founded. They reasoned that the disunity i n the vil
lage was to blame for the long delay in Nadonumai Holdings's
acquisition of the title to a piece of land promised by the govern
ment for its business use. Some wondered i f their hope would be
thwarted once again, j ust like past hopes expressed i n the petiti ons
to the government discussed in chapter 2.
Mataqali Koromakawa's dissent from vill age efforts to gain
compensation for their lands is part of a much longer history of dis
unity within the village. 1 Indeed, Suvavou people have been divid
ed not only in their strategy for seeking compensation for Suva
land but also as to the consequential detai l s of their knowledge
about who they are. The di sunity among Suvavou people has man
i fested itself l argely as disagreement about the method of distribu
tion of shares of annuity and rent that vil lagers receive from the
government ( see chapter 2) . Because of the way the government
stipulates that it be distributed between di fferent mataqali with
particul ar ceremoni al duties, the distribution of shares of the rent
money immediately raises the question of how to al l ocate ceremo
nial duties, and vice versa. In order to resolve the question of how
to di stribute the rent, vil lagers must first agree on such questions as
how many mataqali or yavusa ( sets of mataqali) there are in a vil
lage, which mataqali is the legitimate holder of the chiefly title of a
village, and so forth. The question of who gets what share of annu
ity and rent money, in other words, translates immediately into the
question of knowledge about who one is in terms of the ritual order
A Politics of Sel f-Knowledge
of a chiefdom or a village, and vice versa. The division of money
arising from land therefore becomes the focus of the politics of self
knowledge.
In a series of writings on relations of parts and wholes, Marilyn
Strathern contrasts the relationship between parts and wholes
imagined in Euro-American knowledge with that of Melanesian
knowledge ( Strathern 1 99 1 b, 1 992, 1 997) . According to Strathern,
Euro-American knowl edge focuses on the act of integrating parts
into a coherent whole, while Melanesian knowledge focuses on the
act of dividing a given whole. In Melanesian knowledge, she
argues, parts are outcomes of the act of dividing a given whole, an
act that aims to make di vi si on expl i ci t. For Mel anesi ans, parts
therefore constitute the end point of analysis. 2 By drawing atten
tion to the contrast between the di rection of Euro-American
knowledge and the di rection of Melanesian knowledge i n terms of
the part-whole relationship, Strathern here poi nts to the possibi lity
of reorienting anthropological knowledge itself. In other words, the
end point of Euro-American knowledge becomes the starting point
of Melanesian knowledge and of Strathern's anthropological ex
ploration, and this reorientation in turn makes avai l able decompo
sition as an analytical aesthetic ( see Strathern 1 99 1 b; see also Ver
ran 200 1 ) .
What is parti cul arl y i mportant for present purposes i s
Strathern's attention to the direction of knowledge. In this chapter,
I seek to examine the interplay of two contrasting conceptions of
the relationship between parts and wholes at work i n Suvavou peo
ple's knowledge practices. My argument i s that the pol itics of self
knowledge in Suvavou are also predicated on attention to its di rec
tionality. As we shall see in later chapters, this attention to the
directional ity of self-knowledge, and its associated temporal reori
entation of knowing, are in turn central to the production of hope.
My focus i s on disputes among di fferent factions of the vill age
over the method of distribution of shares of annuity and rent
money. I first turn to anthropological debates about the nature of
the Fi j i an mataqali as the unit of division, and in particul ar, as the
unit of distribution of shares of money ari si ng from l and. The
A Politics of Sel f-Knowledge 5
3
mataqali surfaces as the ontological nexus of Suvavou people's pur
suit of promised money and their effort to confirm their knowledge
of who they really are. My ultimate goal i s to situate Suvavou peo
pl e's hope i n this pol itics of division.
The Logic of Division
For many Fi j i ans, the question of who they are invokes a series of
questions regarding their vanua ( " land, " or a collective entity
under a titular head) , yavusa ( set of "cl ans " ) , mataqa/i ( "clan" ) ,
and i tutu ( " standing, " or ceremonial duty i n the ritual order of the
vanua) . This model of self-knowledge derives from the form of the
government's inquiry into Fi j i an social organization and landown
ership i n the early twentieth century. In 1 8 8o, the Fij i government
established the Native Lands Commission ( NLC) to register Fi j i an
titles to land according to an official model of Fij ian soci al struc
ture, i n which Fi j i ans were organized into i tokatoka ( subdivisions
of mataqali) , mataqa/i, and yavusa. 3 The NLC meticulously record
ed the names and kinship of local landowning units, and as "evi
dence" of ownership, i t al so recorded each unit's narrative of
migration from its ori gi n pl ace to the land it now occupied. By the
end of the 1 9 I os, the NLC had adopted a standardized form of evi
dence taking. At each heari ng, NLC offici al s summoned represen
tatives of each yavusa to give statements regarding their yavusa's
migration to its present site of residence and to provide an account
of the current composition of the yavusa, including the ceremonial
duti es or standing ( i tutu) of each mataqali within the yavusa. Once
the NLC had obtained these statements, it summoned other repre
sentatives of each mataqali within the yavusa, asked them ques
tions about each mataqa/i's status within the yavusa, and finally
required them to swear to the val i dity of the statements given by
their yavusa representative. The mai n texts of the ensuing migra
tion narratives were recorded i n a book entitled Ai tukutuku rara
ba { literally, "general statements " ) , while the testimony of the col
l aborating witnesses was recorded in what the NLC called its
" Evidence Book. " By the mid twentieth century, the NLC had reg-
5
4 A Politics of Sel f-Knowledge
istered all Fi j i an l and ( "Native Land" ) to particul ar owners, and
wherever possible, it assigned ownership to mataqali according to
the official model of Fi j i an soci al structure in which a Fi j i an vil lage
is segmented into yavusa, mataqa/i, and i tokatoka ( see France
1 9 69 ) .
Since the completion of the NLC i nqui ries, anthropologists have
repeatedly chal lenged the official focus on mataqali and its accom
panying i nal i enabl e tie to land as the source of Fij i an identi ty, con
trasting the rigidity of the official model with the " flexi bl e" nature
of the reality of Fij i an social organizati on. For example, the Fij i an
social anthropologist Rusiate Nayacakal ou, who was trai ned at the
London School of Economics, noted:
[W] hi l e I have the highest regard for the records of the NLC and for the
competence of the men who compiled them, I believe that the commis
sion has erred i n its conception of the basic structure of Fij ian society. I
believe that the compil ation of these records was i nspi red by a concep
tion of Fi j i an society which was too rigid, tying down the constitution
of Fi j i an soci al groups to descent alone, thus robbing the system of
much of i ts flexi bi l ity. ( Nayacakal ou 1 9 6 5 : 1 26)
After highl ighting the fact that mataqali as landowning units
were not known to the rural Fijians with whom he worked, Henry
Rutz also argued that while "mataqali was a term employed unam
biguously to refer to a division of the village . . . for purposes of
ceremonial exchange, these units cross-cut yavusa and tokatoka
[and were] terms used interchangeably to refer to pol itical coali
tions of unrelated ( by descent) groups. " Like Nayacakal ou, Rutz
aimed to demonstrate the flexible nature of Fi j i an social organiza
tion: " During the course of a year, the members of some of these
groupings shi fted several times, and i nformants would note the
shi ft by saying that, e.g., 'There were five mataqali but this year
mataqali veibatiki split and now there are si x. "' 4
Likewise, Peter France, a colonial official turned historian,
lamented: "Whil st i n vil l age l i fe the [official] system i s ignored or
evaded wherever possible, i t is, at the national level, l auded and
defended as being the very foundation of Fij i an social order"
( France 1 9 69: 1 74; see al so Clammer 1 973 : 2 1 8-1 9) .
A Pol itics of Sel f-Knowledge 5 5
The anthropologist A. M. Hocart, who conducted extensive
ethnographic fieldwork i n various parts of fiji during the early
twentieth century, took a somewhat di fferent view. For hi m,
mataqali were units that surfaced for the distribution of tasks and
of shares in veiqaravi or presentation of feasts and gifts to the chief.
As he put it: "The cl an [mataqali] is partly artificial : it is a family
cut and trimmed and adj usted to one particul ar purpose, the feast .
. . . [T]he clan system is an organization for the purpose of levying
contributions; and also for distributing them; for the fast [sic] i s
divided, it was col lected, by clans . " 5
Hocart also pointed out the flexible nature of such units.
Depending on the occasion, the units could be individual vi l l agers,
households, mataqali, yavusa, or chiefdoms:
As the extent of the feast vari es ( i t may embrace the whol e state, or onl y
part of a vi l l age) , the uni ts of assessment vary. Besides, a gi ven uni t is
not fixed for al l the time, l i ke our provinces, districts, and parishes; the
units are not territories, but fami lies that multiply or die out, and so
have to be split up, or fused with others. It thus may come to pass that
such a unit may be a matanggali now, because i t used to be one and yet
not a matanggali, because it i s too small to stand on its own, or has
grown so big that it has had to be divided into several matanggali.
( Hocart 1 9 5 2: 22)
However, Hocart stressed that once units of division were deter
mined, the di fference in size between divisions was ignored: " [t] he
matanggali is an assessment unit for feasts, that is to say that con
tributions in pigs, yams, fish, and so forth, are assessed by matang
gali, not by heads" ( 1 9 5 2: 22) . For example, when mataqali were
used as the units for division, al though one mataqali might be big
ger than the others, the mataqali each received an equal share of
exchange i tems. In other words, whi l e many systems mi ght be
avai l abl e to divide the same whole, once a system was chosen, it
was maintained throughout the entire operation of di vi si on.
Di fferent mechanisms of division were not to be used in a single
operation such as the distribution of exchange goods.
Hocart's understanding of the nature of the Fi j i an mataqali
derived from his recognition of what he termed Fi j i ans' "passion
for di chotomy" ( 1 970 [ 1 9 3 6] : 269) . According to Hocart, this pas-
A Pol i tics of Sel f-Knowledge
sion derived from the Fij i an form of ritual order rooted i n the
" mutual mi ni stration" ( veiqaravi) between divisions ( Hocart 1 9 5 2:
5 2) : "The ritual requires two sides which represent the spirits.
Whatever the unit i s that celebrates the feast, two sides there must
be, and therefore every unit splits into two. In the words of a
Lauan, ' In Fij i al l things go in pairs, or the sharks wi l l bite"' ( i bid. :
5 7; cf. Toren 1 994) . 6
Hocart's point was, therefore, that Fi j i ans' interest in division
that generates parts of a whole derived from this form of worship
or "communion" ( Hocart 1 9 5 2: 5 3 ) . ? In other words, although the
effect of the aesthetic of "mutual ministration" was a dichotomized
world, the Fi j i an emphasis l ay on the form of veiqaravi and not on
the oppositions it engendered. Hocart noted that this form reap
peared at every level of Fijian social l i fe: " Every unit is divided into
two, and again i n two right down to the clan, which normally con
sists of two 'edges of the oven,' as they are called, a senior and a
j unior one. The subdivisions are to one another as the whole is to
another whol e" ( Hocart 1 970 [ 1 9 3 6] : 269) .
What I encountered i n Suvavou during the mi d 1 990s was a pro
l i feration of the official model of segmentation i n al l aspects of
Suvavou social l i fe. Suvavou people repeatedly used the officially
registered model of three yavusa segmented into ten mataqali as a
template for division of al l ki nds. Divisions into yavusa anc
mataqali remained the most important for the purposes of feasting,
gift-giving, and the distribution of shares of rent money. Whenever
gift-giving took place i n the vi l l age, shares of val uables and feasts
were redistributed according to these divisions. Suvavou people
al ternately chose mataqali or yavusa as units of distribution,
depending on the occasion, and referred to each method of division
as wase vakamataqali ( division by mataqali ) and wase vakayavusa
( division by yavusa) , respectively. For example, when the Seventh
Day Adventist Church in Fij i presented val uables and feasts to the
Tui Suva to thank him for allowing the SDA Church to use a piece
of vi l l age land for the mission-run secondary school, gifts consist
ing of a cow and drums of kerosene were distributed equally
among the ten mataqali. Likewise, when I presented val uables and
A Politics of Sel f-Knowledge 5 7
ritual food items to the Tui Suva upon my departure, I was advised
to prepare three units of each item so that each yavusa might
receive equal shares.
" [T[ he term mataqali coul d be made unambiguous by narrow
ing the field of reference to deal i ngs with admi ni strators, " Rutz
noted in the 1 970s ( 1 978 : 24) . It i s possible that Suvavou people's
frequent use of the offi ci al model may have derived from the long
term intensive negotiations wi th the government described i n the
previous chapter. Indeed, partly because di fferent vi l lage factions
have repeatedly sought to enlist the government's support i n their
internal confl icts within the vi l l age, as I describe i n this chapter, the
authority of the government has always been present i n Suvavou
people's self-knowledge. Numerous letters written by Suvavou peo
ple to the government since the NLC inquiries attest to the way i n
whi ch the offici al model became an important subj ect and basis for
debate among themselves, as well as between the vil l agers and the
government.
Alternatively, Suvavou people's strong i nterest i n the operation
of division according to the official model of segmentation may
have resulted from what Hocart called Fi j i ans' "passion" for divi
sion. With some irritation, Hocart noted Fi j i ans' tendency to
extend such operations of division to " secul ar" spheres of l i fe:
" [The] dichotomy was becoming so common as to be cheap. It was
bei ng extended to al l occasions, and was no l onger reserved for rit
ual ones . . . . Not only does too much use make stale, the multi
plying of subdivisions was bound . . . to obscure the whole dual
i sm.
"
8 The proliferation of the official model of segmentation i n
many aspects of Suvavou soci al l i fe may be an example of the
extension Hocart regarded as a sign of " decay" ( Hocart 1 9 5 2: 5 8 ) .
The question I wish to address i n the next section, however, con
cerns neither the effects of Suvavou people's l ong-term engagement
with state power nor the effects of the excessive extension of Fi j i an
symbol i c order. I wish to focus, rather, on the competing conceptu
al i zations of the relationship between parts and wholes entailed i n
di fferent model s of di vi si on that have emerged in di al ogue wi th the
official model of segmentati on. Ultimately, my focus i s on the di f-
A Politics of Sel f-Knowledge
ferent temporal relations involved in these competing part-whole
relationshi ps. I draw on disputes over the method of distribution of
shares of rent in Suvavou since the 1 9 20s.
The Division of Rent
Today, touri sm is an increasingly significant part of Fij i 's national
economy. From the standpoint of ethnic Fij i ans, who own over 8 3
percent of the national territory, tourism is not only a maj or source
of employment but also a maj or source of rental income arising
from the l easing of their land to hotels and resorts. At the time of
my fieldwork, the Native Land Trust Board ( hereafter NLTB) , the
entity established i n the 1 940s to admi nister the leasing of Fi j i an
l and, di vi ded money received from the leasing of Fi j i an lands into
shares al l ocated to the head of vanua, the head of the yavusa, the
head of the mataqali and members of the mataqalU Officially, the
NLTB scheme mandated that rent be al l ocated as follows:
NLTB ( admi nistrative costs) 2 5 %
Landowners 7 5 %
Turaga i Taukei ( the head of vanua) 5 %
Turaga n i Qal i ( heads o f yavusa) r o%
Turaga ni Mataqal i ( heads of mataqali) r 5 %
Registered members o f Mataqal i 70%
( i nformation from Ward 1 99 5 : 2 2 1 )
Because of the way rent money i s di stributed, the process imme
diately involves questions of rank. As a result, the division of rent
money has become one of the most sensitive and divisive issues in
Fij i .
At the time of my fieldwork, there were no hotels or resorts on
Suvavou l and. ` A large portion of Suvavou's 3 8 8 acres of l and,
1 1
however, had been developed by the NLTB i n the 1 970s into a res
idential subdivision known as Delainavesi .
1
2 There were also sever
al other tracts of land that were leased to outside parties under
NLTB lease arrangements. In addition, the Seventh-Day Adventist
Church had its headquarters and schools on Suvavou l and. Suva-
A Politics of Sel f-Knowledge 5 9
vou people received rent for al l of these pieces of l and. At the time
of my fieldwork, Suvavou people collectively received between
F$9,000 and F$ I 4, ooo every six months as rent for vi l l age l and
l eased through the NLTB. In addi ti on, Suvavou peopl e also collec
tively received F$9,400 per year from the government as an "annu
ity" for the Government House grounds where the Ol d Suva Vi l
l age was l ocated until I 8 8 2 ( see chapter 2) . 1 3
These two kinds of money were paid t o Suvavou people i n di f
ferent ways. The government . divided the annuity money into
shares allocated to the chief of the vil l age, the heads of three yavusa
of the vi l l age, the heads of ten mataqali of the vi l lage, and the ten
mataqali. Rent money for Suvavou l and, on the other hand, was
paid to Suvavou people as an undivided lump sum.
1
4 This reflected
the fact that, unlike i n other Fi j i an vil lages, where land was regis
tered to mataqali, Suvavou land was registered as the common
property of the three yavusa of Suvavou. What makes the disputes
over rent money i n Suvavou unique, therefore, is the existence of
two competing conceptions of the relationship between mataqali
and l and. Whereas the government's method of payment of the
annuity money treated the mataqali as the unit of ownership, the
government's method of payment of the rent money treated the vil
lage as a whole as the unit of ownershi p.
At the ti me of my fieldwork, fol lowing the standard manner of
distribution of rent money elsewhere, Suvavou peopl e i nformally
divided the rent money they received into shares al located to the
heads of the three yavusa of the vil lage, the heads of the ten mata
qali, and the ten mataqali. 1 5 Since the I 92os, Suvavou people have
had considerable di sagreements about the proper method of divi
sion of rent and annuity money. In particul ar, several factions of
Suvavou had challenged the NLC's registration of Suvavou l and as
the common property of the three yavusa and insisted that Suvavou
l and was owned with mataqali as units.
Judging from government records, however, prior to I 9 I 8, there
was little disagreement about how to divide the vi l lage and the
money. Suvavou people and government official s agreed that
mataqali were the units of ownershi p. Before I 9 I 8, the government
6o A Pol i ti cs of Sel f-Knowledge
recognized the existence of nine mataqali in Suvavou. This was
based on the NLC's fi rst inquiry into l and ownership among Suva
vou people, completed in 1 902. This inquiry found that Suvavou
l and was divi ded i nto pieces of l and al l of which had a name. 1 6
After that inquiry therefore, rent money for the leasing of a piece
of Suvavou land was paid to the mataqali for which that particul ar
pi ece was registered, after shares were pai d to the Roko Tui Suva,
as the head of yavusa as well as the head of vanua. This offici al
al l ocation of l and rights continued to provide a model for the infor
mal al l ocation of l and use rights. At the time of my fieldwork, each
mataqali clearly claimed its own kanakana ( planting ground) and
yavu ( foundations for houses) and enj oyed more or less exclusive
rights to those pieces of l and. 1 7 From time to time, mataqali grant
ed l and from their kanakana to immigrants under so-called vaka
vanua ( " according to tradition" ) , or i nformally arranged settle
ments ( see Rutz 1 98 7) . Such transactions did not involve any for
mal transfer of ownership or exchange of lease contracts but
instead required the presentation of val uables such as tabua
( whal es' teeth) and kerosene, along with occasional contributions
to the mataqali at the time of l arge gift exchange. 1 8 If these pieces
of l and were formally leased through the NLTB, however, rent
would be paid to Suvavou people as a whole.
The di sputes that have permeated the vi l lage originate from the
death of the last member of Suvavou's chiefly mataqa/i, Mataqal i
Roko Tui Suva, in 1 9 1 8Y This forced the government to confront
the question of what to do with the shares of the annuity and rent
money that the now "extinct" chiefly mataqali had received. Prior
to 1 9 1 8, the annuity money was divided into equal shares for the
nine mataqa/i, after shares were di stributed to the nine heads of
mataqali and the holder of the chiefly ti tl e, the Roko Tui Suva. In
1 907, for example, this money was divided as fol lows:
Bul i Suva ( government posi ti on i n charge of
the Di strict of Suva) r o/o/o
Turaga i Taukei ( the head of vanua) r o/o/o
Turaga ni Qal i ( the head of yavusa) 20/o/o
Turaga ni Mataqal i ( heads of mataqali) 3 olo/o
( divided by 9 turaga ni mataqali; each received 3/6/8 )
A Pol i tics of Sel f-Knowledge 6 1
Mataqal i
1 2o/o/o
( di vided by 9 cl ans; each cl an received f1 3/6/8 )
Rewa Provi nci al Fund fi o/o/o
( CSO 4469! 1 907)
At that ti me, Ratu Avorosa Tuivuya col lected the shares for the
Turaga i Taukei, the Turaga ni Qal i , and the head of his own mata
qali, Mataqali Roko Tui Suva. In addition, a few pieces of l and
belonging to Mataqal i Roko Tui Suva had been l eased out, gener
ating additional rent for that mataqali.
The government resolved the matter by keeping the mataqali's
shares of the annuity and rent money for itself. 20 The basis for this
move was probably an official policy, first stipulated in the Deed of
Cession, that land belonging to "extinct " mataqali should become
the property of the Crown. As a result, in 1 9 1 9, while the head of
Mataqali Kaiwai received 1 0 as holder of the government position
of Bul i Suva, the government retained the shares of the annuity
reserved for Mataqal i Roko Tui Suva ( fq/6/8 ) , the head of Mata
qali Roko Tui Suva ( 3/6/8 ) , the Turaga i Taukei ( 1 o) , and the
Turaga ni Qali ( 20) Y
Suvavou people immediately obj ected t o this arrangement. 22 A
Native Lands Commission inquiry into Suvavou people was then
under way. This NLC i nqui ry, completed in 1 9 2 1 , revised all pre
vious NLC records regarding Suvavou that had served as the basis
for the distribution of rent and annuity money until then. First,
whereas in 1 902 the NLC had found nine mataqali in Suvavou, the
1 9 2 1 inquiry found ten. Second, where the earlier NLC report did
not recognize any yavusa in Suvavou, the 1 9 2 1 NLC report found
three. Third, and most important, the NLC decreed that Suvavou
land was owned i n common by the three yavusa, because i n 1 89 2
Suvavou people had purchased their l and from Lami people, the
original owners of the Suvavou land, for I oo, using a portion of
the annuity money they had received for Suva l and. 23 Given that
the land had been purchased from Lami people with a portion of
the money gi ven to Suvavou peopl e as a whol e, the NLC reasoned,
Suvavou land should be registered as the vi l lage's common prop
erty.
62 A Pol itics of Sel f-Knowl edge
The significance of the 1 9 2 1 NLC i nqui ry, therefore, i s that it
essentially denied to Suvavou people the notion, applied elsewhere
in Fij i , that mataqali were the l andowning units. Rent for any
leased portion of Suvavou land should therefore be distributed i n a
lump sum to the village as a whole. As a result, the NLC mandat
ed that the now "extinct" chiefly mataqali's share of the annuity
and rent money be distributed equal ly to the remaining ten mata
qali.24 The NLC also confirmed that Mataqali Kaiwai had suc
ceeded to the chiefly title and therefore, as titleholder, was entitled
to the shares previously al l ocated to the chief.25
However, this decision i n turn led to further disputes. In 1 923 ,
men from a Suvavou yavusa that I shall call Yavusa Kaivanua con
tested Mataqali Kai wai 's collection of shares of rent money re
served for the chief. They claimed that because the original chiefly
mataqali was a division of their yavusa, only their yavusa should
receive these shares. 26 Stressing the divisions confirmed by the
recent NLC i nqui ry, the head of this yavusa pointed out that the
existing subdivisions within the yavusa constituted the proper and
complete ritual order of the vanua, that is, that they constituted the
proper arrangement of ceremonial divisions attending the chief:
"All of us, the installer of the chief [sauturaga], the chief's spokes
man [matanivanua], the chief's carpenter [mataisau] and the chief's
fisherman [gonedau], are alive [ hula kece] . . . . All shares of the
Roko Tui Suva should be truly ours. "27 Here the head of the yavusa
sought to show the exi stence of a self-contained system of division
within the yavusa in order to argue that the yavusa as a whole ful
filled the conditions of an independent chiefdom. The implication
was that al l the mataqali that composed the other two yavusa were
therefore external to the chiefdom of Suva.
In order to understand the significance of this complaint, we
need to consider the di rectionality of the parts-whole relationship
as set out i n the offici al records. In 1 9 2 1 , after identifying three
yavusa in Suvavou, the NLC proceeded to collect each of their
three migration stories, or their stories of how they came to occu
py the l ands they now occupied, standard practice in al l its in
qui ri es. The NLC summoned three men representing each of the
A Pol i tics of Sel f-Knowledge
three yavusa for this purpose. The three men's accounts focused on
how the separate yavusa gathered together at di fferent points. For
example, according to the representative of Yavusa Kaivanua, they
had originally lived at a place called Naul uvatu and had been invit
ed by Yavusa Vakalolo to j oin them at a place called Rairaiwaqa.
Later, both yavusa j oined Yavusa Kai wai i n Suva:
Our ancestors were at Naul uvatu for a l ong ti me. Men of [Vakalol o]
then came and offered Rai rai waqa to our ancestors so that they mi ght
go and settle there. Our ancestors then j oined them there. Our ances
tors were at Rairaiwaqa for a long whi l e before they became anxi ous
about the possi bi l ity that the peopl e of Lomai vuna might attack them,
and so our ancestors hel d a meeti ng and deci ded to leave their settle
ment for Suva. They then l eft Naul uvatu and Rai rai waqa for Suva to
stay with the people of [ Kai wai ] . Our ancestors were there for a long
whi l e before they were attacked by the people of Rewa. 28
The witness detail ed how the people of Suva had been di spersed
after the Bau-Rewa war and how they were subsequently gathered
together agai n. Both of the statements concerning the migration of
Yavusa Vakalolo and Yavusa Kaiwai l i kewise narrate their j ourneys
from their of origin places ( yavutu) to Suva. 29 As the statement for
Yavusa Vakal ol o puts it, " Each of these yavusa left their origin
place to gather together [ la'ki coko vata] at Suva. " 30
These stories are predicated on a singular aesthetic of di recti on
al i ty. 3 1 The stories recorded by the NLC emphasize how three
parts, the yavusa, j oined together to form a singular whole, the
chiefdom of Suva. There is thus a clear di rectionality to this his
torical narrative, from parts to a whole. At the same time, the offi
ci al records also present each yavusa as a self-contained unit, a rit
ual whole of its own. In this conception of the whole, there are
many coexisting wholes, and each is made up of further parts,
mataqali with particular ceremonial duties. Within each whole, the
parts-whole relations are not defined in temporal terms. It i s a
mutually defining relationshi p: parts are defined by the whole and
the whol e by the parts. In other words, the 1 9 2 1 NLC record offers
two competing conceptions of wholes-the whole as a historical
entity, made up of di fferent parts gathered together over time, and
the whole defined by the distribution of ceremonial roles among its
A Politics of Sel f-Knowledge
parts. The latter conception was subsumed in the NLC records,
however, i n the narrative of the former. The petition Yavusa
Kaivanua sent to the government i n 1 923 sought to foreground the
latter i n order to challenge the foregrounding of the former i n the
official record.
What made these two contrasting images of the whole the l ocus
of pol itics was the distribution of money. The defi nition of Suvavou
l and as the common property of the village as a whole mandated
that annuity and rent were paid to the vil l age as a whole. But this
money i n turn had to be divided, and thus a model of parts and
wholes had to be agreed uponY This rendered the dispute over the
method of division of annuity and rent money a contest between
two notions of a whole: the whole defined by the combination of
parts, and the whole defined by and also defining its internal divi
si ons.
These two competing conceptions of wholes in turn had di ffer
ent implications for what should be done with the rent money orig
inally al l ocated to the now-extinct chiefly mataqali. If one concep
tualized the money and the vi l l age as a whole as being made up of
internal parts, one would accept that the money shoul d be divided
equally among the remaining parts ( mataqali ) . If, conversely, one
conceptual ized the whole as the more particularized whole of the
individual yavusa, defined by and defining particul ar internal parts
with their own ritual duties, the money origi nal ly owed to the
"extinct " mataqali should now be di stributed only among the parts
of that smal l er whole, that is the yavusa of which that mataqali was
a part.
At the heart of this issue was a contest over di recti onal i ty. In the
conception of the whole as constituted by the historical combina
tion of parts, the act of dividing annuity and rent money reversed
the direction of the original historical act of combination that
defined the whole. In contrast, i n the conception of the whole that
took the multiple particular wholes ( yavusa) as salient and focused
on their mutual constitution by their parts, the division of annuity
and rent money repl icated the divisive l ogic that constituted the
whole ( yavusa) . In the former, in other words, an act of division in
A Politics of Sel f-Knowledge 6
s
the present reversed the act of combination in the past, while in the
latter, an act of division was a replication of the act of division that
defines the whole. At the nexus of money and self-knowledge, then,
where each is a confirmation of the other, the politics of self-knowl
edge, mediated by di sputes over the method of distribution of
shares of annuity and rent, have continued to play on these con
trasting di rectional i ties. The concept of compani es, and of share
hol di ng, recently introduced in Suvavou, further complicated this
politics.
The Company
At the time of my fieldwork ( 1 994-96) , Suvavou's internal pol itics
revolved around a contest between two factions. One faction con
sisted of the Tui Suva, Ratu Epeli Kanakana, and his supporters,
comprising eight mataqali, including two predominantly SDA
mataqali. The other faction consisted of the dissident SDA mata
qali, Mataqali Koromakawa, and another small SDA mataqali that
supported Mataqal i Koromakawa's chal lenge to the authority of
Ratu Epel i . In more concrete terms, this contest mani fested itself in
di sputes surrounding a company that Suvavou people incorporat
ed i n 1 992 as the basis for distri bution of shares of money recent
ly promised by the government to ari se from Suva l and.
The company formed by Suvavou peopl e was cal l ed Nadonumai
Holdings. The idea of forming a company came from the govern
ment. 33 When Suvavou people first negotiated with Prime Mi ni ster
Sitiveni Rabuka over compensation for Suva land, Rabuka made it
clear that the government would not give Suvavou people money
as long as it was to be divided into individual portions without
being put to further productive use. Rabuka himself, I was told,
requested that Suvavou form a company. In other words, the
notion of the company was an explicit antidote to disputes about
the logic of division. In the company, the operation of division was
problematized as a hindrance to capitalist accumulation, and the
solution was found in the new company form. In more concrete
terms, the formation of the company coincided with Rabuka's offer
66 A Pol i tics of Sel f-Knowledge
to return Cruickshank Park, a piece of state land i n downtown Su
va, and to ensure that the vi l l age would receive a low-interest l oan
from the Fij i Development Bank to bui l d an office bui l ding there.
The company and its shareholders would dictate how profits from
leasing office spaces i n this bui l ding would be distributed.
It is important to note, however, that the company conflated two
distinct logics. On the one hand, it was clearly intended to intro
duce capitalist practices. As reflected in the name of the company,
Nadonumai, the ceremoni al name of the Vanua ko Suva ( chiefdom
of Suva) , however, the structure of the company made use of units
of division already fami l i ar to vi l lagers. On the other hand, how
ever, ownership of shares was l i mited to Suvavou mataqali, which
raised funds and purchased "shares " ( sea) in the company as indi
vi dual units. Each mataqali contributed an equal amount of money
and was represented on the board of di rectors by a mataqali mem
ber nominated as its representative and "shareholder. " Care was
taken that management responsi bi l ities be di stri buted evenly
among the three yavusa. The management team included the Tui
Suva, Ratu Epeli Kanakana, as " leader of the vanua" ( i liuliu ni
vanua) ; an elder from Mataqal i Koromakawa who held the admin
istrative position of turaga ni koro ( commonly translated as "vi l
l age headman" ) ; and three other di rectors, representing the three
yavusa of Suvavou-Rev. Samuel a Ratulevu, an elder from Yavusa
Vakal ol o who had served as the president of the SDA Church in
Fij i ; an elder from Yavusa Kaiwai; and an elder from Yavusa Kai
vanua. 34 The most educated of al l , Rev. Ratulevu, served as mana
gi ng director responsible for day-to-day negoti ations wi th the gov
ernment. In its ownership and its leadership, therefore, the compa
ny thus replicated the chief, the three yavusa, and the ten mataqali
of Suvavou.
In light of my discussion of part-whole relations, the company
as a new whole stands in an interesting relationship to the compet
ing concepts of the whole I have described. On the one hand, the
company resembles the conception of a whole defined as a histori
cal combination of parts. Just as each mataqali came together to
form the whole i n that conception, here, each mataqali purchased
A Politics of Sel f-Knowledge
equal amounts of shares i n the new whol e. On the other hand,
however, the notion of shareholdings adds a new dimension to this
whole. In what fol l ows, I wish to discuss how the novelty of this
whole became evident to Suvavou people themselves.
At the company's inception, in a moment of renewed hope of
receiving the long-awaited compensation for Suva l and, Mataqal i
Koromakawa, the long-standing rival of the present chiefly mata
qa/i, Mataqali Kaiwai, j oined other mataqali in purchasing shares
i n Nadonumai Holdings. Within a few months of the company's
formation, however, Mataqali Koromakawa declared that it would
withdraw from the company to found its own company. It declared
that its company would develop what the mataqali claimed to be
its old vil lage site in Suva. The logic behind this dissention was that
the integrity of the company as a whole depended on the integrity
of the vil lage as a whole. Elders of Mataqal i Koromakawa repeat
edly told me i n 1 9 9 5 that Nadonumai Hol dings would never suc
ceed, because it was based on the wrong ordering of the vanua. The
al l ocation of shares of ownership and responsi bi l ity in Nadonumai
Holdi ngs was based on a model of the vanua of Suvavou internal
ly di vi ded into three yavusa and ten mataqali. Mataqal i Koroma
kawa, in contrast, i nsisted that the vill age consisted of only one
yavusa and nine mataqa/i, fol l owing the pre-1 9 2 1 NLC inquiry
model . In their opinion, the artificial ordering of the chiefdom on
which the company was based could not possibly be the basis for
an effective " business " enterprise-it could never possibly serve as
an effective form. Mataqali Koromakawa's reasoning derived pre
cisely from the conflation of capitalist practices and ritual ordering
described earlier.
What Mataqali Koromakawa did not take into account, howev
er, was the fact that the company entailed a new conception of the
relationship between parts and wholes. Although, like the vil lage,
the company as a whole resulted from an act of combination i n the
form of investment, the future act of division of the company's
profits would not be bound by the original act of combination
because this act of division would be defined by the ownership of
shares at the time of the act of division. From this standpoint,
68
A Politics of Sel f-Knowledge
Mataqal i Koromakawa's deployment of the old strategy of pre
senting a counter notion of a whole defined by an act of its division
as I have described i n this chapter was not particularly effective.
Unlike in other cases where, i n vil lagers' conception, the with
drawal of one mataqali would threaten the efficacy of their collab
orative ventures, by 199 5, it would be fine i f the company did not
have the participation of al l vil lage mataqa/i. The company, in their
view, had emerged as a construct based on the voluntary participa
tion of a new category of entities, individual shareholders, and Ma
taqali Koromakawa's chal lenge would thus not pose a threat to its
integrity. As this view gained popularity and the success of the com
pany seemed imminent, some members of Mataqali Koromakawa
and of one other dissident mataqali began to express their desire to
be part of the company. For their part, the elders of the two dissi
dent mataqali i n turn focused on their own companies and on pur
suing their own business enterprises. The company as a new con
ception of a whole had begun to reorient the di rection of Suvavou
people's self-knowledge.
4 F Setting Knowledge in Motion
As noted i n chapter 2, over the past hundred years, the government
of Fij i has repeatedl y rej ected Suvavou people's divergent claims to
the Suva Peninsula as their ancestral l and. Indeed, Suvavou people's
history is a history of thwarted hopes. Yet Suvavou people have
sustained their hope. In this chapter, I begin to address the simple
question I posed at the outset: How have Suvavou people kept their
hope al ive for generation after generation, given that their self
knowledge has continued to fai l them?
In hi s i naugural lecture at the University of Tibingen entitled
" Can Hope Be Disappointed? " Ernst Bloch drew attention to the
predication of hope on disappointment:
hope must be unconditional l y disappointable, first, because it is open in
a forward direction, in a future-oriented di rection; it does not address
itsel f to that which al ready exists. For this reason, hope-whil e actual l y
i n a state of suspension-is committed to change rather than repetition,
and what is more, i ncorporates the element of chance, without which
there can be nothing new. ( Bloch 1 998 : 3 4 1 ; emphasis i n origi nal )
In thi s lecture, Bloch situates hope in the real m of the not-yet
and hence focuses on its radical l y indeterminate character. For
Bloch, indeterminacy is the necessary precondition for hope:
Hope's methodology . . . dwel l s i n the regi on of the not-yet, a place
where entrance and, above all, fi nal content are marked by an enduring
i ndetermi nacy. In other words, referring di rectly to disappointabi l ity:
hope hol ds eo ipso the condition of defeat precari ousl y within itself: it
i s not confidence. It stands too close to the indeterminacy of the hi stor
ical process, of the world-process that, indeed, has not yet been defeat
ed, but l i kewise has not yet won. ( Bloch 1 998 : 3
4
1 )
70
Setting Knowledge in Motion
For Bloch, therefore, disappoi ntment is the engine of hope:
[I)s it not the case that a thing, once it has become realized, whatever
has been attained by its real i zation, so that it does not resembl e what
was previ ousl y hoped for, even though i ts content has passed, whol l y
undi mi nished, from the possible into the actual ? And yet, a resi due
remains, i n this i nstance only because of the still undi scovered ( with
respect to its content) "true and perfect being. " But even such disap
pointment over realization's " mi nus" fi nal l y counts toward the credit of
wel l -founded hope, and advances its existenti al as well as its essenti al
demands. ( Bloch 1 998 : 3
4
2-
4
3 )
Unlike classical metaphysics's conception of essence as already
given, but hidden from humans, i n other words, what Bloch calls
the "true and perfect being" is radically underdetermined and sur
faces only as "latency. " The "essence of the matter" that hope
entai l s is "not-yet- being par excellence, something not al ready pre
sent and thus not available to be experienced, something that can
not be exhaustively determined-even so, its direction, in view of
i ts purposive content, which i s that of genuine humanism, can be
determined as an invariant and at the same time as an indispens
able factor" ( Bloch 1 998 : 3 43 ; emphasis in original ) . Here Bloch
seeks to negotiate a delicate balance between future-oriented open
ness and anticipation of a moment in which hope is fi nally ful fi l l ed.
If Bloch's sol uti on to the probl em of the disappointabil ity of
hope focuses on his effort to situate hope in the realm of indeter
minacy without undermining the possi bi l ity of its fulfil lment, the
chal lenge for Suvavou people has focused on the question of how
to achieve such a condition of indeterminacy. For reasons to be di s
cussed, the indeterminacy that Wittgenstein ( 19 5 3 ) and other twen
tieth-century critics of metaphysics have taken as given ( see
Bohman 1 99 1 ) has not been a given condition for Fi j i ans when it
comes to their knowledge about who they are. For them, rather, the
possibility of self-knowing is foreclosed precisely because self
knowledge has already been fi xed and made fi nal . For Fi j i ans, in
other words, self-knowledge belongs to the past and is not open to
reinterpretation from the standpoint of the present. This temporal
nature of the closure of Fi j i an self-knowledge in turn demands ter-
Setting Knowledge in Motion 7 1
poral solutions. The focus of this chapter i s Suvavou people's long
standing effort to set their self-knowledge i n moti on.
Ultimately, however, like Bl och, Suvavou people have striven to
reconcile indeterminacy as a condition for the possibi lity of hope
with their effort to render self-knowledge determinate once and for
al l . The question to which I now turn concerns a series of strategies
specifically designed to situate hope in this del icate balance of
openness and cl osure wi thi n the context of the particular col oni al
and postcolonial situation that Suvavou peopl e have faced. These
strategies have evolved through a series of petitions that Suvavou
people sent to the government over a period of nearly one hundred
years from 1 89 8 to 1 995 , some of which are discussed in chapters
2 and 3 . Here, however, my focus is on their form rather than their
content (cf. Messick 1 993 ; Riles 2000) . The authenticity of the
underlying claims is not my concern. Moreover, my i nterest lies in
the hope and anticipation entailed in these petitions rather than in
their uni ntended consequences. '
These petitions are quintessential ly heterogeneous documents
(cf. Hanks 2000: 1 3 ) that draw on diverse genres of knowledge
practices, including bureaucratic, academic, and ritual practices. In
many cases, the documents are also products of collaboration
between the petitioners and their scribes, " researchers, " "consul
tants, " and lawyers ( cf. Davis 1 987: 5 ) . Hence they cannot be
reductively analyzed in terms of either their cultural specificity or
their adherence to the technical ities of bureaucratic form. 2 Never
theless, the documents deploy a variety of strategies deriving from,
and in di al ogue wi th, a genre of official documents produced by
government offici al s to record Fi j i an social systems and migration
narratives. 3 As mentioned earlier, these official documents, gener
ated in the course the taking of evidence from Fij i an witnesses by
representatives of the colonial administration in the early twentieth
century, have long been declared to be uncontestabl e. In this chap
ter, I seek to situate these petitions in a wider regime of document
production, following Natalie Zemon Davis's analysis of letters of
remission in sixteenth-century France ( Davis 1 98 7) . I draw atten
tion to specific strategies these petitioners deployed to chal lenge the
Setting Knowledge in Motion
finality of the knowledge about them contained i n these official
records. 4 I argue that although the strategies deployed in these peti
tions have changed over time in di al ogue with the government's
responses, one element has remained constant: the self-knowing
effectuated by these petitions i s overwhelmingly indeterminate, and
yet it continues to anticipate the moment of the ful fillment of
Suvavou people's hope as the confirmation of who they really are.
Ultimately, I argue, Suvavou peopl e have achieved this bal ance
between indeterminacy and anticipation of closure by relocating
self-knowledge from documents to an interactional and performa
tive terrai n.
Closed Knowledge
Marshall Sahlins recounts that a vi l l age elder once showed hi m a
wooden chest, stored in the latter's bedroom, that contained Fi j i an
val uables i n the form of whal es' teeth ( tabua) . The chest, known as
the " basket of the clan" ( kato ni mataqali) , was inherited from one
generation to the next: "Passing with the leadership of the clan, the
chest was a pal l adi um. So long as it is intact, [the elder] sai d, the
vanua-the l and, including the people-will be preserved" ( Sahlins
1 9 9 3 = 2 3 ) .
I n Suvavou, there was no mention of such chests. Instead, I was
repeatedly shown briefcases ful l of documents hidden i n mataqali
elders' bedrooms. The documents in the briefcase typically includ
ed a certified copy of a list of registered mataqali members, copies
of other ol d government records concerning the Suva land case,
and an old map of the Suva Peninsul a. On occasion, elders opened
their briefcases and took out the documents one by one as they nar
rated their version of stories about the history of the village.
The col lection of documents was one of the maj or activities of
those regarded by other villagers as "elders " ( qase) . Indeed, a doc
ument col lection was one of the most significant marks of rank. 5
Like the " basket of the clan" that Sahl i ns mentions, the l eaders of
each mataqali had inherited these documents from thei r " father"
( tamaqu) or " mother's brother" ( momo) , with an admonition to
Setting Knowledge in Motion
73
"take good care of" them ( maroroya vinaka) . Some Suvavou elders
would not even allow me to take the documents ( usual l y NLC l ists
of i tokatoka and mataqali membership) to a nearby store to pho
tocopy them and insisted that I copy them by hand i n front of
them, as i f the loss of the documents mi ght have negative effects on
their mataqali's state of being. For Suvavou people, official records
about themselves were obj ects to be enacted and displayed as proof
( i vakadinadina) of their knowledge about who they were ( cf.
Rappaport 1 994; Shryock 1 997) .
Suvavou people's approach t o documents i s a result of the gov
ernment's conscious effort to instill i n Fi j i ans a sense of awe about
official records concerning clans and their l and rights. The NLC
has not only restricted access to its records but also has sought to
cultivate among Fi j i ans a sense of the documents' final ity and clo
sure. For example, the NLC has repeatedly told Fij ians that their
ancestors' statements on oath are sacred texts ( i vola tabu) ( cf. M.
Kaplan 2004: r 68 ) . Closure i n this sense forecloses the possibility
of going back to question the val i dity of statements made on oath
i n the past: Fi j i ans are encouraged to accept their ancestors' testi
monies as definitive statements about themselves. This has resulted
i n many contemporary Fi j i ans experiencing a shared sense of alien
ation from knowledge about who they are. From the Fij i an stand
point, official records about themselves are important not only
because they constitute the legal basis for distribution of money
arising from the l and but also because they constitute the ontolog
ical foundation of their identity. For many Fi j i ans, therefore, revis
ing the offici al records entai l s a certai n amount of risk, which has
i n turn shaped the form of their chall enge to the offici al account of
who they are. In what follows, I focus on a report submitted to the
government in 1 994 by Mataqali Koromakawa regarding its claim
to the chiefly title. The report exhi bits a variety of strategies that
have evolved through petitions or "letters of request" (i vola ni
kerekere) that Suvavou people, and Fi j i ans more generally, have
sent to the government over the past hundred years. These strate
gies derived from, and i n di al ogue with, official documents that
they have treasured as sources of proof.
74 Setting Knowledge i n Motion
In 1 994, Mataqali Koromakawa submitted a " report" to the
NLC concerning its long-standing claim to the chiefly title of the
village, Tui Suva. The title had been held by another mataqali of the
village, Mataqali Kaiwai, for some time. Since the mid r 98os,
Mataqali Koromakawa had repeatedly written to the NLC to chal
lenge the legitimacy of the current chiefly mataqali. The NLC had
rej ected Mataqali Koromakawa's claim on the basis of NLC
records showing Mataqali Kaiwai to be the legitimate holder of the
chiefly title, and the fact that the NLC records were not open to
revi si on. Soon after Ratu Epeli Kanakana of Mataqali Kaiwai
became the new chief of the village in r 990, for example, the head
of Mataqali Koromakawa wrote a letter of protest to the NLC. The
chairman of the NLC replied by sharply reminding the head of
Mataqal i Koromakawa that thei r ancestors had gi ven sworn ( bu
bului) statements affirming Mataqali Kaiwai 's cl ai m to the chiefly
title, and that it was the NLC's "duty" (i tavi) to "protect and pre
serve" ( taqomaka ka maroroya) those statements. In other words,
what their ancestors had confirmed could not be altered.
Mataqal i Koromakawa's chal l enge to the NLC had not been
entirely ineffective, however. In 1 99 1 , it had succeeded in obtain
i ng a response from an NLC official that upheld a portion of its
l ong-standing claim. The official migration narrative recorded by
the NLC i n 1 9 2 1 l i sted Mataqali Koromakawa's standing (i tutu) ,
or ceremonial duty in the chiefdom of Suva, as that of priest ( bete) .
Yet the head of Mataqal i Koromakawa pointed out i n hi s 1 99 1 let
ter to the NLC that when his grandfather had been asked by the
NLC to swear to the validity of the migration narrative told by a
representative of his yavusa in 1 9 2 1 , he had contested that portion
of the narrative by claiming that his mataqali's standing should be
that of sauturaga ( installer of the chief) . In fact, this Mataqal i
Koromakawa man's obj ection had been recorded i n the NLC's
Evidence Book. The NLC responded by admitting the error and
altering its records. Although the NLC's confirmation that the
mataqali's standing should be that of sauturaga did not seem to be
endorsed by other mataqa/i i n Suvavou, for Mataqal i Koromaka
wa, it served as proof that the government would accept i ts claim
Setting Knowledge in Motion 7 5
to the chiefl y title i f i t coul d support i t with documentary evidence.
In addition, this was an important step in the sense that as the
instal ler of the chief, Mataqali Koromakawa would have the power
to appoint any future chief. The report Mataqal i Koromakawa
submitted to the government i n 1 994 was, therefore, a product of
its renewed hope.
Appendi ces
The Mataqal i Koromakawa report consists of three parts. The first
section is a narrative of the mataqali's migration route from its ori
gin place. The second section l ists a series of questions regarding
the detai l s of NLC records concerning the three yavusa of Suvavou.
The third section consi sts of appendices that contain copies of
archi val records. Each section draws on old and new strategies that
have evol ved as the di al ogue wi th the government and its records
has progressed over the past hundred years.
The appendices in the third section of the report reproduce
archival records such as documents contained in files from the
Col oni al Secretary's Office ( CSO) and NLC records. The practice
of attaching copies of past government records as evidence seems
to have emerged as common practice in Suvavou people's letters of
request some ti me during the 1 970s. In 1 973 , for exampl e, when
fifty Suvavou peopl e obj ected to the NLC's registration of Suvavou
l and as the common property of the three yavusa, they enclosed
with their letter a copy of a letter dated December 27, 1 905 , writ
ten i n Fij i an by Native Lands Commissioner David Wilkinson and
detailing the locations of pieces of l and held by each mataqali in
Suvavou as evidence that i n Suvavou, mataqali and not yavusa
shoul d be considered the l andowning units. 6 This increase in the
use of government records as documentary evidence since the
1 9 70s was the result of the introduction of photocopying technol
ogy, on the one hand, and increased access to government records,
on the other. The government's efforts to preserve admi nistrative
records and make them avai l abl e to the public began in the mid
1 9 5 0s ( Crozier 1 9 5 8, 1 9 5 9; Diamond 1 978 ) , but I do not know
Setting Knowledge in Motion
precisely when Fi j i ans began to consult government records at the
National Archives of Fij i in order to prepare their letters of request.
By the 1 970s, however, j udging from Suvavou people's letters, a
fair number of government records seem to have been in vi l lagers'
hands. In 1 994, for example, a Suvavou elder showed me a copy of
Wil ki nson's letter that he kept i n his briefcase along with other old
government records. He told me that he had inherited these records
from hi s mother's brother. At the time of my fieldwork, many of
those who held leadership positions i n i tokatoka, mataqali, or ya
vusa kept collections of government records concerning their own
i tokatoka, mataqali, or yavusa. These records usual l y consisted of
NLC l ists of i tokatoka and mataqali membership ( i vola ni kawa
hula, or native register) . 7 Others kept copies of other ki nds of gov
ernment records, such as ol d maps of Suva, NLC records concern
ing the genealogy of Bauan chiefs to whom the original chiefly line
of Suva people was related, and other government records relevant
to their mataqali's specific claims.
The appearance of appendices in Suvavou peopl e's documents
coincided with the emergence of "researchers " in the village. Suva
vou people repeatedly told me that they were not al lowed to see all
the relevant government records about Suva people and their land
at the National Archives of Fij i and the NLC because the govern
ment wanted to hide the truth from them. At the time of my fiel d
work, however, there were at least two peopl e in Suvavou who had
conducted extensive research at the National Archives and other
government offices. One was the author of the Mataqali Koroma
kawa report and the other was the daughter of a Suvavou woman
who claimed to be a descendant of the original chiefly line. This
woman had conducted extensive research at government depart
ments and had written numerous letters to the government regard
ing her mother's claim. Given their exposure to the style of bureau
cratic writing at the archives, i t i s perhaps not surprising that both
researchers used appendices in their documents submitted to the
government. In 1 9 89, for example, when the woman sent a letter
to the minister for Fi j i an Affai rs regarding her cl ai m to the chiefly
title of her cl an, she attached, i n chronological order, a series of
Setting Knowledge in Motion 77
internal memoranda between government offici al s concerning her
case, as well as all correspondence between herself and the govern
ment. The 1 994 Mataqali Koromakawa report continued this use
of appendices to demonstrate inconsistencies in the government
records. This presentation of government records as appendices re
flects a more general strategy, which an examination of the report's
other two secti ons will make explicit.
Questi ons
In the second section of the 1 994 Mataqal i Koromakawa report,
the author directs a number of questions at the government. Given
that the NLC records the report chal lenges were their ancestors'
responses, as witnesses, to government officials' questions, this
strategy of asking questions of the government was an inherently
subversive act. By asking the government questions, the Koroma
kawa report reversed the questioner-respondent relationship, the
very context in which NLC records were created.
The reversal of the questioner-respondent relationship is one of
the oldest strategies deployed by Suvavou people in their letters of
request. Recall the first letter Suvavou people wrote to the govern
ment in 1 898 expressing their di scontent with arrangements re
garding Suva Peninsula land. 9 This letter does not include a single
question. The government i n turn responded sharply with a series
of questions: The chief of Suvavou and other Suvavou representa
tives who had signed the letter were summoned by Assistant Co
lonial Secretary W. L. Al l ardyce to his office. In their 1 904 petition
to the government, Suvavou people asked the government a num
ber of questions and i n so doing reversed the questioner-respondent
relationship.
The author of the 1 994 report, writing in the late twentieth cen
tury, was i n a better position to ask questions. Unlike his ancestors,
he had gained access to some of the government's own records.
Questi ons i n the 1 994 Mataqali Koromakawa report therefore
chal lenged technical details of the NLC records about Suva people
and their land head-on. The report's questions focused on the in-
Setting Knowledge in Motion
completeness and inconsistencies of i nformation contained i n the
NLC records. As mentioned i n chapter 3 , the NLC had conducted
two inquiries into the status of Suva people and their l and. The fi rst
was conducted by Native Lands Commissioner David Wil ki nson in
I 9o2, and the second took place between I 9 I 9 and I 9 2 I . At the
time of my fieldwork, the NLC regarded the result of the I 9 I 9-2 I
inquiry as the fi nal record concerning Suva people and their l and.
Thi s was not unusual . By the I 9 2os, in response to the develop
ment of a standardized method of recording, the NLC had decided
that the work of Wil ki nson's commission was inaccurate. 1
The Mataqali Koromakawa report seized on apparent di screp
ancies between the NLC's I 902 and I 9 I 9-2 I findi ngs, which it
offered as evidence of the findings' baselessness. The report notes,
for example, that whereas i n I 9o2, the NLC found nine mataqali
in Suvavou, i n 1 9 1 9, it found four yavusa and twelve mataqali. The
report then asks: Why this di fference? The report al so poi nts to the
incomplete nature of the i nformation recorded by the NLC in
I 9 2 I . In I 9 2 I , the NLC recorded three statements made by three
elders of Suvavou representing each of the three yavusa of the vil
lage. The Mataqal i Koromakawa report points out, for example,
that none of the three narratives mentions the place of origin of the
witness's yavusa. Where, it asks, did these yavusa originate ?
Furthermore, the report notes inconsistencies and contradictions
among the three yavusa's narratives. For example, according to one
narrative, during a mi d-nineteenth-century war between the pow
erful rival chiefdoms Bau and Rewa, the chief of Suva, Ratu
Ravulo, stayed i n Rewa, while according to another narrative,
Ratu Ravulo stayed i n Bau ( see Sahlins I 99 I ; Wal l I 9 2o) . "Why do
these narratives di sagree? " the report asks.
Of course, the NLC has never claimed that the basis for the final
ity of its records is their l ogical coherence. In fact, in some cases, the
NLC has abandoned the results of its earlier inquiries. Rather, the
finality of the NLC records is temporally defined: the NLC simply
denies the retroactive contestability of its records. In other words,
whether or not information given on oath at NLC hearings is logi
cally incoherent or simply "wrong, " it must be treated as final .
Setting Knowledge in Motion 7
9
From this standpoint, it is probabl y not so much the act of
pointing to the logical inconsistencies of the NLC records as the act
of asking questions that is threatening to the i ntegrity of the NLC
records. The strategy of subversion in the questioner-respondent
relationship seeks to engage the government in discussion and thus
to reopen inquiries into landownership. Although access to gov
ernment records in the 1 9 8os opened up a new manner of engage
ment with the government for Fij ians, namely, a substantive cri
tique of government records, from their standpoint, the effective
ness of this new form of engagement depended on the old strategy
of asking questions.
This strategy of asking questions invokes two aspects of the act
of questioning. On the one hand, questions asked of the govern
ment are mani festations of a search for i nformation and are
designed to solicit a response ( Goody 1 978 : 23 ) . On the other
hand, however, the questioners do not always expect a response,
partly because there may be some doubt as to whether they wi l l get
one and partly because their main concern may not be to get
answers to their questions but simply to "pose" them ( Goldman
1 9 9 3 : 1 9 8 ) . I suggest that these "open" and "closed" potenti al s of
the act of questioning ( i bid. : 1 99) can coexist in a si ngl e set of ques
tions. The subversion of the questioner-respondent relationship,
therefore, has the interesting effect of both openness and closure at
once.
This is true from another perspective as well . Judging from the
internal discussion within the government triggered by Suvavou
people's questions, the strategy worked, and the government began
to investigate Suvavou people's concerns. In 1 904, for example, it
prompted the government to investigate the legal grounds of its
possession of the Suva land, although ultimately, the government's
conclusion was that " [t] he question which was settled so long ago
cannot now be reopened. " 1 1 Nevertheless, Suvavou people's ques
tions clearly had triggered an internal debate among government
official s about the Suva land case. The strategy fail ed, however, in
that Suvavou people did not succeed in reopening their case; the
government almost always categorically denied the contestabi l ity
So Setting Knowledge in Motion
of past government decisions concerning Suvavou people's land. In
other words, for both sides, these questions opened and closed the
possi bi l ity of self-knowledge for Suvavou people. In order to un
derstand the ful l significance of the interplay between openness and
closure embedded i n the act of questioning, I now turn to another
subversive strategy deployed by the report.
Migrati on Narrati ves
The fi rst section of the 1 994 Mataqal i Koromakawa report pre
sents an alternative migration narrative of Suva people that is more
logically consistent and complete than the migration narratives
recorded by the NLC i n 1 9 2 1 , according to the author of the
report. The first part of the narrative reads as follows:
Ena i golegole mai Nakauvadra e ratou gole mai na noqu qase ena
Yavusa Suva, Mataqali Suva ka nodratou Yavutu na Suva.
My ancestors, Yavusa Suva, Mataqal i Suva, came down from Nakau
vadra, and their ori gi n place is Suva.
Mai Nakauvadra e ratou gole sobu mai, vakamuria na tokaitua me
yacova ni ratou sa mai yaco e na dua na vanua yacana ko Lutu, ena ulu
ni wai na Wainimala.
They came down from Nakauvadra fol lowing a mountai n range and
final l y reached a place cal l ed Lutu on the bank of the Wai ni mal a River.
Biu mai o Lutu e ratou gole sobu mai, me yacova ni ratou sa yacovi
Delaitoga (Naitasiri). E Delaitoga e sa mai wase kina na Yavusa Suva.
E sa mai toka yani kina e dua vei iratou na neitou qase ka se vakayavu
tiko ga ni kua mai Delaitoga.
They l eft Lutu and came down unti l they reached Del aitoga ( Naitasiri ) .
At Del aitoga, they di vided Yavusa Suva. One of our ancestors remai ned
there and hi s descendants are still based at Del ai toga today.
According to this narrative, therefore, Suva people originated from
Nakauvadra, a mythic origin place that many contemporary Fi j i ans
would identify as thei r ul timate ori gi n pl ace. 1 2 The mention of Suva
people's ori gi n pl ace contrasts wi th the lack of such i nformation in
the migration narratives recorded by the NLC. The narrative ends
i n Suva with Suva peopl e's al location of ceremoni al duties (i tavi)
Setting Knowledge in Motion 8 1
among three brothers who were Mataqal i Koromakawa's ances
tors:
Ena de/ana talega oqo e mai wasei kina na nodratou i tavi na noqu
qase, ka mai buli kina nai matai ni Tui Suva. Me vaka ni ratou sa yaco
mai ena vanua vou e ratou /ewe tofu ka dua vei iratou e taka ga yani
mai Delaitoga. E ratou sa mani vei lesi na /ewe tofu na qase oqo.
On thi s hi l l , my ancestors divided ceremoni al duties, and they i nstal l ed
the fi rst Tui Suva. When they reached the new l and, there were three
people, and like before one had stayed at Del aitoga. Then these three
were appoi nted [to di fferent ceremoni al positions] .
According to the narrative, the eldest of the three brothers installed
the youngest of the three as the chief of Suva. The eldest of the
three installed himself as sauturaga ( i nstaller of the chief) and the
other became bete ( priest ) . This self-contained structure of the
chiefdom of Suva as a whole contrasts sharply with the whole
incorporating three di fferent wholes as its parts in the 1 9 2 1 NLC
records.
Thi s strategy of subverting the temporal di rection of the rela
tionship between parts and wholes embedded in migration narra
tives recorded i n the 1 9 2 1 NLC i nqui ry will be fami l i ar from chap
ter 3 . In those official accounts, the focus was on the present, i n
that they al l poi nt to how di fferent parts gathered together to form
the present whol e. In other words, as one traces the migration sto
ries back from the present toward the past, one fi nds the di fferent
places where di fferent yavusa used to reside. In contrast, the nar
rative of the head of Mataqali Koromakawa quoted here focuses
on how the original whole was divided at di fferent points along the
route. For example, when Suva people reached a place called
Delaitoga, they divided themselves into two groups. One of them
remained in Delaitoga, while the rest set out to sai l down along a
river and eventually reached Suva. In other words, where the
migration stories recorded by the NLC seem to validate the com
position of Suva people as a historically constituted whole at the
time of the NLC i nquiry, the story told by the head of Mataqali
Koromakawa draws attention to the fragmentation of an original
whole from which Suva people originated.
8 2
Setting Knowl edge i n Motion
My focus here is on the implications of this reversal of the tem
poral relationship between parts and a whole for the question of
indeterminacy. Like the subversion of the questioner-respondent
relationship, the temporal subversion of the relationship between
parts and whole in the migration narrative also creates a simulta
neous effect of openness and closure. On the one hand, unl i ke the
NLC's historically constituted and inclusive whole created by gath
ering disparate groups, Mataqali Koromakawa's whole defined by
the act of division privileged formal closure and excl usivity. On the
other hand, the subversion of the NLC's official migration narra
tive also revealed a new horizon of openness. If one traced back
through the mi grati on route presented i n the Mataqal i
Koromakawa report, one would encounter other parts of the orig
inal whole of which Mataqali Koromakawa still considered itself a
part.
This openness was defined by an i nteractional method of proof:
Mataqali Koromakawa elders pointed out to me that they could
prove the truthfulness of their story by going back to Delaitoga,
where according to their migration story, their ancestors divided
themselves into two groups. According to them, the descendants of
the other half of the origi nal whole still lived i n Delaitoga and the
stories of these two groups would "correspond" ( sota) , such that
each woul d prove the other. This aspect of Mataqal i
Koromakawa's migration narrative equipped the report with the
potential to trigger an ontologically based interactional closure of
its own. The report, in other words, succeeded i n situating
Mataqali Koromakawa's hope i n a delicate bal ance between
future-oriented openness and anticipation of a moment at which
their self-knowledge would be final l y proven and closed.
Mataqal i Koromakawa had a basis for their belief i n this possi
bility. In December 1 994, Mataqali Koromakawa organized a
meeting for me at what they claimed to be their old village site i n
Suva. There, they showed me a clipping from a l ocal Fi j i an-l an
guage newspaper entitled "A Song About Suva " ( " Serekali kei
Suva " ) .
1
3 The song was composed by an el der from Serea, Naita
siri, a vil lage on the route Mataqal i Koromakawa elders believed
Setting Knowledge in Motion
their ancestors had taken, and exemplified what Mataqal i Koro
makawa elders claim to constitute effective proof. While we sat on
the floor, one of Mataqal i Koromakawa elders read it al oud.
In this song, the song-maker attempts to demonstrate that his
yavusa, Yavusa Nadoloi, and Suva people share an origi n. As evi
dence of this claim, the song traces the migration of Suva people
and i ndicates the places where the original group divided itself and
left parts along the route ( at Lutu, Delaitoga, and Serea ) . Some
detai l s of the two narratives do not match. For example, the Mata
qal i Koromakawa narrative mentions the Wai ni mal a River as the
river along which their ancestors descended from Nakauvadra,
instead of the Wai ni buka River mentioned i n the song. Moreover,
the Mataqali Koromakawa narrative does not mention Lutu and
Serea, two places where, according to the song, parts of Suva peo
ple were left. However, for Mataqali Koromakawa elders, the
song's mention of Del aitoga was sufficient proof of their theory
that stories told by people of the same origin would essentially
match. For Mataqali Koromakawa elders, this in turn confirmed
that i f they went to Delaitoga, they would be able to prove their
knowledge about who they were.
Spurred by this claim, I visited Del aitoga i n January 1 99 5 i n the
hope of learning what the people of Delaitoga knew about Suva
people, and more specifical l y Mataqal i Koromakawa. My trip gen
erated great hope on the part of Mataqali Koromakawa elders.
They asked me to tape-record al l the stories the people of Del ai toga
might have of Suva people. When I arrived, I discovered that there
was indeed a yavusa called Yavusa Suva in Del ai toga, and I spoke
with its head and other people there. However, during my short
visit, over three days, I could not obtain much i nformation about
the Delaitoga perspective on Suva people.
Mataqal i Koromakawa elders were di sappoi nted when I
returned to Suvavou without a substantial story, as they had been
looking forward to the tape-recorded stories that would val idate
their self-knowledge. However, their disappointment soon turned
into a kind of confirmation that only they could get such informa
tion. " If we go there to sit down with them and tal k, " they told me,
Setting Knowledge in Motion
"our stories will match. " Naturally I could not gather the stories,
they surmised, for to know the facts was not enough; the possi bi l
i ty of correspondence depended also on a particul ar form of ri tual
interaction ( veiqaravi). Here cl osure was defined ontological ly. The
seemingly open character of the migration narrative was accompa
nied by a narrowly defined method for its own closure. The reem
phasis on the performative dimension of the possibil ity of self
knowing reintroduced the kind of indeterminacy that sustained
Mataqal i Koromakawa's hope.
Delegati ng Cl osure
As far as knowledge about Fi j i an land is concerned, indeterminacy
is not, therefore, a given condition, but a condition to be
achieved. 1 4 In the petitions to the government I have described, the
indetermi nate character of self-knowledge is strategically created.
As we have seen, the Mataqali Koromakawa report contains mul
ti pl e devices for creating the effect of indeterminacy. These include
the open-ended questions that appear i n the second section of the
report and the migration narrative presented i n the report, the form
of which suggests its own method of proof.
What these devices have i n common is their dependence on acts
of delegation or i ndi rection ( cf. Bauman 2001 ; Brenneis 1 9 86;
Keane 1 997c) . The subversion of both the questioner-respondent
relationship and the form of the NLC's migration stories ultimate
ly delegates closure to a third party. By asking questions of the gov
ernment, the Mataqali Koromakawa report invites the government
to answer the questi ons. The migration narrative l i kewise impl icit
ly calls upon another mataqa/i, the part of the original whole that
was left behind, to validate the narrative. The strategy of listing
government records as appendices also reflects this delegation of
the proof of self-knowledge.
Acts of delegation produce an effect of indeterminacy, because
they situate self-knowing on an i nteractional and performative ter
rain. The indeterminate nature of interaction arises from the way it
invokes a recursive relationship between an initiating act of inter-
Setting Knowl edge in Motion
action and its response. Whether questions will be answered, for
example, depends not so much on their content as on the way they
are posed. Likewise, whether stories will correspond and hence
mutually prove their truthfulness depends on the character of the
encounter between the parties involved. In the same way, whether
access to documents will be granted at the Nati onal Archives and
other government offices depends on the identity of the parties and
the nature of the relations between bureaucrats and cl ients.
Interaction is radical l y indeterminate, in other words, because one
side's response depends upon the other's manner of attendance. It
is this radical indeterminacy of self-knowledge achieved i n the
reports and petitions of Suvavou people to the government that has
enabled them to maintain their hope in the face of the government's
repeated rej ection of their cl ai ms. In the fol lowing chapter, I further
explore the predication of hope on performance i n an analysis of
church and gift-giving ritual s.
5 c Intimating Fulfillment
In thi s chapter, I turn to church and gi ft-gi vi ng ri tual s that repeat
edly engaged Suvavou people i n successive moments of hope and
its ful fill ment. I argue that the ritual experience of hope and its ful
fil l ment was instrumental i n the production of hope. When adept
l y performed, this ritual process entailed a temporally and spati al
ly orchestrated discursive game of agency that redefined and recon
figured the relationship between humans and God, and that ulti
mately made ritual participants' hope of God's ultimate response
an echo of the ritually ful filled hope. In this understanding, I sug
gest, the problem of how to maintain a prospective orientation dis
places the question of who or what i s the ultimate source of hope.
In more general terms, my attention to ritual moments in which
human agency i s placed i n abeyance marks a departure from social
theorists' long-standing emphasis on human agency and strategy
(cf. Bourdieu 1 977; Giddens 1 979; Ortner 1 9 84) . Moreover, it
seeks to respond to the more recent attention paid by Dipesh
Chakrabarty and others to actors' imaginings of nonhuman agents
such as God and spirits making evident the l i mits of secular disci
plines such as anthropology and history. 1 My argument i s that
Fij ian ritual s point to the fact that what makes rituals consequen
tial are not the intentions of God, spirits, and other experientially
inaccessible entities but the limits placed, at least temporarily, on
ritual participants' capacity to control the effects of their acti on i n
the world.
Intimating Ful fi l lment
Questi ons and Answers
In Suvavou, the Methodist and Seventh-Day Adventist ( SDA)
churches have coexisted for over a hundred years, ever since the
chief of Suvavou, the Roko Tui Suva, Ratu Avorosa Tuivuya, and
some villagers became Adventists i n r 89 8 . Subsequently, in 1 9 1 8,
this original chiefly line ceased to exist with the death of its last
member, and a Methodist mataqa/i, Mataqali Kaiwai, assumed the
chiefly title ( see chapter 3 ) . In 1 9 9 5 , the Suvavou Methodist
Church had a membership of 3 1 4, while the Suvavou SDA Church
had 2 70 members. A few belonged to the Catholic Church, Assem
blies of God, and other churches, al l of which were l ocated outside
the village. Although it was not unusual for a Fijian village to
accommodate more than one Christian denomination, Suvavou's
history of religious pl uralism is unique in its scale. 2
The two churches offered Suvavou people very di fferent models
of social l i fe ( cf. Thomas 1 997: 5 0-5 1 , 224) : At the most obvious
level, Methodists observed the Sabbath on Sunday, while the Ad
ventist Sabbath began at sunset on Friday and ended at sunset on
Saturday. Many Adventists abstained from cooking on the Sabbath
and spent most of the day attending church services. In contrast,
for Methodists, Sunday l unch was the most el aborate meal of the
week. Adventists adhered to many food prohibitions, such as those
against eating pork and shellfish, and were highly conscious of fol
l owi ng a healthy di et. Methodists observed none of these prohibi
tions. Yaqona ( piper methysticum, or kava) drinking was an inte
gral part of Methodist gatherings, while Adventists did not drink
yaqona, alcohol, or even tea ( see Steley 1 990: 209-r r; cf. SDA
General Conference 1 9 8 8 : 28 r-8 2) .
The organizational structures of the two churches were very di f
ferent al so. The Methodist Church in Fij i and Rotuma was a self
contained national body separated into "divisions " ( i wasewase)
and "circuits " ( tabacakacaka) . In sermons and church activities,
members of the Methodist Church were constantly reminded of
bei ng part of a nati onal church structure wi th the president ( qase
8 8 Inti mati ng Ful fi l l ment
levu, literal ly, " big elder " ) at its apex. In contrast, Adventists
stressed their membership in a worldwide community of Sabbath
keepers who every Saturday studied the same section of the same
textbook produced at the world headquarters of the SDA Church
in the Uni ted States. At the Suvavou Methodist Church, only Fij i an
preachers preached, and they did so in Fij i an. At the Suvavou SDA
Church, European, Tongan, and Samoan preachers, in addi ti on to
Fi j i ans, gave sermons. Many non-Fij i an preachers deli vered thei r
sermons i n Engl i sh, whi ch Fij i an Adventist schoolteachers translat
ed into Fijian almost simultaneously. Finally, the Methodist leader
ship played a central role in nationalist pol itics, and church activi
ties were steeped i n commentary on Fijian cultural identity. In con
trast, Adventists di d not portray their church as exclusively and
independently Fi j i an and did not regard the church as a forum for
the explicit celebration of Fi j i an ethnicity and its relationship to
Christian faith.
The doctrinal and organizational di fferences between the two
churches were sometimes the subj ect of j oking debates between
cross-cousins ( tavale) of the kind Andrew Arno has also observed
in the Lau Islands ( 1 990) . For example, on New Year's Eve in
1 99 5, following the annual j oint church services held successively
at the SDA and Methodist churches in the vi l l age, Ana, a
Methodist, and her Adventist cross-cousi n, Jo, held such a j oking
debate while Ana's husband and daughter and I chatted outside
Ana's house. The debate began when Jo told of his experiences
working as a cook at a resort hotel near the village. In the course
of the story, he mentioned that he had served pork and shel lfi sh to
the passengers of a cruise shi p. Ana j okingly challenged him to j us
tify serving to other people what he himself was not al lowed to eat.
Jo responded that i t was what tourists wanted. Ana's husband,
Si kel i , j oined in and repeated Jo's response. Ana then asked i f it was
a sin to serve food to others that he himself would not eat. Sikeli
repeated Ana's question and asked Jo how he would respond. Jo
quickly countered with a quotation from the Bi bl e that one must
give others what they need. This response provoked appreciative
laughter from al l of us. Jo also added that he had not touched the
Intimating Ful fi l l ment
pork and shellfish, because non-SDA women had prepared those
items. Ana's daughter then shouted, " You ate them too! " and we
all burst into l aughter.
Donal d Brenneis's description of pancayat, or conflict resolution
sessions among Indo-Fij ians, as concerning "more than its topic,
for aesthetic pleasure, or pleasure expressed i n aesthetic terms, i s
central to i t" ( Brenneis 1 990: 23 0) could apply equal l y well to Fij i
an j oking debates. In the i nterchange described above, a conflict
over religious doctrine provided the basis for a particul ar ki nd of
social engagement. It was the quick rhythm of the engagement, the
sequence of challenges i n the form of questions, and responses in
the form of answers, that captured our attention and entertained us
( cf. Arno 1 990: 264) .
An exchange of questions and answers between two sides was
also a predominant manner of religious learning at both Methodist
and SDA churches. Every Sunday morning, for example, when
Methodist vi llagers gathered together for their Sunday church ser
vice, a group of old women seated i n the back pews of the church
read aloud, i n a rather monotonous tone, a set of questions and
answers, an exercise known as laga taro ( l iteral ly, " singing ques
tions, " meaning "catechism" ) . These questions and answers con
cerned Methodists' fundamental beliefs and were printed at the
back of the Methodist Church hymnbook. With a measured ca
dence, the leader of the group read al oud a question, such as " Is it
possible for the Holy Spirit to descend to us al so? " and the rest of
the group read al oud the answer: "It i s possi bl e as Peter sai d on
Pentecost Sunday: ' Repent, and be baptized every one of you i n the
name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive
the gift of the Holy Ghost. For the promise is unto you, and to your
children, and to al l that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our
God shal l cal l ' [Acts 2: 3 8-3 9 ] " ( Methodist Church i n Fij i 1 9 8 8
[ 1 9 3 8] : 4 3 9 ; my translation) .
Unlike the j oking debate between cross cousins, this exchange
scripted both the questions and the answers, and al l that was
required was to read them i n unison as printed in the hymnbook.
As church members arrived at church and took thei r seats, the
Intimating Ful fi l l ment
monotonous back and forth of question and answer served as a
kind of background music or rhythm, which fil led the few mi nutes
before the opening of the worship. Even more than the j oking
debate, Methodist women's practice of singing questions focused
not so much on the content of the question and answer pairs as on
the rhythm that these sets produced.
Although it was less predetermined than Methodist women's
singing questions, there was a si mi l ar pattern of questions and
answers in the Adventist religious service. Every Saturday morning,
Adventist vi l lagers assembled at their church to attend " Sabbath
School . "3 Bibl e study groups, known as "cl asses" ( kalasi) , were
organized according to age and sex. Teachers were senior male
church members. In their classes, women and young people gener
ally kept quiet and deferred to the group leader. In contrast, in the
mal e elders' classes, members took turns each week serving as
teacher, and the teacher's authority was limited to aski ng the fi rst
question and di recting the conversation at particular moments.
Male elders' classes often involved heated debate as participants
openly disagreed with one another's i nterpretations of the Bi bl e.
One of the interesting features of these conversations was that
the teacher did not ai m to demonstrate his authority ( cf. Goody
1 978 : 42) . Rather, members of the elders' class took turns leading
the discussion by asking a question. The interaction among male
elders consisted of sets of discussions, each focusing on a particu
l ar question; one elder asked a question of the others, and each of
the others attempted i n turn to formulate an answer.
Consider the following discussion in one male elders' class about
the role working for the church plays in salvati on. 4 Referring to a
passage from Luke ( 23 : 42-4 3 ) , in which one of the two men cru
cified with Jesus cried out, " Remember me when thou earest into
thy ki ngdom, " to which Jesus responded, "Verily I say unto thee,
To day shalt thou be with me in paradise, " Sakeasi asked, how the
sinner could be saved simply by asking for salvation, without hav
ing done any work for God in hi s l i fetime. The designated teacher
responded:
Inti mati ng Ful fi l l ment 9 1
I thi nk that he knew thi s was the end of hi s l i fe . . . . He bel ieved that
this was Christ, the Savior . . . . So he believed. But this shows that God
will accept us when we change. What do you thi nk? I f there is another
"chance" [Engl ish word] for thi s man, I bel ieve it is possibl e for hi m to
take up that chance.
Di sregarding the teacher's answer as irrelevant, Sakeasi repeated
the question. After another member made a comment, which
Sakeasi again rejected, he once again repeated his question, and the
teacher again attempted to respond. Yet again, Sakeasi was not sat
isfied. He reminded members of the discussion group of the signif
icance of the question and asked them to try to l i sten to what the
Holy Spirit might say to them on this point: "This i s a good ques
tion because sometimes we are not focused and suddenly someone
asks us and we get confused. We should give some thought to its
answer. The Holy Spirit can give us what we should talk about. "
Then, the teacher and another member of the class again respond
ed. Both seized on Sakeasi 's mention of the enl ightenment of the
Holy Spirit and proj ected this insight onto an understanding of the
sinner's behavior. Dissati sfied with these answers, Sakeasi fi nal l y
gave hi s own answer to his question:
Now that we have come cl oser to the question regarding our study, I
would l i ke to present my own thoughts . . . . Who was nai led to the cross
along with the sinner? jesus. Only jesus is deciding everything . . . . You
believe in the Lord jesus Christ. Whether you tithe and then die today
or you don't tithe . . . and then di e today, you bel ieve [ i n God] and He
knows that [you are] a si ncere person, right ? You are being si ncere. God
is watching you. You can be i n trouble today and not tithe but [ i ntend
to] tithe next week. But i f you di e suddenl y, God will know that you
had di fficul ty and therefore did not give anything . . . . [Do you think
that] He is waiting for you to tithe, and then [when you tithe, He wi l l
say, ] " I wi l l save hi m" ? No. He says that [ what matters i s] your si ncere
heart. [As He says,] "If you want to fol low me, I will save you. "
This answer then prompted others t o confirm Sakeasi 's answer
as correct by each reciting l anguage from the Bible supporting his
point. For example, one member of the class offered the following
quotation from the Bi bl e and the Sabbath School textbook: '"As ye
92 Inti mati ng Ful fi l l ment
have therefore received Christ Jesus the LORD, so wal k ye i n him
[Col. 2: 61 . ' It i s i nterpreted as fol l ows: 'To follow Jesus requires
wholehearted conversion at the start, and a repetition of this con
version every day' " ( quoted i n Gane 1 9 9 5 : 64, taken from Nichol
1 978 ( 1 9 5 3 1 : 1 1 1 3 ) .
Although rounds of questions and answers began as contests
among elders, as the above example i l l ustrates, the person who
asked the question usually concluded the round of answers by pro
viding his own answer. Once the proper answer was found, the
other participants then offered further confirmation of the correct
ness and final ity of that answer by citing Bible passages that sup
ported it. If Methodist women's practice of catechism achieved a
sense of completion through the chanting of printed sets of ques
tions and answers, Adventists' Sabbath School sessions achieved it
through an exchange of questions and answers between class mem
bers.
For Adventists, therefore, asking a question was extremely sig-
ni ficant. For example, Sakeasi stated:
We know that we believe i n jesus as God's son but very often we are
too shy to show i n a straight way, and to ask i n a straight way, what
troubles us . . . . Very often I am weak and I fi nd i t di fficul t to tal k i n a
straight manner to a pastor or a l ay preacher . . . . The Holy Spirit
i nspi res . . . us to act with purpose. Let us not be too shy to ask i n a
straight manner fol l owing the path i ndicated by Jesus . . . . Shyness i s
the weapon of the Devi l that makes one's mi nd smal l and that tel l s us
not to show i n a straight manner what worries us or what makes i t pos
sible for us to obtai n eternal l i fe.
Although Bi bl e study sessions always began wi th a prayer for
the Holy Spirit's guidance in their debate, and participants often
referred to the Holy Spirit's guidance during the course of the
debate, as Sakeasi did at one point in the above example, the issue
of the agency of the Holy Spirit i n " speaking through" the partici
pants ( see Bauman 1 9 8 3 , 1 98 9 [ 1 9741 ; Harding 1 98 7, 20oo) , that
is, the question of whether the Holy Spirit was actual l y directly
i nfluencing the speakers, was secondary. In Sakeasi 's theory of
questions and answers, what was cruci al , rather, was one's attitude,
Intimating Ful fi l l ment
93
one's " straight manner. " Shyness, evidenced by a rel uctance t o ask
a questi on, prevented a person from bei ng enlightened by the Holy
Spirit. In other words, asking a question not only evidenced one's
"straight manner " but also guaranteed one's capacity to reach the
right answer.
Problems and Sol uti ons
In Methodist and Adventist church sermons, there was a si mi l ar
rhetorical pattern. Li ke questions and answers in Bi bl e study ses
sions, the sermons of both Methodist and Adventist preachers con
sisted of a contingent set of paired problems and solutions.
Through this pattern, the preacher urged the congregation to real
ize the problematic nature of their present method of worship and
to seek a soluti on. In other words, the preacher sequentially for
mulated and then solved problems concerning the congregation's
way of l i fe.
Methodist and Adventist preachers thus used the same problem
and-solution technique for thinking about the proper method of
worshi p, although stressing di fferent conceptions of temporality.
Methodist preachers constructed a problem and its solution out of
the contrast between the past and present and emphasized the
maintenance of the rituals of the past. In contrast, Adventists pre
sented the state of an individual as a problem i n need of a solution
and showed greatest interest i n the need for a change in the present
and in the coming of the end of the worl d. The di ffering concep
tions of temporality in Methodist and Adventist sermons evidenced
disparate doctrinal positions and served as indexes of the contrast
ing forms of collectivity that the two churches strove to achieve. In
other words, l i ke j oking debates, Methodist women's si nging ques
tions, and Adventist elders' Sabbath School sessions, Fij i an ser
mons focused on the completion of a specific form. At this level of
form, despite di fferences of content, striking similarities between
Methodist and Adventist ways of preaching emerged.
The predominant theme of Methodist sermons concerned the
9
4 Intimating Ful fi l l ment
relationship of the present to the past. Methodist preachers fre
quently used stories about early Fi j i an chiefs' encounters with
Christianity ( cf. Thornley and Vulaono 1 996) as vehicles for criti
cizing the congregation's sinful practices. In these sermons, early
Fij ians' conversion to Christianity and manner of worship was pre
sented as a model for present-day Fij ians, whose l i fe had lost its
strength and vigor. Preachers often pointed to social problems such
as the increasing crime rate among Fi j i ans and explained that these
resulted from contemporary Fij i ans' improper manner of worship.
For example, in a sermon delivered at the Suvavou Methodist
Church during one Sunday service, a preacher from a nearby
church poi nted out that contemporary Fij ians' manner of worship
was not good enough:
I f you want Fi j i and Fi j i ans to be l ivel y [ hula] , let Fi j i restore the man
ner i n whi ch our ancestors " attended" [qaravi] God. Our ancestors
accepted Chri sti an cl othing in 1 8 3 5. Please forgive me, my relatives, for
sayi ng a word of criticism. The way God is worshipped today in Fi j i i s
not proper . . . That i s why we have more rape and more murder today
and the prisons are ful l . This is not the custom of Fi j i ans. 5
The preacher went on to i l l ustrate earl y Fi j i ans' ri gor i n "seek
i ng" ( vakasaqara) God by describing their first encounter with
European missionaries:
My relatives, I would l i ke to show you the way our ancestors attended
God. European missionaries arrived i n Tubou but did not respect any
thing that Fi j i ans were doing at the time. Our ancestors then wondered:
"Where does the missionaries' strength come from? " "Where is their
power ? " From sunrise, throughout the day and into the evening until
mi dnight, they l ooked for i t. They then fi nal l y found Chri st!
The preacher then stopped and directly confronted the congre
gation: "If you say you have accepted Jesus today, I will ask you
today i f you have found him. How did you find him? I wish to
point out to you the lesson of this story. If you search for hi m, you
wi l l fi nd him. "
This critical commentary on contemporary Fi j i ans' manner of
worshi p exemplifies the Methodist usage of conversion narratives
and their emphasis on the relationship of the present to the past
Intimating Ful fi l l ment 9 5
through the "maintenance" ( maroroya) of the proper manner of
worshi p ( cf. Gewertz and Errington 1 993 ; Joll y 1 992, 1 996: 2 5 2-
5 3 ; White 1 99 1 ) . In this view, the truth about God and the atten
dance owed to Him by human beings was already entirely known
and could be found in Fi j i ans' past. Moreover, this theme of mai n
tenance was explored through a particul ar rhetorical form: a ser
mon often portrayed some aspect of village l i fe as a problem and
then offered early Fij ians' manner of worship as its solution. Like
a question and its answer, the problems of the present were re
solved through a return to the ritual forms of the past.
In contrast, Adventist sermons rarely mentioned mission hi sto
ry. I heard only one sermon i n Suvavou that referred to the chief's
conversion to Adventism and the vi l lage's long history of Adventist
belief. In this sermon, the preacher actual l y al l uded to the past only
to negate its importance. He opened his account with the famous
parabl e of the payment of l aborers i n the vineyard ( Matt. 20: 1-1 6) ,
i n which the l andowner equall y rewards the laborer employed from
early i n the morning and the l aborer employed at the very end of
the day. The preacher then noted that the people of Suvavou had
been the first to become Adventists in Fij i :
I believe about a hundred years have passed since we accepted the
church. [The chief of Suvavou] has been remembered throughout Fi j i
for generati ons. Many of us were born into thi s church. There are many
faithful fami l i es. Bl essed are those who are cal l ed to hel p the church's
activities. However, my relatives, I bel ieve tonight that there is onl y one
payment. Forget your begi nni ng. Whether you start i n the morning or
at the end of the day, the Bible says that there is onl y one payment, that
i s, eternal l i fe. 6
Adventists' sermons focused on the present and the future-and,
i n particul ar, on church members' i ndi vi dual efforts to change
themselves. In sermons and other religious conversation, Advent
ists repeatedly reminded themselves that people were sinful beings.
Because the end of the world was approaching, each person need
ed to prepare him- or herself by rendering his or her l i fe "sin-free, "
"clean, " "straight, " and "truthful . " As the resident minister of Su
vavou's SDA Church tol d the congregation in one sermon: "I know
Intimating Ful fi l l ment
you al l will stand up to say, ' I have done something. ' God knows
about it. There is something I have done and should tell Him. This
year, God's words challenge us. You are expected to show Him
something, something good, clean, straight, and holy in His eyes. "7
Despite their di fferent temporal orientations, however, both
Methodists and Adventists stressed the importance of the proper
manner of worship. Methodists portrayed the attitude to God of
early Fi j i an converts as the ideal model . The Methodist preacher
mentioned above emphasized that i f contemporary Fijians revived
this ideal manner of worship, everything would be better. Si mi l arly,
Adventists stressed the sinfulness of human l i fe and the importance
of consistent efforts to dedicate one's l i fe to God and to cleanse
one's body and mind, because these must evidence the proper atti
tude of worshi p. As demonstrated by ancestors' conversion stories
or biblical parables, the preacher suggested that adopting the truth
ful manner of worship would ensure that one received God's re
sponse and guarantee that one's l i fe generally would " move for
ward" ( toso) ( cf. Tomlinson 2002a) . In other words, notwith
standing their di fferent temporal orientations, the idealization i n
thei r sermons of the faith of earl y Fi j i an converts by Methodists
and of sin-free cleanliness in the present by Adventists both made
the future contingent on congregations' conforming to an ideal
model.
This critical commentary on the congregations' manner of wor
ship is somewhat surprising, however, given that before the sermon
began, the worshippers had taken great care in their self-presenta
tion. At both churches, members paid enormous attention to the
propriety of their appearance, speech, and conduct. Both Meth
odists and Adventists wore their best dress to church. Men wore a
tie, a sulu vakataga ( "pocket sulu, " or skirts with pockets) , a shiny
white shirt and a Western-style j acket. 8 Women wore a white or
light-colored long dress over a black or dark col ored sulu that cov
ered thei r ankles, and a pair of l eather shoes with heel s. Choir
groups devoted long hours during the week to practicing hymns.
Both congregations strove to attai n the i deal model of worship the
Intimating Ful fi l l ment 97
preacher offered as a solution and a source of closure. Why, then,
did the preacher devalue and even deny their efforts to present their
best appearance through their attire, hymns, and speeches and
stress instead the problematic nature of the present manner of wor
ship, that is, the way in which i t fel l short of the ideal model ?
This question recal l s the SDA Sabbath School sessions, although
the role of the questioner in those sessions was less rigidly defined
than that of the preacher. Recal l that Sabbath School class mem
bers' efforts to answer a given question almost always fell short of
the questioner's expectations, and that the questioner ultimately
answered his own question after dismissing the answers of other
members as incomplete. In both cases, the preacher and the ques
tioner temporarily negated the other side's effort to conform itself
to an ideal model and subsequently completed the round of engage
ment by providing their own answers to questions they had origi
nally posed.
Agency i n Abeyance
Esther Goody points out that a question often "compels, requires,
may even demand, a response, " and she compares the question
answer form of conversation to gift exchange: "In the incomplete
nature of the question there is a parallel with Mal i nowski 's view of
the gift-for the gift, like the question, demands a return. Both may
be seen as social devices for compelling interaction-for forcing
two partners to enter into a social exchange" ( Goody 1 978 : 23 ) .
Other writers, however, have challenged the assumption i n Goody's
anal ogy that questions are coercive ( see Brenneis 1 990; Goldman
1 9 9 3 : 1 98 ; cf. Green 1 975 ; Keenan et al . 1 978 ; Mertz 1 996) .
The sequential form of questions and answers or problems and
solutions that I have described in the context of Suvavou people's
Christian worship does indeed bear a strong resemblance to Fij i an
gift-giving. For the Fi j i an case, however, the analogy of questioning
and gift-giving would be more fruitful if it were to focus on the
form of the exchange of gifts and speeches rather than on the char-
Intimating Ful fi l l ment
acter of the debts that reciprocity engenders. What I have i n mind
is the di stinctively Fi j i an form of gi ft-giving predicated on the
notion of veiqaravi, or " facing. "9 My focus here i s on the temporal
process of its completion rather than on " reciprocal duties " ( Ho
cart 1 970 [ 1 9 3 6] : 270; cf. Bourdi eu 1 977: 5 ) . Veiqaravi, I argue, i s
a form of interaction between two sides that sequentially completes
itself.
Veiqaravi rests on an indigenous theory of attendance and
response repeatedly observed by anthropologists in Fij i and in
other Polynesian societi es. According to this theory, although gods,
chiefs, and ki ngs exert influence over people, their own efficacy
depends upon people's attention to them. Valerio Valeri has
observed of nineteenth-century Hawaiians, for example, that the
agency of gods and ki ngs was activated by human belief in the effi
cacy of these entities: " On the one hand, the gods are conceived as
the autonomous source of al l mana 'power. ' But on the other hand,
it i s believed that the gods' power does not exi st independently
from man's worship and, in particul ar, from sacrifice . . . . Thus
quite paradoxical ly, gods are the source of power but at the same
time their worshippers are said to be the source of their power"
( Valeri 1 9 8 5 : 8 9) .
"People attend on ( qarava, lit. ' face' ) the Christian God, who i s
above al l , " Chri sti na Toren says of contemporary Fij i . "The old
gods and ancestors still exist but their power has waned for they
are no longer the obj ect of the people's sacrifices; so the Christian
God i s invoked not as 'the only god' but as 'the only god who is
served' " ( Toren 1 9 9 5 : 1 66) . Fi j i ans' devotion to the Christian God
thus does not necessarily entail the complete banishment of other
gods. Fij i an Christians always, i n fact, have their ancestors and the
old gods in mind, Toren observes ( see also Tomlinson 2002b) .
From the Fi j i ans' perspective, however, they remain in the back
ground as long as no attention i s pai d to them. Veneration of a
chief or god, whether Christian or otherwise, is a matter of choice
( cf. Hocart 1 970 [ 1 9 3 6] : 99; M. Kaplan 1 99 5 : 1 1 4; Kasuga 1 994;
Ravuvu 1 987: 259; Sahlins 1 9 8 5 : 3 7-40) .
The temporal aspect of this theory of attendance and response,
Inti mati ng Ful fi l l ment
99
however, has so far escaped anthropological attention. Fij i an gift
giving, I suggest, entails a moment at which gift-givers place their
own agency in abeyance and a subsequent moment i n which gift
receivers recuperate the gift-givers' agency. A comparison between
Christian ritual s and gift-giving rituals will bring this temporal
process into focus.
In comparing Christian ri tual s and gift-giving rituals, I do not
mean to suggest that Fi j i an Christianity is an extension of the vei
qaravi-style of interaction and thus distinctively Fij i an. Indeed,
many aspects of Fij ian Christian rituals, including the use of the
problem and solution or question and answer sets described above,
are not at al l unique to Fi j i an rituals ( see M. Kaplan 1 99oa; Tom
linson 2002a, 2002b, 2004; Toren 1 9 8 8, 1 990, 1 995 , 1 999, 2003 ) .
Christian rituals and Fij i an gift-giving rituals should rather be
regarded as two versions (cf. Hollander 1 9 5 9 ) of a single form,
which unfolds in time ( cf. Toren 1 9 8 8 ) .
This treatment of two realms of knowledge encountered i n Fij i
parallels Fi j i ans' own discourse on lotu ( church) and vanua ( land)
as separate "paths . " This discourse does not use either of these
categories to explain the other. At times, Fi j i ans observe that these
two paths are the same; at others, they claim that the paths are
entirely di fferent and therefore should not be mixed together or
confused analytical ly. Anthropological observations that Fi j i an
Christian churches have taken a distinctively Fi j i an form resonate
with the former claim but contradict the latter. The latter al ready
contains within itself, and rej ects, the anthropological rendering of
Fi j i an Christianity as a local mani festati on. Instead of explaining
one realm of knowledge as the outcome of the other, then, I aim to
bring into view ritual participants' aesthetic experience ( cf. Riles
2ooo) as the basis for the common Fij ian assertion that the two rit
ual processes are at once the same and profoundly separate.
For Suvavou people, veiqaravi entailed a very particul ar "aes
thetic" or "constraint of form" ( Strathern 1 9 8 8 : 1 80-8 1 ) . As two
parties faced each other spatially and exchanged gifts and speech
es, both the gift-givers and the gift-receivers attended to each other
i n a manner emphasizing "respect" ( veidokai) . In gift-giving, any
1 00 Intimating Ful fi l l ment
expression of conflict was out of place and to be avoided. Thus, for
example, when mataqali that competed for leadership in Suvavou
exchanged gifts and speeches at one another's mortuary rites, nei
ther raised issues of contention i n their speeches. Rather, "the way
of relationships " ( vakaveiwekani) as a morally empowered practice
required proper words to be uttered at such occasi ons. Gifts and
speeches confirmed the respectful relationship between the two
sides.
This does not mean that gift-giving was a mechanical act. The
successful execution of gift-giving called for a spokesman's compe
tent performance. Typical ly, the gift-givers assembled a group of
men and women who represented their cl an, church, or other enti
ty. A senior male figure who was particularly skilled i n making
speeches acted as the group's spokesman. 1 0 The spokesman was
usually a member of the mataqali, or the entity he represented,
although in some cases, he had no di rect connection with those he
represented. 1 1 The spokesman did not consult with the delegation
about what he was to say. The understandi ng was that he would
know what was to be said on behal f of the delegation ( see Arno
r 976a: 8 2) .
Ritual participants were well aware of the risks entailed i n gift
giving, which included the possibil ity that the gift-receivers might
reject the gift, although this was extremely rare. The spokesman or
other members of the delegation mi ght stray from the ideal model
of mutual respect and express overt criticism of the gift-receivers
during the course of the event. Participants' intentional or uninten
tional misgivings might ultimately lead to the failure of gift-giving:
the gift-receivers might later comment on the spokesman's poor
performance or on the inadequacy of the gifts, and they might spec
ulate about the negative consequences that this poor performance
might have on the gift-givers ( see Arno 1 976a: 8 2) . Such "fai l ure"
could be made evident retrospectively when the spokesman or one
of his clansman became sick or died following the gift-giving
event ) . 1 2 In the rituals I observed i n Suvavou, however, awareness
of these risks did not overwhelm the participants' commitment to
Inti mati ng Ful fi l l ment T OT
completion, a sense of which was created by a n exchange of
speeches between the two sides.
In every case of gi ft-giving, the gi ft-givers' designated spokes
man moved forward, while their delegation sat qui etly behind hi m,
facing the gift-receivers. Sitting on his knees holding a tabua
( whal e's tooth) , he del ivered a speech after the gifts ( mats, money,
and food) had been piled beside hi m. The first task the spokesman
faced was to define the two sides, that i s, the participants, both pre
sent and absent. 13 The spokesman typical l y began with an
acknowledgement of the various groups of people on the receiving
side by addressing himself to their chiefs by their titular names. For
example, the spokesman for a delegation from an outer island
made the following speech on the occasion of a mortuary exchange
for a Suvavou woman's death: 1 4
Spokesman for the gift-givers: In the chiefly manner, [ I address
mysel f] to Nadonumai [the ceremoni al name used for Suvavou peopl e] ,
to the chief, the Tui Suva, Vasu ki Bau [ the uterine nephew of Bau] .
Gift-receivers in unison: Wa oi oi u.
Spokesman for the gift-givers: [ I al so address mysel f] to Mataqal i
Koromakawa [ the gift-receivers] , to the turaga [ l iteral ly, "chi efs " ] , its
itaukei [ " owners, " meani ng "clansmen" ] .
Gift-receivers in unison: Vinaka saka [ l iteral ly, " Good, Si r, " mean
ing "Thank you, Si r " ] .
Spokesman for the gift-givers: [ I also address mysel f to] the chi efl y
l and of Nakorotubu [ from whi ch the deceased origi nated] , to the chi ef,
the Gonesau [the chi efl y title of Nakorotubu] .
Gift-receivers i n unison: Vinaka.
Spokesman for the gift-givers: [ I al so address mysel f] to the chiefly
relatives who have gathered together at your place tonight.
Gift-receivers in unison: Vinaka.
The speaker then explained the reason for his delegati on's visit.
He usual l y apologized for the shameful inappropriateness of the
gi fts ( cf. Hocart 1 9 29: 7 1 ; Hooper 1 9 8 2: 1 22) and the lateness of
his mataqali's arrival . In thi s case, for example, the spokesman for
the gi ft-givers sai d,
We thought we woul d come earl i er but the travel was di fficul t. We
crossed the sea so that we might j oi n you on thi s important occasi on
J 02
Inti mati ng Ful fi l l ment
today. Val uables di spl ayed here are onl y small reguregu [ l iteral ly, " kiss
ing with the nose, " meani ng death gi fts] from [ our chi ef] .
Gift-receivers: Levu [ Big! ]
Spokesman for the gift-givers: We thought we woul d bring some
thing good. Here is a small mat, tea, food and an envelope [referring to
money] . . . but i f i t is not useful , pl ease forgive us.
In his l i st of apologies, the spokesman usually noted how l ong and
redundant his speech had been.
At the end of the speech, the spokesman emphasized the close
blood ties between the two sides and requested that the gift-receiv
ing side accept the gi fts and hi s speech. The speech ended with the
mention of the titular names of the gift-givers' and the gift
receivers' chiefs. In this case, for example, the spokesman conclud
ed, " [These are] death gifts from Nabala, from the Tui Nakasa, to
Nadonumai, to the chief, the Tui Suva, to Mataqali Koromakawa,
to the gentlemen, its clansmen. To Nakorobutu, to the Gonesau,
and to the descendants that follow. " After finishing his speech, the
spokesman for the gift-givers remained motionless holding a tabua
in front of him until a spokesman for the gi ft-receivers took it away
from him. The speaker then retired to j oin other members of his
mataqali.
The tabua was then passed to the chief or the most senior mem
ber of the gift-receivers who kissed it and proclaimed that it was
accepted. For example, i n response to the speech above, the most
senior member of the gift-receivers said, "I have touched the valu
abl e, a good valuable, a valuable of relationships, togetherness,
thickness of blood ties . " This speech consisted of only one or two
sentences ( cf. Hooper 1 9 8 2: 1 22) and often ended with a standard
phrase referring to the Christian God, such as " May al l of us
[inclusive of both sides] be led only by God [ da liutaki tiko mada
ga mai vua na Kalou]. " 1 5 After this, the tabua was passed to the
spokesman for the gift-receivers, who gave a l onger speech, in
which he acknowledged the gi ft-givers' effort as " respectful "
( vakarokoroko) and "chi efly" ( vakaturaga) and deni ed that there
was a need for gifts ( cf. Hooper 1 9 8 2: 1 22) . For example, follow
ing the brief speech above, the gift-receivers' spokesman said, " You
Intimating Ful fi l lment
1 03
di d not need t o bring anything. You should have brought only
yourselves. We could have j ust met i n the manner of relatives [sota
ga vakaveiwekani]. However, you came with a l arge whale's tooth,
val uables, and food. I thank you very much. " The speech of the
gift-receivers' spokesman ended with a series of prayers and always
referred to God. In this case, the speech was concluded i n the fol
lowing way:
Your val uables have been offered to Heaven so that we al l may be given
Heavenly blessing. May the Tui Nahata [the gift-givers' chi ef] be
blessed. May your descendants be blessed so that they may study well
every day to grow up to be strong enough to attend on our God . . . .
May God love us together and may our duties be possi bl e. Our mutual
l ove is the only val uabl e.
When the speaker finished his speech with this reference to
"mutual love" ( veilomani), al l present responded, " Let it be effec
tive and true! ( Mana ei dina! ) " ( cf. Hocart 1 9 29: 7 1 ; Hooper 1 9 8 2:
1 22; Ravuvu 1 9 87: 25 4) . This was usually fol l owed by the stan
dard phrase: "I wi l l l ay my hands on the gift . . . the whale's tooth,
val uables, and food . . . It i s plenty! Things from the past, things
from the past" ( cf. Ravuvu 1 9 87: 78, 8 2, 8 6) . In response, clapping
their hands, everyone shouted, "A muduo, muduo, duo. " 1 6 Then,
i n the same humble manner i n which the gift-givers presented their
gi ft, the receivers presented a whale's tooth as a return gift ( dirika)
and thanked the gift-givers for their effort, and the gift-givers i n
turn declared that the return gi ft was accepted. 1 7 Ritual partici
pants often expressed a sense of accomplishment at the completion
of gift-giving. Although veiqaravi was then complete, however, it
was ofen followed by further rounds of veiqaravi. For example,
the identical form of exchange of gifts and speeches was repeated
between the hosting mataqali and di fferent visiting mataqali during
the course of mortuary rites, and it was understood to be part of a
succession of other occasions for gift-giving.
As described here, there are remarkabl e si mi l arities between gift
giving rituals and church services. As i n sermons and Bible study
sessions that sequential l y presented problem and solution or ques
tion and answer, the spokesman for the gift-givers posed a problem
1 04
Intimating Ful fi l l ment
for the gift-receivers to solve. For example, when the gift-givers'
spokesman described their gift as problematic, "smal l " ( lailai) ,
" useless " (sega ni yaga) , and so forth, the gift-receivers immediate
l y shouted, " Bi g! " ( Levu! ) , confirming its appropriateness. The
gi ft-receivers' spokesman brushed aside the concern about their
gi fts that was repeatedly expressed by the gi ft-givers' spokesman by
dwelling on their generosity and on the mutual respect and eternal
blood ties between them and the gift-receivers. Finally, at the end
of his speech, the gift-receivers' spokesman declared "mutual love"
to be the ul timate gift, obviating any need for gi ft-giving. The gi ft
givers' spokesman's speech and the gift-receivers' spokesman's
speech thus constituted a problem-and-solution set.
In both the Christian and gift-giving ritual s, the spokesman ( the
Sabbath School questioner or preacher i n the case of the former)
was instrumental in completing these sets of problems and solu
tions, first rendering problematic the efforts of the other class mem
bers, the congregation, or the gi ft-givers to conform to an ideal and
then offering a solution to the very problem he had rai sed. In the
case of church rituals, the questioner or preacher solved the prob
lem by confirming the ideal model to which the participants i n the
ritual had al ready striven to conform. Even though the partici
pants' roles involved di fferent degrees of rigidity and scriptedness,
al l were framed by questions and answers or problems and solu
tions organized sequential ly.
Most important, this similarity between Christian and gift-giv
ing rituals at the level of form i s reiterated at the level of content.
The completion of these sets of sequenced problems and solutions
coincided with a moment at which speakers expressed a hope for a
response from God or the Holy Spirit. Recal l Sakeasi 's mention in
the Sabbath School class of God's response to one's sincerity and of
the Hol y Spirit's response to straightforward questions; recall also
the Methodist and Adventist preachers' repeated emphasis that the
congregation's proper attendance would elicit God's response.
Likewise, i n the gift-giving ritual , the spokesman for the gi ft
receivers concluded his speech by referring to a hope for a response
from God i n such prayers as " May all of us [the gift-givers as well
Inti mati ng Ful fi l lment
as the gift-receivers] be led onl y by God" or "Your val uabl es have
been offered up to Heaven so that we all may be given Heavenly
blessing. " The role of the questioner and the preacher in church rit
uals was si mi l ar to the role of the spokesman i n gi ft-giving rituals
i n effectuating a moment of abeyance of agency-a moment at
which al l present ceased to emphasize their own or others' actions
and instead looked to God for a response.
One way to understand such abeyance, ambiguation ( Battaglia
1 997) or indirection ( Brenneis I 98 6) of agency is to view it as the
ultimate strategic act of rhetorical manipulation ( see also Marcus
1 9 8 8 ) . Based on his study of Cretan shepherds' use of oaths,
Michael Herzfel d ( I 990, 1 997) has, for example, called such
moments "structural nostalgi a, " observing: "People generally
ignore human agency when it suits them to do so . . . . [They]
invent, refashion and exploit . . . [timeless) structures as moral al i
bis for their contingent actions " ( I 997: I I 3 ) . Si mi l arly, i n his study
of ritual speech i n Anakal ang, Eastern Indonesia, Webb Keane has
likewise di scussed the strategic abeyance of human agency as a tool
for overcoming the risks that ritual itself makes explicit. According
to Keane, " ft) o speak i n couplets [ according to the manner by
which ancestors speak] is . . . to display a strategy of avoidance . . .
[T] he i ndirection and distancing effects of ritual speech protect its
users from the chal lenges each presents to the other-or rather,
they al l ow its users to act b if such protection were necessary"
( Keane I 994= 62o; emphasi s i n original ) . Here, Keane suggests that
the use of a particular style of speech renders participants aware of
the risks involved in the exchange of gifts and defines the manage
ment of those ri sks as the task of exchange. 1
8
In this act of
abeyance, exchange creates the possi bi l ity of experiencing the effi
cacy of ancestral agency itself.
The Fi j i an case, however, draws attention to ritual participants'
commitment to completion rather than to their interest i n strategies
for control l i ng ri sks. For Fij i ans, the abeyance of agency entailed a
three-step process, that is, an effort to conform to an ideal model,
the problematization of that effort, and the presentation of the
same ideal model as a soluti on. As exempl i fied most starkly by the
! 06 Intimating Ful fi l l ment
utter stillness of the gift-givers' spokesman at the end of hi s speech
while he awaited the gift-receivers' response, the exchange of prob
lems and solutions i n gift-giving, preaching, and Bibl e study
entailed a temporary negation of the ritual participants' agency.
When the gift-givers' spokesman fel l si lent, he l ai d the gift-givers
open to the risk of rej ection-he placed his hope i n the hands of the
gift-receivers. Likewise, when the questioner di smissed other class
members' questions, and when the preacher dismissed the congre
gation's effort to conform to the ideal model of worship, the ques
tioner and the preacher suspended the agency of the other class
members and the congregation, respectively. Nothing the other
class members and the congregation said or did was adequate, they
were told. In turn, the solution that the questioner, the preacher,
and the gift-receivers' spokesman provided always lay in the prop
er manner of attendance. Note that none of these moves to place
agency in abeyance was completely open-ended. Both sides shared
a commitment to closure. The moment of hope that emerged at the
moment of abeyance of agency was, then, simultaneously open and
closed.
Ultimately, however, successive moments of abeyance of agency
and the subsequent recovery of agency preceding the ultimate
moment of abeyance of human agency in these ritual s enabled par
ticipants to anticipate another moment of ful fillment. In other
words, the three-step process intimated an ultimate response. From
this standpoint, it is clear that by repeatedly presenting sets of ques
tions and answers or problems and solutions, Fij ian ritual partici
pants experienced intimations of ful fi l lment. It i s through the
appreciation of or "empathy" ( Bateson 1 979: 8 ) for the complete
ness of these sets, I claim, that Fi j i an ritual participants experienced
the fulfillment of their hope as the capacity repeatedly to place their
own agency i n abeyance. 1 9 Thus, the hope produced in this process
surfaced as the replication of a hope ritually ful fi l l ed.
Note that i n both genres of self-knowledge I have described,
church and gift-giving rituals, this three-step process was repeated
again and again. For example, in gift-giving, the form of each
episode of gift-giving was almost identical , except that each in-
Inti mati ng Ful fi l lment
1 07
valved a di fferent delegation of gift-givers, with its own specific tie
to the gi ft-receivers. From the gift-receivers' point of view, there
fore, these episodes of gift-giving were experienced as successive
moments of hope and its ful fil lment, and these successive moments
i n turn generated one further moment of hope: after al l of the gifts
had been presented, the gift-receivers were requi red to present food
for col lective consumpti on. During their presentation speeches,
many gift-givers al luded to this obl igation, known as i burua, with
statements such as "this i s our assistance for tomorrow's work"
( meaning the work of preparing the feast) . For ritual participants,
then, there was a homology between the temporal traj ectory of the
entire mortuary rite-from a moment of hope i n an ul timate
response that emerged as each delegation completed its presenta
tion of death gi fts to a moment of the completion of i burua-and
the temporal traj ectory experienced in the course of each i ndi vi d
ual epi sode of gift-giving. In other words, this l arger and extended
state of waiting for a response, which gradual l y became more and
more immanent as successive delegations presented their death gifts
and was ultimately completed with the preparation of the fi nal
feast, was a homological replication of al l previous moments of
hope and thei r ful fi l l ment. In chapter 6, I turn to the effect of this
repetition in Suvavou people's hope.
6 F Repeating Without
Overlapping
In the previous chapter, I sought to demonstrate how hope i s ritu
ally produced as an effect of di scursive pl ay of agency, i n particu
l ar, as an effect of what I have called the abeyance of agency.
However, as mentioned in chapter 1 q thi s ki nd of analysi s in turn
rai ses a further methodological problem. As noted at the outset,
there i s a certai n incongrui ty between the retrospective orientation
of my own analytical framework, which approached hope as the
product of a ritual process, and the prospective orientation of its
subj ect, hope itself. The retrospective rendering of hope, as a sub
j ect of anal ysi s, foreclosed the possibi l ity of describing the prospec
tive momentum i nherent in hope. As soon as hope i s approached as
the end point of a process, as i n the previ ous chapter, the newness
or freshness of the prospective moment that defines that moment
as hopeful i s lost. The solution to this methodological problem
seemed to be to reorient the di rection of my own analysis toward
the future and render the analysis synchronous with its subj ect.
Such synchronicity would be an illusion, however. Moreover, I
came to understand that my retrospection was not the cause of the
troubl e I was confronting. Moving away from the i l l usi on of
achieving analytical synchronicity, I began to see that temporal
incongruity was instrumental i n the production of hope. In this
chapter, I want to advance the argument framed i n terms of agency
i n the previous chapters by exami ni ng the role of temporal incon
gruity i n the production of hope. The obj ective now i s not simply
descriptive but al so methodological . I return to the methodological
problem of temporal incongruity between my analysis and its
obj ect as an opportuni ty.
Repeating Without Overlapping
T 09
Instead of expl ai ni ng hope, woul d it be possible to anticipate i t?
Let me first take a step back and describe the argument to this
poi nt in l ight of the problem of temporal incongruity. In chapter 4,
we saw that from Suvavou people's point of view, a state of syn
chronicity was not achievabl e. The offici al account of who they
are, contained i n government documents, belongs to the past. It is
not open for rei nterpretation from the point of view of the present.
For them, temporal incongruity was therefore a given condition of
their self-knowledge. Where the possi bi l ity of synchronicity was
specifi cal l y foreclosed, Mataqal i Koromakawa's report described i n
chapter 4 deployed a strategy of knowledge that resulted in the
production of the offi ci al account. For example, the report reversed
the questi oner-respondent relationship i n land i nqui ries and the
parts-whole relationship i n migration stori es. These efforts ai med
to create a realm of indeterminacy, i n the context of this temporal
incongruity, i n which they sought to situate their hope. This en
tailed a strategy of delegati ng the act of cl osure to a third party,
which in turn al so deferred closure to a future moment.
With di fferent degrees of scri ptedness, the church and gi ft-giving
rituals examined i n chapter 5 also created moments of temporal
incongruity. In criticizing hi s fl ock for fai l i ng to conform to the
proper form of worship, a preacher countered the prospective ori
entation of the congregation, which had prepared itself by dressing
up, studying the Bi ble, or practicing hymns, with the inherent ret
rospectivity of self-critique. In gi ft-giving, the prospective orienta
tion of the gi ft-givers' prospective gesture of waiting for the gi ft
receivers' favorable response was countered by the gi ft-receivers'
retrospective language of eval uation praising the gi ft-givers' man
ner of presentation as " respectful " ( vakarokoroko) and "chiefl y"
( vakaturaga) and confirmation of the close ti es between the two
si des. In both cases, the moment of temporal incongruity thus cre
ated resulted i n a renewed moment of prospecti vity. The preacher
suggested once agai n that the congregation conform to the form;
the spokesman for the gi ft-receivers dedicated the gi fts to God. In
both petitions and ri tual s, in other words, the hope produced at the
completion of a ritual was thus placed i n a del icate bal ance be-
I I O Repeating Without Overl apping
tween future-oriented openness and anticipation of a moment of
ultimate ful fi l lment, effectuated as an echo of the moment of ful
fi llment j ust achieved i n the ritual .
The interplay of retrospective and prospective perspectives i n
di fferent genres of self- knowledge i n Suvavou recal l s Walter Ben
j ami n's messianic historian di scussed i n chapter 1 . I demonstrated
that retrospective attention to what Benj ami n calls "hope i n the
past" generates hope i n the present, reimagined as moments of ret
rospecti on. My argument was that this hope i s a product of the
temporal incongrui ty between the prospective momentum of the
past moment of hope that the hi storian sought to recapture and the
retrospective perspective of the histori an. What emerges at the
i ntersection of Suvavou people's and Benj ami n's hope, then, i s their
shared solution to my original problem of how to recapture ( and
maintai n) hope. In both cases, hope i n the past i s extrapolated and
replicated as hope i n the present.
In what fol l ows, I examine instances of such replication i n a fi el d
of di scourse beyond peti ti ons and ri tual s. My goal i s to understand
the i mpl ications of Suvavou people's hope for the location of Fi j i
ans' hope i n the multi-ethnic state. 1 I fi rst exami ne a series of
speech events surrounding the Suvavou village company Nado
numai Hol dings's foundati on-layi ng ceremony for its office bui l d
ing, whose chi ef guest was Pri me Minister Si ti veni Rabuka. My
focus is on the way a retrospective perspective constantly invaded
the prospective moment of the ri tual and how that retrospective
turn was then countered by a further prospective turn. My l arger
cl ai m here i s that hope surfaced as an ontological condition that
Fi j i ans constantly strove to mai ntai n. In the second half of the
chapter, I turn to the case of Prime Mi nister Sitiveni Rabuka's 1 996
apology for hi s past acti ons. Thi s apology triggered a publ i c debate
in Fij i 's nati onal newspapers that engaged a variety of Fij i citizens,
including Europeans, part-Europeans and Indo-Fij i ans. The case
makes apparent the di fficulty of extendi ng Fij i an hope to a wider
di scursive arena. My point i s that hope cannot be argued for or
explai ned; it can only be repl icated. Hence the potenti al danger of
Repeating Without Overl appi ng I I I
hope transforming itself into sel f-aggrandizement and self-right
eous anger. This example both demonstrates the character of hope
as a method and signals its limits.
The Invasi on of Retrospection
EXCEPT the LORD bui l d the house, they l abour i n vai n
that bui l d it
[ Kevaka sa sega ni tara na vale ko jiova, era sa oca wale
ga ko ira era sa tara[ .
Ps. 1 27 :1
Quoting one of Fij ian Christians' favorite Bi bl e passages, Rev.
Samuela Ratulevu, an SDA pastor from Suvavou, who had j ust
been designated managing di rector of Nadonumai Holdings, pro
poed to hol d a seri es of prayer meeti ngs i n the village. At the time
of my fieldwork, Fijian Christians often quoted this passage when
they insisted that they should pray for God's blessing and assistance
before holding a meeting, embarking on a villagewide proj ect, and
so forth. For Fij i an Christians, it was general l y considered impera
tive to pray for God's blessing and assi stance before embarking on
any proj ect. If one prayed for God's assistance, they reasoned,
everything would go wel l . Psalms I 2 7: I thus constituted an effec
tive model for social and political action.
What interests me about Rev. Ratulevu's proposal is that he
intended it to counter a certai n retrospective perspective that per
meated Suvavou people at the inception of Nadonumai Holdi ngs.
Rev. Ratulevu knew that many Suvavou people were skeptical of
Nadonumai Hol di ngs because al l past busi ness enterprises initiat
ed by Suvavou i ndi vi dual s and mataqali had failed miserably. We
might say that Suvavou people were haunted by their memory of
the past. Seeki ng to counteract such negative memori es, Rev.
Ratulevu quoted Psalms 1 27: I and told Suvavou people, "Unless
God i s with us, nothing will be possible. " Rev. Ratulevu's choice of
the passage, "EXCEPT the LORD build the house, they l abour i n
vai n that bui l d it, " seemed particularly appropriate for the occa
sion, because i n this case the company's project was literally to
1 1 2 Repeating Without Overl appi ng
bui l d an office bui lding i n Suva Ci ty. Hi s i mpl ication, however, was
that al l past Suvavou business enterprises had failed because they
had not been founded on Christian truth and therefore had not
received God's blessing and assistance. In other words, Rev.
Ratulevu redefined Suvavou people's past fai l ure as evi dence of the
truthful ness of Psal ms 1 27: 1 and argued that i f they prayed for
God's blessing and assi stance in following the teaching of Psal ms
1 27: 1 , they would always succeed. At his insistence, therefore, the
two congregations in the village, Methodi sts and Seventh-Day
Adventists, gathered together and held a week-long prayer meeting
at the vi l l age green. By seeki ng God's blessing, Rev. Ratulevu
sought to ground Suvavou's new business enterprise i n Christian
fai th.
Note that Rev. Ratulevu's effort to turn a moment ful l of retro
specti on, that is, memory of past fai l ure, i nto a moment of hope
was predicated on a certai n sl i ppage i n the conception of agency.
Whereas Psalms 1 27: 1 focuses on the i mportance of God's agency
i n the effectiveness of humans' work, Rev. Ratulevu's vi si on
focused on the importance of the work of devout Christians l i ke
himself. Rev. Ratulevu explicitly told his fellow vil lagers that he
wanted to use his long-term experience of mi ni stry i n the Seventh
Day Adventist Church as a basis for this business enterpri se. In
other words, Rev. Ratulevu sought to found Nadonumai Hol di ngs
on the truth that he himself embodied. This recentering of human
agency i n turn al lowed Rev. Ratulevu to present a concrete sol ution
to the problem of Suvavou people's past fai l ures, that i s, prayer for
God's blessing. Hope that this would be the fi rst successful business
enterprise thus emerged in the ontologically defined gap between
Suvavou people's past approach to l i fe and their present effort to
emulate a truthful Christian way of l i fe.
Retrospecti on easi l y invades and thwarts a prospective moment,
however. Despi te having been l aunched wi th prayers, Rev.
Ratulevu's business did not proceed smoothly. It took three years
for Nadonumai Holdi ngs to secure title to the necessary piece of
state l and i n Suva and start construction, and vi l l agers attributed
the delay to thei r own di sunity. During the three years, the compa-
Repeating Without Overl apping
ny's integrity was threatened by di sputes among vil lage mataqali.
Withi n a few months of the company's formation, Mataqal i Koro
makawa, a long-standing chal l enger of Mataqal i Kaiwai 's leader
shi p, dropped out of the company. These disputes reminded the vil
l agers of their long history of past feuds ( see chapter 3 ) . Then, i n
October 1 99 5, the paramount chief of Rewa, Adi Lady Lal a, the
wife of Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, who was president of Fij i at the
ti me, announced that the Rewa Provincial Council pl anned to con
struct an office bui l di ng on a lot directly adj acent to Crui ckshank
Park, Nadonumai Holdi ngs's construction site. Many Suvavou
people feared that the Rewa Provincial Council proj ect woul d i n
tentionall y or uni ntenti onal l y "spoil " their company's proj ect. A
Suvavou woman expressed this pervasive view when she told me
that Rewa people were j eal ous of Suvavou people because of Prime
Minister Rabuka's attention and favor.
This woman's comment is paradigmatic of a wider form of
memory that i s triggered by i mmanent fai l ure. Her comment i n
voked a hi story. The famous war between Bau and Rewa, two com
peting chiefdoms in southeastern Viti Levu, i n the 184os is said to
have begun, in part, over an incident that took place i n Suva ( see
Sahl i ns 1 99 1 : 5 2-6o) . A. M. Hocart, who vi sited Suvavou in 1 9 1 0,
and Colman Wal l , who also vi sited Suvavou early in the twentieth
century, recorded Suvavou's traditional stories about the Bau-Rewa
War. According to these stories, the war broke out as a result of an
incident in which a high chi ef of Rewa, Ro Qaraniqio, attempted
to capture a pig in Suva. The Roko Tui Suva, Ratu Ravul o, was
angry about Ro Qaraniqio's behavior and chased him away from
Suva. Angry about this, Ro Qaraniqio determined to destroy Suva.
Suva people fought back successful l y agai nst Rewa's fi rst attack
but succumbed to the second attack, when a number of Suva peo
ple were ki l l ed. Survivors of this fight fled to various vi l l ages in
neighboring regions, and Ratu Ravul o himsel f took refuge i n Bau.
Later, the most powerful chief of the time, the Vuni val u of Bau,
Ratu Seru Cakobau, returned the remai ni ng Suva peopl e to Suva
( Hocart n. d. a: 25 07-1 2; Wal l 1 9 20) . 2 Suvavou people I knew did
not seem to be much interested i n these war stories, although they
I I 4 Repeating Without Overlapping
were clearly aware that Rewa people had defeated Suva people in
that war. The i mplication of the woman's comment, therefore, was
that the actions of the Rewa Provincial Council were yet another
mani festation of the long-standing tension between the two chief
doms.
It i s not simply memory that introduces a retrospective perspec
tive to a present moment. A sense of achievement might also i nduce
retrospection. In 1 99 5 , Nadonumai Hol di ngs fi nal l y acquired the
piece of state land in Suva City that it needed and received com
mitments from several government departments to occupy its office
bui l di ng once it was completed. On December 8, I 9 9 5 , Nadonu
mai Hol di ngs invited Prime Mi nister Rabuka, who had personal l y
assisted Suvavou wi th this proj ect, to i ts foundation-laying cere
mony. Rev. Ratulevu's vision of a business enterprise founded on
Christian faith permeated the ceremony, which began with a prayer
by Rev. Ratulevu. This was fol l owed by the presenting of a series
of gifts to Rabuka. With the fi rst of these, the spokesman for the
chief and mataqali of Suvavou stressed the role of God's blessing
and assi stance in Nadonumai Hol dings's accomplishment so far:
Thi s morning, I am hol di ng a val uabl e in front of you to welcome you
in a chi efly manner according to the expected manner and procedure
and with such respect ( veidoka] and humbleness ( veirokorokotaki] as
our parents and el ders have al ways shown si nce the ol den days. I wish
to show you the j oy of the people of Nadonumai in inviting you as a
guest of honor in a respectful and humbl e manner to thi s foundation
l ayi ng ceremony for devel opment of the peopl e of Nadonumai . We
wi sh to tell you that we are grateful for using your time of leadershi p
to give us a bl essing. A blessing for our now deceased parents who
moved out from here . . . . For I I 3 years since we left thi s land, we have
been at a crowded place i n Suvavou. We have been at a di fficul t pl ace .
. . . We have prayed to God that the time wi l l come when a government
that will remember us will appear in the suffering that we are going
through. Prime Mi ni ster, you are God's appointee. Sitting beside you
are the president of the Methodist Church, the acting principal mi ni s
ter for the Suvavou Ci rcuit, and others, i ncl udi ng the mi nister of the
SDA Church. They have prayed for [ Suvavou people] many times. We
bel ieved that the time would come when God would give us Hi s bl ess
ing . . . . We have cried for generations unti l today. Prime Mi ni ster, this
Repeating Without Overlapping
1 1 5
is a val uabl e for many thanks from the Tui Suva and the people under
him. We are very grateful to you and are very pleased with your lead
ershi p. 3
Here, the spokesman for Suvavou peopl e si tuated this moment as
the achi evement of many years of prayer for God's blessing and
assi stance.
In one of the speeches followi ng the presentation of val uables,
Rabuka took up the theme thi s Suvavou spokesman raised and
acknowledged that this was a time of God's bl essi ng for Suvavou
peopl e: " You have grumbl ed for years. Other peopl e have gained
mi l l i ons of dollars i n busi ness on your l and, the soi l where you
obtained your food i n the past. Now i s the begi nni ng of your steps
toward wealth as a result of development at the time of God's
blessing for you. " But Rabuka al so el aborated the implications of
Suvavou people's struggle for a more general Fi j i an aspiration for
empowerment and stressed that Suvavou people's success proved
that i f Fij i ans were united, everything they wanted would come
true. Later, i n response to the fi nal presentation of val uables,
Rabuka concluded hi s speech by positing " uni ty" as a future neces
sity:
I hope that we shall not forget that this l and is not ours. We are only
i nhabiting it for those future owners of this land . . . . In everything we
make happen, we are thinking of those future l andowners. May our
gathering be successful . May our development be successful . We al l
vanua, lotu, and matanitu-hol d hands together i taurilinga, meaning
"col l aborate " ] . May God lead our l and al ways. 4
Note the way i n which Rabuka's grand vi si on for Fij i ans' devel
opment proj ects introduced a future orientation to hi s response.
Whereas the Suvavou spokesman's speech celebrated the efficacy of
Suvavou people's prayer for God's blessing and assi stance, Rabuka
depl oyed a popular Fij i an i dea about the importance of the col l ab
orati on among vanua, lotu, and matanitu as the condi ti on of Fij i
ans' future success ( cf. Jol l y 1 992; M. Kapl an 1 9 8 8, 1 99oa; Rutz
1 99 5 ) . In Rabuka's vi si on, if Fi j i ans brought their tradition and
Chri sti an faith together i n the governance of the country, every-
I I 6 Repeating Without Overlapping
thing woul d be possible. Here, the case of Nadonumai Hol di ngs
served as proof of this fact. If the Suvavou spokesman celebrated
the present moment as an effect of Suvavou people's past prayer,
Rabuka's speech introduced a prospective momentum beyond Na
donumai Hol di ngs's proj ect.
There is a paral l el between the way Rev. Ratulevu used Psalms
1 27 : 1 as an inspiration for hi s vision of a company founded on
Christian faith and the way Rabuka presented a grand vision of
Fij i an unity. Both Rev. Ratulevu and Rabuka generated a prospec
tive momentum for audiences among whom a retrospective per
spective seemed to reign. This was accompl ished by a shi ft from a
focus on God's agency to a focus on humans' ( further) work.
Following the presentation of val uables and the foundation-lay
ing ceremony, the police band played music, and vil l age women i n
vi ted guests to dance ( tara/ala) . This dance, however, provi ded Ma
taqal i Koromakawa, the dissident SDA cl an that had withdrawn
from the proj ect of Nadonumai Hol di ngs two years before, with an
opportunity to di srupt the festive and hopeful mood of the rest of
the vi l lage, because the SDA Church, to which a half of the vi l l age
belonged, prohi bited dancing. 5 At church the fol l owing Sabbath,
Mataqali Koromakawa elders requested that al l SDA church mem
bers who had danced at the foundation-laying ceremony be pun
ished.
In response to Mataqali Koromakawa church members' request,
the board of the Suvavou SDA Church decided to give the dancers
an opportunity to confess their si n and seek forgiveness at the
year's last communion ceremony, to be hel d four days l ater. 6 When
no one who had danced at the ceremony confessed to wrongdoing/
Mataqal i Koromakawa church members publ icly named the vi l
l agers who had failed to seek forgiveness for their sin and demand
ed their formal punishment. A heated debate ensued, and church
elders fi nal l y summoned Rev. Ratulevu, who reluctantly admitted
that SDAs shoul d not have participated i n dancing.
To the surprise of many Methodist vi l l agers, Mataqal i Koro
makawa church members' persistent emphasis on the importance
Fi gure 2. Pri me Mi nister Si ti veni Rabuka at the foundati on-l ayi ng cere
mony for an office bui l di ng to be owned by Suvavou peopl e's company,
Nadonumai Hol di ngs. Courtesy Fiji Times .
I I 8 Repeating Without Overl appi ng
of church law swayed other i nfluential SDA church elders, includ
i ng a handful of elders from other mataqali who backed
Nadonumai Holdings and had attended the foundation-laying cer
emony. Church elders ultimately decided to punish their cousins,
daughters, and wives for their si nful behavior by prohi biting them
from performing offici al duties at church for a period of three
months.
8
Mataqali Koromakawa church elders' theological inter
j ection thus was successful i n dividing the other church elders who
di d not necessarily share Mataqali Koromakawa's stance on the
company.
" Let us love one another [Me da veilomani] . " With this state
ment, Ratu Epel i , the chief of the village, stood up to make a plea
( vosa ni vakadre) at the begi nning of the annual j oint church ser
vice on New Year's Eve several days after this crisis. It was the first
time Ratu Epeli, a Methodist, had attended an SDA church service
since assumi ng the chiefly title in 1 990. He was not a regul ar
churchgoer at his own church, and perhaps this was part of the rea
son for his begi nning in an apologetic and humble tone:
Ladies and gentlemen who have duties at church, . . . I di d not intend
to come here to speak thi s evening. I have not entered thi s church for a
long time. It occurred to me at the l ast mi nute. Ladies and gentlemen, I
do not preach in my own church. I j ust go to church from time to ti me.
If anythi ng I say mi sses the poi nt and i s awkward, arrogant and wrong,
ladies and gentlemen, please forgive me. 9
To everyone's great surpri se, he went on to quote Scripture:
" For thus hath the LORD of hosts sai d, Hew ye down trees, and cast a
mount against Jerusal em: thi s is the city to be visited; she is whol l y
oppression i n the mi dst of her [ Sa vakaoqo na vosa i Ji ova ni l ewe vuqa,
Dou taya sobu na kau, ka vi ri suva kei Jerusal emi : oqo na koro me cud
ruvi ; sa caka e lora ni koro nai val aval a vakausausa (Jer. 6. 6) ] . " I do
not read the Bible too often. Thi s is j ust what I happened to pick up.
It was cl ear to everyone that the speech was intended as a re-
sponse to the recently intensified dispute between Mataqal i Koro
makawa and the rest of the village about Nadonumai Holdings.
Ratu Epeli continued:
Repeati ng Without Overl appi ng
1 1 9
Those who have duties at church shoul d [ fence off a church com
pound) 1 . . . . They should tell the congregation not to gossip, not to
poi nt to someone or not to speak behi nd someone's back. Then your
vanua wi ll be good . . . . I have seen behavi or among members of the
church that i s not good. There are acts of decepti on. Young people,
both Methodi sts and SDAs, are fi ghting and do not fol l ow the teachi ng
of the church. They fight from the Sabbath to Fri day. There i s no
Sabbath. Churches are lost. You should put a fence and tel l them what
i s right . . . . I f they remai n l i ke thi s, they wi l l be worse. Moreover, there
will be noisy behavi or. Causi ng a lot of noise i s a si n . . . . Let us love
one another [ Meda veilomani] . . . . We should love one another and
everything will go wel l . . . . The fi rst thing I strongly feel i n my heart i s
that our parents di d not behave l i ke thi s. Thi s is a new thi ng that I have
seen happening for the l ast two weeks. I have been wondering when this
stops . . . . I hope we wi l l love one another and wi l l hol d hands togeth
er and will put a fence, the fence of the church or the fence of the vanua.
Thi s is i mportant for our chi l dren.
Here, in response to Mataqal i Koromakawa's theological inter
j ection, Ratu Epeli invoked the effectiveness of love and the need
for a " fence" that would stop rivalries among mataqali from enter
i ng the church. Love would make everything possi ble, he stressed.
The notion of love as an effective form now made Mataqal i Koro
makawa's i nterj ecti on fundamental l y problematic ( cf. Toren 1 999:
1 3 1-3 2) . After Ratu Epel i 's speech, which once agai n gave a pro
spective momentum to the proj ect, hi s supporters and those of
Nadonumai Hol di ngs were triumphant. Ratu Epel i 's turn to Jere
mi ah 6: 6 was predicated on a sl i ppage similar to the sl i ppage from
God's agency to human agency in Rev. Ratulevu's use of Psalms
1 27: 1 . Ratu Epel i 's focus was not on God's punishment of a cor
rupt city as described i n Jeremiah but on the commitment of devout
Christians to erecting a fence and to loving one another.
The conceptual sl i ppage entailed in the extensi on and transla
tion of Psalms 1 27 : 1 into a di scourse on the importance of prayer
i n al l aspects of Fij ian social l i fe i s one mani festation of a pervasive
shi ft from an emphasis on God's agency to an emphasi s on the
importance of human agency i n Fi j i an Christian discourse. The
shi ft i n turn al lows Fij i an Christians to present themselves with a
model to emul ate in order to achieve a state where, as they say,
1 20 Repeating Without Overl appi ng
"everything [ they want] is possible. " Hope therefore fol lows self
aggrandizing proclamations of faith in humans' work. In other
words, i n Fij i an Christian discourse, the production of hope is
paradoxically predicated on the temporary backgrounding of
God's agency. This process renders the truthfulness of bi bl ical texts
simultaneously both sel f-evident and emergent. The source of hope
lies in extending the bi bl ical example to social and political action
and foregrounding human agency.
In this way, Fij i an Christians repeatedly sought to introduce a
prospective perspective to a present constantly invaded by retro
specti on. They reoriented the temporal di rection of their knowl
edge by redefining and reconfiguring the relationship between hu
mans and God. Suvavou people first devalued and even placed i n
abeyance the agency of humans by confirming the certainty of
God's intention before presenting themselves wi th a concrete model
for effective acti on. This two-step process of redefinition turned a
present moment characterized by retrospective perspective into one
fi l l ed with hope. My argument is that the mai ntenance of hope is
predicated on this operati on. Hope as a method, i n other words, i s
an effort to preserve the prospective momentum of the present. The
fl ip side is that hope cannot be preserved otherwise. I now turn to
a demonstration of this latter poi nt.
The Li mi ts of Hope
At a church service broadcast throughout Fij i i n November 1 996,
then Prime Mini ster Sitiveni Rabuka stood up to pray for the
nation. Before begi nning, however, Rabuka sought the forgiveness
of the people of Fij i : " For those of you who are l istening i n, I don't
know how many people I have wronged . . . . If you feel I have
wronged you, forgive me fi rst before I pray for this nation . . . . If I
am forgiven, then I can pray for this nation. "
I |
Rabuka l ater explained to a local newspaper that he had felt
compelled to apologize to the nation after reading a certai n Bibl e
passage i n preparation for the service: " [T] hat morning it came
very very clearly to me that if you are at the altar to present your
Repeating Without Overl apping 1 2 1
offerings and there you remember that your brother has something
against you, go back and make your peace with your brother. "
Z
I n I 98 7, Rabuka had led two mi litary coups that toppled the
legitimately elected National Federation-Labour coalition govern
ment of Fi j i . Rabuka described himself as a devout Christian and a
lay preacher ( Dean and Ritova I 9 8 8 : 22) , and he had always em
phasized Christian themes i n hi s publ i c speeches. For example,
soon after the coups, he characterized hi s role i n the I 9 8 7 coups as
"a mi ssi on that God has given me" ( quoted i n i bi d. : I I ; emphasis
removed; cf. Garrett I 990: 8 8-89) . As he understood it, the coali
tion government threatened ethnic Fij ians' privileged right to their
l and, "the l and that God has given them" ( quoted i n i bid. : 1 1 q
emphasi s removed) , because i n hi s view the government was dom
i nated by Indo-Fi j i ans . 1 3 The fol l owing i s a version of Rabuka's j us
tification for the fi rst mi l itary coup:
There is onl y one reason for thi s coup, that is my apprehension that the
time might come when the rul e of our l and and our soi l might be taken
and that in such future times our descendants might therefore be
impoverished. We people of Fij i have been well off, because of the rel i
gion of our living God.
If we welcome the enl ightenment of this religion of God and we
bel ieve it, we must accept everything that comes to pass in hi s worl d.
When fi rst God's religion came to our l and the chi efs of that time
were strong and they were strong and successful in war then.
God decreed that those true chi efs of the l and of that time shoul d
convert to Chri sti anity. These true chiefs wel comed the rel i gi on then,
and it was fortunate that they di d, [ because ! we nowadays have
received its blessings. We are enl ightened thereby, our l and was devel
oped thereby and we have learned much nowadays.
If we approve of and welcome thi s, let us welcome the fact that these
chi efs were the source of our blessedness. Thei r descendants who are
l eadi ng nowadays, they are blessed because their ancestors who have
passed on before them welcomed Chri sti ani ty.
The basi s of our blessedness is thei r having accepted our God's rel i
gion, Hi s name, Hi s sal vati on, and Hi s light. It is right thereby that we
see everythi ng that comes to us as something blessed, i ncl udi ng devel
opment i n the work we do, and the coming here of the Indians was a
thi ng of blessedness to our l and. Everything has happened because of
the acceptance of the religion by our true chi efs who have led us from
those days to the present.
1 22 Repeating Without Overlapping
It i s thus right that we use al l of these blessings, to employ them for
our use, but let us not lose the paramountcy of [ nati onal political ] l ead
ershi p of the true chi efs of the l and.
Let not our thoughts thereby be led astray so that we say to our
selves, since we have studied we can be chi efs. It's wrong, i f we study
we are wise, i f we are chi efs, we are chi efs; they the chi efs are chi efs
onl y from God, as the Apostle Paul says . 1 4
Because Rabuka's 1 996 apology appeared t o contradict his 1 9 8 7
j ustificati on of the coups, i t triggered a publ i c debate i n the local
press. 1 5 The Fiji Times, a national daily that tended to express
views critical of the government, publ i shed an articl e on Rabuka's
apol ogy on the front page al ongside a cartoon that portrayed Ra
buka begging for the forgiveness of an uni nterested audi ence. In its
editorial that day, the newspaper portrayed Rabuka as "a mixed
up, gui lt-ridden man who cannot draw the l i ne between private
prayer and leading a nation. " 1 6 In a letter to the Fiji Times, Si r Len
Usher, a long-time Suva resident and vocal critic of the Rabuka
government, noted: "There is one puzzl i ng thing about the Prime
Minister's tearful plea for forgiveness for wrongs which . . . he has
done to the people i n Fij i . He has repeatedly told us that i n al l his
publ i c actions, from the 1 9 8 7 coups on, he has been specifical l y
chosen and di rected by God. " 1 7
Imrana Jal al , a Suva lawyer and i nternationally recognized wom
en's rights activist, also dismissed Rabuka's apology and declared
that she would not forgive hi m. As she wrote in her weekly column
i n the Fiji Times, "Unfortunately Mr Prime Mi ni ster, not that it mat
ters i n the sl ightest to you what I think of you, at this moment I do
not forgive you. " 1
8
Jal al poi nted out that Rabuka's apology was
merely words, the antithesis of the "action" that she bel ieved was
needed to solve the political problems caused by the coups:
Actions speak louder than words, and words are cheap. I hol d you and
others of your i l k i ndi rectly responsi bl e for the loss of my fami l y[ , ] the
maj ority of whom departed for greener shores, for the loss of my
fri ends of al l races who[ mj you have made unwelcome in thi s country
that I love, for the suspicion and mistrust that now exi sts amongst
chi l dhood friends, for the disdain with whi ch people abroad look upon
Fij i , for the debacle of the Nati onal Bank of Fij i, for the loss of in-
Repeating Without Overl appi ng
1 23
vestors, for the downward spi ral of our economy, for the racism and
hatred now pervading our country, and for the fact that my two l i ttle
boys may grow up not loving thi s country as I do . . . . Show us wi th
your deeds, not with what you say that you are genui nel y sorry. Make
me feel that my chi l dren wi l l have similar rights in thi s country as do
your chi l dren Mr. Pri me Mi ni ster then I will forgive you. 1 9
I n addi ti on, Jal al criticized Rabuka for bringing hi s Chri stian
agenda i nto politics: "Although you may have genui nely believed
i n your God-given right to act as you di d[ , ] it was not right for you
to sacri fice the prosperity of this country based simply on your
beli ef.
"2
0
Following criticism of Rabuka's move by Jal al and others, letters
from readers fl ooded the local press. Many defended Rabuka's
apology. They did so, however, not by denouncing Jal al and others'
political analysis of the coups, but by asserting that the critics had
mi sunderstood the context of Rabuka's apology. 2 1 According to
them, Rabuka's apol ogy fell into the realm of faith, not that of pol
itics, and the critics had i nvaded that realm with political discourse.
In a letter to the Fiji Times, for example, Michael Ah Koy, a Suva
businessman and a son of Rabuka's political al l y, Ji m Ah Koy, crit
icized the Fiji Times's negative reportage of Rabuka's apology:
For you to take that deeply spi ri tual moment and l ampoon it i n a
cartoon on the front page of your paper is sacrilege.
You may not l i ke the Prime Mi ni ster's politics and you may not
think much of hi s Government, but pl ease do not demean hi s fai th i n
jehovah-our forgi vi ng God.
In doi ng so you demean my fai th and the faith of every other
Christian i n Fi j i-Fij i an, Indian and others al i ke. 22
One "S. V. Taka " noted i n the same vei n:
Rabuka may have been apol ogi si ng t o t he nati on[ , ] but he was doi ng i t
wi thi n t he sacred portals of t he church.
Every good Chri sti an knows that one must humble hi msel f before
God and confess hi s sins, i n order that one may be strengthened by the
Hol y Spi ri t.
And that was the context in whi ch Rabuka prayed before the con
gregati on.
However unpal atabl e hi s gross mi sconduct may have been during
1 24
Repeating Without Overl appi ng
the coup or duri ng hi s present admi nistrati on, he has proven to every
one that he can be human to admi t hi s weakness. 23
Taka interpreted Rabuka's apology as a moment at which he sub
mitted hi msel f to God's deci si on. Whether others forgave Rabuka
made no di fference to God's deci si on to forgive, as long as Rabuka
had been humbl e enough to seek others' forgiveness. The apology
therefore was not a matter for human beings such as Jal al to com
ment upon:
It was a moment of atonement i n whi ch Rabuka sought fel l owshi p
with God. And yet you []al ai ] and the media have portrayed it as i f he
was baring hi s soul to the nati on.
It was a pri vate gesture turned publ i c si mpl y because he was Prime
Mi ni ster.
In that moment of reckoni ng Rabuka was not aski ng the nati on to
forgi ve hi m, he was aski ng God to do so. He was not aski ng your for
giveness for he knew very wel l you woul d publ icl y ri di cul e hi m as you
have done.
But as a good Chri sti an Rabuka woul d know well the paradox of St.
Paul "that from ri di cul e one is strengthened. "24
Rabuka's defenders thus did not focus on his critics' political
views or on the substance of their critiques of Rabuka's past
acti ons. Rather, the issue for them was these critics' fai l ure to
respond properly to Rabuka's humbl e display of himself. In light of
the argument of the previous chapters, one can understand that for
Rabuka's defenders, Rabuka's apol ogy was a moment of hope
analogous to the moment of the gift-givers' spokesman's stillness
after his speech, as he waits for the other side's response ( see chap
ter 5 ). In this interpretation, Jalal and others' questioning of the
sincerity of Rabuka's apology was out of place for that particul ar
moment, and thus inappropriate and disrespectful . 25 In an inter
view with the Fiji Times, Rabuka himself procl ai med: "Wel l , i f the
people don't feel happy about [ forgiveness] , then it's their fault.
They j ust don't feel it, and we cannot expl ain, I cannot expl ai n, it
is very di fficul t for anyone to expl ai n. "26
Erasure of hi s own agency figures in both Rabuka's 1 996 apol
ogy and the theological j ustification he came up with after the fi rst
Repeating Without Overl appi ng 1 2 5
1 9 8 7 coup. I n hi s 1 98 7 j usti fication, Rabuka cl aimed to have been
on a God-given mission to restore the relationship that God had
establ i shed between chi efs and people ( land) , and i n hi s 1 996 apol
ogy, he presented himself as a humble Christian pursuing forgive
ness for hi s past si nful behavior and wi l l i ng to submit to God's
deci si on. Thi s erasure of hi s own agency was exactly what both
ered hi s critics, for whom hi s apol ogy was simply an attempt to
evade responsi bi l ity. " People general l y ignore human agency when
it suits them to do so, " as Mi chael Herzfeld has pertinently ob
served ( 1 997: 1 1 3 ) .
Rather than address the question of whether Rabuka's apol ogy
was genui ne or strategic, however, I wish to focus on what may
seem a somewhat obvi ous aspect of the case-the way Rabuka's
apology was politicized by hi s Christian sympathizers' defense.
Notwithstandi ng thei r plea that pol itics be kept out of it, by assert
i ng Rabuka's moral superiority vi s-a-vi s hi s critics, Ah Koy, Taka,
and others inevitably poli ticized what they portrayed as a nonpo
l i ti cal , nonstrategic act. Taka concl uded:
Your nai ve reaction to hi s l ament proves you nei ther know nor care
about what Christian churches do.
We all pray for our si ns-from a beggar in the street to a Prime
Mi nister who leads people of di fferent fai ths.
We al l take the time to do what our faith requi res of us, to humbl e
ourselves before God. 27
Likewise, the Sunday Post, the Sunday edition of a national
daily general l y sympathetic to the government, attacked the critics
of Rabuka's apol ogy, not only for being "cultural l y insensitive, "
but al so for provoki ng hatred between ethnic groups:
Being cul tural l y insensi tive in our mutual l y-compl ementary mi xed soci
ety is tantamount to bl atantl y committing the unpardonabl e si n.
Yet, that i s the di vi si ve path a vocal mi nority i s openl y fl aunting in
orchestrated efforts to di scredit Prime Mi ni ster Sitiveni Rabuka and by
associ ati on, bring di srepute to hi s government.
Ungodly heathens i ncl udi ng those swayed by acqui sitive Western
values can hardl y be expected to ful l y appreciate the genui ne val ue
pl aced on spi ri tual ity and religious bel i efs whi ch are cornerstones of
our i sl and heri tage.
1 26 Repeati ng Wi thout Overl appi ng
Isl anders i n parti cul ar have the tremendous capaci ty to forgive and
forget si nce that i s part and parcel of val ues passed on to them genera
ti on-to-generati on through the extended fami l y system.
Symbolic presentati on of the tabua ( whal e's tooth) and yaqona tra
di ti onal beverage achieve sol i darity and forgiveness far beyond that
envi saged by any legal system.
Their transparency leads to mutual l y-benefici al weepi ng and putting
themselves i n the hands of the Creator for sal vati on.
To i nterpret i nstantaneous outpouri ng of tears as si gns of weakness
and hypocrisy i s the unki ndest cut of al l .
Persistent needl i ng remi nders of past mi sdeeds wi l l i n t he fi nal analy
si s lead to a backlash when blood coul d flow.
Thus, in the name of whi chever al mighty power that breed of mal
contents remotely bel i eves i n-back off.
Instead, grasp the wi ndow of opportuni ty whi ch i s avai l abl e to take
the beloved country to greater levels of achi evement.
Ei ther that, or i f convi nced that the nati on i s rotten to the core and
run by corrupt l eaders, why remai n i n thi s perceived den of i ni qui ty? 28
If, from the viewpoint of these Christian commentators, ]al ai 's
plea for action to correct the negative consequences of the 1 98 7
coups missed the point, i t was al so the case that these Christian
commentators al so fai led to recapture what they described as a
genuine moment of Christian hope. Even though Ah Koy and Taka
characterized Rabuka's apology as a "deeply spiritual moment"
and "a moment of atonement i n which Rabuka sought fellowship
with God, " respectively, the tone of their i nterpretation was that of
an accusation: Ah Koy called the Fiji Times's treatment of Rabuka's
apology "sacrilege, " while Taka called ]al ai and others' reaction to
Rabuka's apology naive. In other words, if it is true that from many
Fi j i an Christi ans' point of view, poli tics stopped when Rabuka
apologized, pol itics also resumed when Ah Koy, Taka, and others
asserted Chri sti ans' moral superi ority over Rabuka's critics.
My poi nt here is not to demonstrate the inconsistencies or the
latent pol itics in the Christians' rhetoric. On the contrary, I wish to
argue here that Rabuka's defenders' fai l ure to recover what they
characterized as a nonpoli tical , nonstrategic moment without sub
suming i t into the very "political " di scourse they sought to rescue
it from did not derive from the strategic nature of the ori ginal act
of apol ogy. Instead, I wi sh to suggest that the fai l ure derived from
Repeati ng Wi thout Overlappi ng
1 27
the incongruity between the temporal di rection of their i nterpreta
tion and that of the subj ect of their i nterpretation, Rabuka's apol
ogy.
In the terms of this book's argument, Rabuka's apology was a
forward-looking moment of hope in which Rabuka neither men
tioned the 1 98 7 coups nor explained the mi sconduct for which he
apologized. He simply humbled himself and sought forgiveness for
hi s unspeci fied past action as part of hi s preparation for hi s prayer
for the nation. In other words, Rabuka's apology reset the relation
shi p between the vaguely defined past and the present moment of
prayer for that moment. According to Rabuka's sympathizers, i n
other words, what mattered to Chri sti ans was an acceptance of thi s
di splay of humi l ity for its own sake as a moment of temporal reset
ting. Rabuka's real intention behind his apology was not important
to them-not because it was impossible to see that behind a mo
ment of hope might li e a political strategy, but because the signi fi
cance of that moment lay i n i ts resetting qual i ty. As one Lautoka
resident said, "Whether it was genuinely [sic] or not only time will
tel l . Until then why not let's give hi m the benefit of the doubt.
"
29
What seemed wrong to Rabuka's sympathizers about interpreting
Rabuka's apology as an apology for the negative consequences of
the 1 98 7 coups and hi s subsequent political leadership was the fact
that reading the event i n this way reintroduced a retrospective per
spective to this moment of temporal resetti ng. The irony, however,
is that in pointing out the inappropriateness of such a retrospective
interpretation, Rabuka's sympathizers also retrospectively i nterpret
ed the moment of apology. In other words, their efforts to counter a
retrospective perspective produced a retrospective interpretation of
its own, which in turn undermined the moment's hopeful content.
Repeating Without Overlapping
The debate surroundi ng Rabuka's apology may therefore point to
the l i mits of hope as a method of self-knowing. But it ul timately
al so points to the predication of "hope as a method" on a strategy
of replication rather than a strategy of criti que. Thi s returns to my
i ni ti al problem of how to recapture hope, and to the series of
1 28 Repeati ng Without Overl appi ng
speech events surrounding the foundation-laying ceremony de
scribed i n the first part of this chapter, i n which actors repeatedly
reintroduced prospective momentum to a present moment contin
ually invaded by retrospection of all kinds, such as memory, nos
talgia, a sense of achievement, or criti que. Hope is the onl y method
of recapturing hope. In those speech events, in contrast to the de
bates surrounding Rabuka's apology, actors succeeded i n mai n
tai ni ng a hopeful moment, although every ti me hope was recap
tured, it appeared on a di fferent terrai n ( hope for the success of Na
donumai Hol dings was, for example, displ aced i n the gift-giving
ritual of the foundation-laying ceremony by Rabuka's hope for the
success of ethnic Fi j i ans as a whole) . I n other words, hope was
replicated from one moment to the next. And this replication was
mediated by the recurring impulse to reintroduce a retrospective
perspective to the present. From this perspective, we can under
stand that the method of hope consi sts in replicating the ( i mmedi
ate or distant) past. The method of hope, in other words, is a per
formative inheritance of hope.
Repetition i s therefore a logical consequence of what I have
cal l ed the method of hope, that is, the performative i nheritance of
hope i n the past. This i s perhaps evi dent from the composition of
this book. In every chapter, the same operation-the effort to repl i
cate hope on a new terrai n-appears across di fferent epi sodes and
di fferent genres of sel f-knowl edge. Strictly speaking, the operation
thus repeated and replicated i n each episode and each genre was
not, of course, identical . As shown i n chapter 5, for example,
church and gift-giving ritual s rested on di fferent degrees of script
edness and each replication is di fferent i n itself. Therefore, the
process of replication as a method of hope did not simply generate
repeti ti on. Suvavou people experienced every moment of hope
anew, not as something al ready experienced, at least for that
moment.
This returns us to Bloch. In The Principle of Hope, Bloch's anal
ysi s moves from daydreams to musi c, to science and technol ogy,
and to religi on. Bloch sees mani festations of hope in al l of these
and observes: "An encyclopaedia of hopes often contains repeti-
Repeati ng Wi thout Overl appi ng
1 29
tions, but never overlappi ngs . . . the repetitions of the book i deal
ly always occur on a new level, have therefore both learnt some
thing i n the meanti me and may al low the i denti cal thing they are
aiming at to be learned anew" ( Bloch I 98 6: I ?) .
Here Bloch does not elaborate the i mpli cati ons of repeti tion as
hi s method of representing hope. He simply emphasizes the signi f
icance of repeating what is important: " [ S] o far as [ repeti ti on] is
concerned, Voltaire's statement is valid here that he woul d repeat
himself as often as was necessary until he was understood" ( Bloch
I 98 6: I ?) .
I n light of my di scussi on of Suvavou peopl e's hope, however, I
wish to suggest that Bl och's notion of repetitions that do not over
l ap i s not so much a methodological i nnovation as an effect of the
method of hope I see i n hi s work. I wish to suggest that the paral
l el i sm between the nature of repetitions contained i n thi s book and
the repeti tions contai ned i n Bloch's "encyclopedia of hope" may
not be accidental . What the paral l el , or rather the replication,
impl i es i s that hope demands that its own method be repl icated i n
the method of its representati on. The method of hope i s the only
method of representing hope. Thi s i n turn suggests that the success
of an effort like mine depends on whether it generates a further
moment of hope. In the next, concl udi ng chapter, I turn to my own
hope i n anthropology.
7 F Inheriting Hope
In thi s book, I have ai med to demonstrate that hope i s a common
operative i n knowledge formation, academic and otherwi se. I have
sought to achieve this by replicating what I have called the method
of hope i n the shape of my argument. My inquiry began with a
methodological problem I encountered at certai n moments of hope
i n Fij i an gift-giving i n which the temporal di rection of my analysis
and that of its obj ect, hope, seemed incongruous. I j uxtaposed this
methodological problem with the methodological problem that
served Ernst Bloch as the starting point of his philosophical inquiry
into hope, that is, the temporal incongruity between hope and
philosophical contemplation. In both cases, hope made explicit
temporal incongruity between knowledge and its obj ect and
prompted radical temporal reorientation of knowledge to the
future. I have argued, however, that the retrospective character of
knowledge i s not i tsel f the cause of this analytical troubl e. In ret
rospect, my ( and Bloch's ) analytical impulse toward temporal con
gruity was a replication of the hope that had prompted the anal yt
ical impulse at the outset. Hope was replicated on a new terrai n, in
other words. The method of hope therefore revolves around radi
cal temporal reorientation of knowledge and its resulting replica
tion of past hope i n the present. Each chapter of this book has been
an ethnographic explication of this method, as well as an instanti
ation of the method itself. The resulting zigzag traj ectory of my
investigation points to yet another possibil ity for replicating Fi j i an
hope on a new terrai n. In thi s fi nal chapter, I wish to turn to hope
as a method for apprehending the present of anthropological
knowledge.
Inheri ti ng Hope
1 3 1
Si nce the mid 1 98 os, many anthropologists have been anxious
about their discipl ine's loss of rel evance, based on the broadly held
assumption that the world has changed radical l y. How, i n this con
text, can anthropologists recover their distinct intellectual space i n
the academy? In the introduction to Recapturing Anthropology:
Working in the Present, a volume of which he was the editor,
Richard Fox notes, for example:
How can anthropologists work i n and wri te about the world at pre
sent? . . . [ We] took the worl d "at present" not si mpl y to mean the con
temporary but al so to refer to the pecul i ar: that i s, we understood that
fundamental and wi despread changes had happened fai rl y recentl y i n
the world . . . . Our "present" appears to be substanti al l y di fferent from
the "present" that our predecessors confronted, even j ust a short ti me
ago. ( Fox 1 99 1 a: r )
More recently, George Marcus has noted that anthropol ogists
"seem to have reached consensus about the substanti al changes
that surround and have al tered the nature of anthropol ogy's obj ects
of study" ( Marcus 1 999: 2 5 ) .
I n more concrete terms, since the early 1 98os, anthropol ogists
have confronted the problem of how to respond to the postcol oni al
pol itics of cul tural identity i n which indigenous popul ati ons such as
Suvavou people deploy what, i n l ight of criticism by Edward Said
and others, anthropol ogists woul d deem "essenti al i st" and ahi stor
ical notions such as kastom, tradition, and cul ture ( Sai d 1 978 ) . In
his introduction to the fi rst col l ection of essays devoted to the pol
itics of tradition i n the Pacific ( Keesing and Tonkinson 1 9 8 2) , for
example, Roger Keesing noted: " [T] here is speci al anthropological
interest in kastom because it is culture itsel f that serves as symbol .
( Anthropologists themselves often spuriously reify and i deal i ze cul
tures i nto abstract, cul tural systems. That Mel anesi an ideologues
construct an imaginary kastom out of messy realities shoul d per
haps give us some discomfort " ( Keesing 1 9 8 2: 3 00) .
The attraction of this new focus has consisted at least parti al l y
in i ts power to proj ect a mi rror i mage of anthropological analysis
of i ndigenous forms of "obj ectification of tradition" (Thomas
1 992) and sel f-reflexive knowledge ( see Jol l y and Thomas 1 992;
1 3 2
Inheri ti ng Hope
Otto and Thomas 1 997; Thomas 1 997, for cases from the Pacific) .
The analytical attention t o i ndigenous debates on culture, tradi
tion, and nationhood has placed a particul ar emphasis on indige
nous creativity as mani fested in the politics of knowledge produc
tion. In this view, anthropol ogists and indigenous populations
engage in a similar kind of representational politics. In other
words, anthropologists have attempted to bring into view "their
versi ons " of what we used to do, to reformulate Marilyn
Strathern's phrase ( Strathern 1 990: 28 ) . Furthermore, for anthro
pologists, this indigenous identity pol itics exemplifies a broader
shi ft in the place of anthropological knowledge, which i s in turn
associated with a shi ft in the character of global capitalism and the
political economy of academic knowledge ( see, e. g. , Foster 1 995 ;
Kell y and Kapl an 2001 ; Munasinghe 2001 ) .
More recently, such anxiety about and fascination with the clos
ing of di stance between the knowledge practices of anthropologists
and their research subj ects has mani fested itself in more method
ological terms. In recent debates on the anthropology of expert
knowledge, Douglas Holmes, George Marcus, Annelise Ril es, and
others have identified the ethnographic condition i n which there is
no di stance between anthropologists' analytical practices and those
of their research subj ects as a methodological opportunity ( see
Brenneis 1 999; Holmes and Marcus, i n press; Marcus 1 998 , 1 999;
Maurer 2002; Miyazaki and Ril es, i n press; Ri l es 2ooo; Riles n. d.
a; Riles n. d. b; cf. M. Lynch 1 9 9 3 ) . As Bill Maurer has put it: "The
convergence or indeed isomorphism of anthropological tools and
the knowl edge-generating techniques of those they study opens
possi bi l i ties for a new kind of ethnographic sensibility" ( Maurer
2003 : 1 63 ) .
The lack of analytical di stance between anthropologists' knowl
edge practices and those of their research subj ects resonates with
another ki nd of lack of distance, of which anthropologists have
increasingly been aware, that is, the closing of di stance between
anthropology and other disciplines, such as hi story ( see Cohn
1 987a; Comaroff and Comaroff 1 992; Thomas 1 98 9; Thomas
1 997; see also Axel 2002) , art criticism ( Myers 1 99 5 : 5 7- 5 8 ) , and
Inheri ti ng Hope ! 3 3
philosophy. Commenting on the narrowing of di stance between
anthropology and phi l osophy, Cl i fford Geertz has recentl y
remarked, for example:
[ T] here has been . . . a maj or shi ft i n the way i n whi ch phi l osophers, or
the bulk of them anyway, conceive thei r vocati on, and that shi ft has
been i n a di rection parti cul arl y congeni al to those, l i ke mysel f, who
bel ieve that the answers to our most general questi ons-why? how?
what? whi ther ?-to the degree they have answers, are to be found in
the fine detai l of l i ved l i fe. ( Geertz 2000: xi )
In Geertz's view, the narrowing of the gap between the two di s
ci pl i nes has resulted from phi losophers' critique of metaphysi cs.
Here Geertz poi nts to a wi de range of phi l osophers from
Wittgenstein to John Dewey who have sought to di slocate knowl
edge from the cerebral terrai n and relocate it to the social terrai n
( see Geertz 2ooo: xi i , 21 -22) .
What is interesting for present purposes is that Geertz locates
this new place of anthropological knowledge i n a wider intellectu
al terrai n i n connection with the character of changes in the worl d.
For Geertz, i n thi s narrowed di sci pl i nary gap, anthropology and
phi losophy have emerged as parallel efforts to understand the
emergent world of which both forms of knowing are part. Geertz's
di scussi on of Wi l l i am James's The Varieties of Religious Experience
is a case i n poi nt. Here I wish to draw attention to the di stinctive
way i n whi ch Geertz bri ngs i nto vi ew the contemporary relevance
of James's well-known i ndi vi dual istic treatment of religious faith.
The focus of my attention is on Geertz's apprehension of what con
stitutes the contemporary: " [W]hen we look back at [ The Varieties
of Religious Experience] from where i t i s we are now, . . . i t seems
at once almost ultra-contemporaneous . . . and quai ntly remote"
( Geertz 2ooo: 1 6 8 ) .
Geertz attributes the "quai ntly remote" character of James's
ideas simply to the fact that the world has changed:
We see reli gi on in other terms than James di d, not because we know
more about i t than he di d ( we don't) , or because what he di scovered no
longer i nterests us or seems i mportant (it does ) , or even because i t i tsel f
has changed (i t has and i t hasn't ) . We see i t i n other terms because the
1 3 4 Inheri ti ng Hope
ground has shi fted under our feet; we have other extremes to exami ne,
other fates to forestal l . ( Geertz 2000: 1 68 )
" It i s not i n solitude that faith i s made, " Geertz observes ( i bi d. :
r 84) , l i sting many i nstances of pol iticized religious fai th:
In james's ti me i t seemed that rel i gi on was becoming more and more
subj ecti vi zed; that it was, in the very nature of the case, weakeni ng as a
soci al force to become a matter whol l y of the heart's affecti ons . . . . But
that i s not how thi ngs have i n the event turned out. The developments
of the century si nce james gave hi s lectures-two world wars, genoci de,
decol oni zati on, the spread of populi sm, and the technologi cal i ntegra
ti on of the world-have done less to dri ve fai th i nward toward the com
moti ons of the soul than they have to drive i t outward toward those of
the pol i ty, the state, and that complex argument we cal l cul ture. ( Ibi d. :
1
7
0)
In Geertz's view, "we" do not have adequate analytical tools for
understandi ng what is happening now:
The probl em . . . i s that i f the communal di mensi ons of rel i gi ous
change, the ones you can ( someti mes) read about i n the newspapers are
underresearched, the personal ones, those you have ( usual l y) to tal k to
l i vi ng peopl e i n order to encounter, are barel y researched at al l . We si m
ply don' t know very much about what i s goi ng on ri ght now i n James's
shadow world of i mmense wi ngs and unfleeable storms. ( I bi d. : 1
7
9)
Ultimately, however, i t i s precisely i n the socially situated nature
of James's i ndi vi dual i stic view of religious experience, and James's
own awareness of it, that Geertz fi nds contemporary relevance:
[ M] aj or thi nkers, l i ke maj or arti sts, are both compl etel y engul fed i n
thei r ti me-deeply si tuated, as we now woul d say-and transcendent of
those ti mes, vi vi dl y al ive i n other ti mes, and . . . these two facts are
i nternal l y connected. Certai nl y this i s true of James. The radi cal l y i ndi
vi dual i sti c, subj ecti vi sti c, " brute percepti on" concept of rel i gi on and
rel i gi ousness, whi ch hi s l ocati on as hei r to New Engl and i ntui ti oni sm
and hi s own encounters wi th the pi nch of desti ny led hi m i nto, was
complemented by the i ntense, marvel ousl y observant, al most pathol og
i cal l y sensi ti ve attention to the shades and subtleties of thought and
emoti on they al so led hi m i nto.
It i s thi s last, ci rcumstanti al accounts of the personal i nflecti ons of
rel i gi ous engagement that reach far beyond the personal i nto the con
fl icts and di lemmas of our age, that we need now. ( I bi d. : I 8 5 )
Inheri ti ng Hope
Here Geertz redi scovers what has always defined anthropologi
cal knowledge, that i s, the analytical category of the soci al . More
specifical ly, James's awareness of the social construction of hi s own
theory of religion i n the midst of his otherwise i ndi vi dual istic take
on religious fai th i s precisely what anthropologists have always
argued for i n their studies of rel i gi on. In Geertz's reasoni ng, in
other words, anthropological i nsights i nto religious faith have
emerged as acutely relevant as a result of changes i n the worl d.
Moreover, the narrowed gap between t he two di sci pl i nes further
proves the relevance of anthropology for the present moment.
Anthropologists' apprehensi on of these new condi ti ons of
knowledge production i s thus predicated on a particul ar apprehen
si on of the present moment of the world. As discussed throughout
thi s book, however, accessing the present i s not an easy task.
Moreover, usi ng a phi losophical lens, the problem of lack of dis
tance might be framed as a problem of how to access the present.
As noted i n chapter 1 many phi losophers, including Bloch, have
regarded the problem of the present as paradigmatic of the anal yt
ical problem ari si ng from the lack of di stance between knowledge
and its obj ect. In particular, the el usive qual ity of the present has
served as a subj ect of contemplation for the purpose of gai ni ng
i nsights into a more general problem of how to apprehend one's
own self. Thi s book argues that the problem of how to access the
present is precisely the problem of hope as a method of self-knowl
edge.
Indeed, these new ethnographi c proj ects prompted by a percep
tion of the changed world are hopeful proj ects. In these proj ects,
anthropologists have not simply been critical of their own past
modes of knowledge producti on. They have also sought to intro
duce prospective momentum to the moment of self-cri ti que and
reflection by proposing new research agendas and new modes of
ethnographic writing that are supposed to reflect new ethnographi c
condi ti ons. For some, this future-oriented explorati on has focused
on an effort to " historicize" anthropology ( e. g. , Cl i fford 1 9 8 8 ;
Comaroff and Comaroff 1 992; Thomas 1 98 9) or on a search for
new forms of ethnographic writing ( see Cl i fford and Marcus
I nheri ti ng Hope
1 9 86) , while for others, it has concerned new subj ects of ethno
graphic research that not only render obsolete many of anthropol
ogists' theoretical constructs but al so demand new research strate
gies ( e. g. , Appadurai 1 996; Fischer 1 999; Greenwood and Levin
2ooo; Gupta and Ferguson 1 997; Marcus 1 998 ; Rabi now 1 996) .
For still others, like Geertz, as discussed above, new phenomena
have rendered ol d anthropological insights relevant agai n. In their
view, as Bi l l Maurer recently has poi nted out, it i s time for anthro
pologists to go back to " business as usual " ( Maurer 2003 : 1 69 ) .
What al l these divergent efforts to reinvigorate anthropological
knowledge have in common is anthropologists' acute collective
awareness of their belatedness i n relation to the LM of the world
they seek to represent ( see also Miyazaki 2003 ) . In the terms
deployed in this book, in other words, in these divergent responses
to the newly found condition of anthropological knowledge pro
duction, anthropologists have recreated a productive gap for
anthropology on another terrai n. If, in the past, the gap was
between anthropol ogy and other disciplines, or between the West
and the non-West, now the gap is between knowledge, more gen
eral ly, and its obj ect, that is, an emergent worl d. Here both anthro
pologists and philosophers, or anthropol ogists and their research
subj ects, now share a common ground from which to explore this
emergent world ( see Marcus 1 998 ) . In other words, anthropolo
gists have created prospective momentum in the now recreated
realm of the future unknown, which has in turn generated an antic
ipation of congruity between knowledge and its obj ect, the emer
gent world. It is the pull of this anticipation, I wish to suggest, that
has animated anthropological debates over the past two decades.
Hope has, in other words, served as a method of anthropological
knowledge.
One consequence of these hopeful endeavors has been a kind of
temporal reorientation, an effort to reconfigure the temporal
strategies embedded in anthropological knowledge. The focus on
the problem of time is perhaps not surprising, given that, as
Johannes Fabi an has noted, anthropologists have always deployed
various temporal strategies in their writing, of which the ficti onal
Inheri ti ng Hope
1 3 7
and frozen "ethnographic present" tense is the most renowned
( Fabi an 1 9 8 3 ) . However, I wish to argue that there is something
pecul i ar about anthropologists' current concern with time and its
consequences for the character of anthropological knowledge pro
ducti on. In particul ar, at the heart of anthropologists' impulse to
reorient the temporal ity of their knowledge at the moment is an
awareness that the world has not only changed but continues to be
changing. The " novelty of the worl d" ( R. G. Fox 1 99 1 a: 4) has
therefore mani fested itself to anthropologists as a subj ect, that is,
as what Michael Fischer terms "emergent forms of l i fe" ( 1 999) .
This widely held analytical aesthetic, which I wish t o cal l an aes
thetic of emergence, renders not only the world but also its analy
sis provi si onal , i ndeterminate, and open-ended. Anthropological
analyses not only focus on provisi onal "assemblages " of the old
and the new but al so become assemblages on their own ( see Ong
and Collier, in press; Rabinow 1 999) . This analytical aesthetic is
pervasive not only i n anthropological studies of so-called new
ethnographic subj ects but also in historical anthropology. In advo
cating a di alogical perspective, John Kelly and Martha Kaplan
recently have noted, for exampl e:
We support an anthropology more di al ogical i n the Bakhti ni an sense.
For Bakhti n and others, hi story as a di alogical process i s an open series,
wi th neither absol ute priorities of level nor fi ni te numbers of subj ects
and obj ects involved. In a di alogical account, even gl obal hi story is a
series of pl anned and l i ved responses to speci fic circumstances that were
also irreducibl y consti tuted by human subj ects, creating not a si ngle
vast chain of "the subject" changed by "the object" and vice versa, but
a dense complex network of individual and col lective subj ects conti nu
al l y responsive to one another. These constitutive, i rreduci bl y subj ective
di alogics add enormous conti ngency and complexity to what di alectic
there i s between material rel ati ons and human societies. ( Kel l y and
Kapl an 2oo r : 6-7)
This aesthetic of emergence reflects a broader and more general
move in social theory to emphasize the provisional , indeterminate,
and open-ended nature of real ity. As the philosopher of social sci
ence James Bohman has suggested, the focus of social scientific
explanation has shifted from the pursuit of analytical determinacy
Inheri ti ng Hope
to the recogmtion of the i ndeterminacy of real ity ( see Bohman
1 99 1 : 6-7) . Accordi ng to Barbara Herrnstei n Smi th and Arkady
Plotnitsky, l i kewise, the concern with emergence currently popular
i n soci al theory, " reflect[ s] the increasing need to address and
descri be, wi thout i mpl i cati ons of purposive agency or si mpl e uni
l i near ( "mechani cal " ) causal i ty, the ongoing effects of exceedingly
complex interacti ons " ; i n thi s framework, "forces that are cl assi
cal ly represented as di stinct and opposed-for exampl e, the genet
ic and the environmental or the natural and the soci al-are seen as
reciprocal l y i nteractive and mutuall y constituting" ( Smith and
Plotnitsky 1 997: 8 ) . The aesthetic of emergence therefore foreclos
es the possi bi l i ty of pinpoi nting the end point of anal ysi s ( see
Barber 2000: 7; Pickering 1 995 , 1 997) , and al l knowledge remai ns
provi si onal , contingent, and ongoi ng. It i s no surpri se that thi s
emphasi s on provi si onal ity and i ndeterminacy has had a strong
appeal to anthropologi sts whose immedi ate concern has been to
come to terms with what they perceive as a rapi dly changing and
unpredictable worl d.
It i s important to note, however, that i n thi s aesthetic of emer
gence and its associ ated focus on provisi onal i ty, i ndeterminacy, and
open-endedness, the possi bi l ity of achieving congruity between
knowledge and its obj ect is forecl osed. Rather, i roni cally i t i s pre
cisely the failure ( cf. Riles 2000) to achieve such congruity and syn
chronicity that i s central to the aesthetic of emergence. In other
words, temporal incongruity i s now embedded i n the shape of
knowledge itself. The aesthetic of emergence would seem to enable
anthropol ogi sts to mai ntai n prospective momentum wi thout
changing the temporal orientation of thei r knowledge any more. In
thi s scheme, anthropologists' task becomes simply to trace or track
the world as i t emerges. Here knowledge itself i s rendered emergent
i n order to mi rror an emergent worl d.
In light of the argument of thi s book, however, the temporal
reorientation to the emergent achieved i n many of these recent
hopeful anthropological efforts to reinvigorate anthropological
knowledge may not be hopeful as i t sounds. In the previous chap
ters, I have argued that the production of a hopeful moment i s
Inheriting Hope
1 3 9
predicated on an effort to replicate a past moment of hope. Recal l
how the intimation of ful fi l lment enabl es Fi j i an Christians to mai n
tai n a prospective momentum. Recal l , al so, Bl och and Benj ami n's
attention to unful fi l l ed hope in the past and a sense of " not-yet"
following the ful fi l lment of a hope. For them, hope is i nheri ted
from the past, and the pull of hope i n the present derives from
anticipation of fulfillment contai ned i n that past hope. For Fi j i an
Chri sti ans, as for Bloch and Benj ami n, the effort to mai ntai n
prospective momentum entai l s an effort to replicate a past unful
fi lled hope on another terrai n, I have argued. The method of hope,
i n other words, i s predicated on the i nheritance of a past hope and
its performative replication i n the present. In the five ethnographic
chapters, I sought to replicate the method of hope in the structure
of my account of Fi j i an hope by showing the homological opera
tion of the performative repl ication of a prospective momentum i n
di fferent genres of Fi j i an self-knowledge.
In contrast, the aesthetic of emergence that now domi nates
anthropological attempts to reintroduce prospective momentum to
an i nqui ry forecloses the possi bi l i ty of such replicati on. The ki nd of
prospective momentum embedded in the aesthetic of emergence is
that of anthropologists' belatedness relative to the emergent world
rather than a conscious effort to reorient knowledge to the future.
In the aesthetic of emergence, as currently practiced i n anthropolo
gy, the world i s rendered open-ended and indetermi nate from
begi nni ng to end. Yet by its very open-ended nature, the pul l for
knowledge comes from the emergent world and it does not leave
room for hope and its method, that i s, radical reorientation of
knowledge. What worries me most about the aesthetic of emer
gence, i n other words, i s the way thi s analytical strategy seems to
have taken away the driving force of knowledge from hope by giv
ing too much credit to the so-called emergent world. Where knowl
edge does not seek its own radi cal reorientation, hope ceases to be
the engine of knowledge.
In light of my discussion of the method of hope, recl ai ming a
place for hope in anthropology and social theory, however, de
mands more than a strategy of delayed provisional engagement
1 40 Inheriting Hope
with an emergent worl d. Instead of seeking to fol l ow the world i n
a bel ated manner, I propose that one shoul d make expl i ci t one's
own hope retrospectively via replication of others' hope on a new
terrai n. As I have demonstrated i n the last six chapters, this retro
spective perspective is antici pated i n the method of hope.
The task of reigniting the " spark of hope " ( Benj ami n 1 99 2
[ 1 968 ] : 247; see chapter 1 ) i n anthropological knowledge demands
an effort to bring into view the possibi lity of radical reorientation
of knowledge once agai n, rather than emergent ( al beit belated)
congruity between the temporality of knowledge and that of its
obj ect. This effort i n turn will demand an effort to inherit and repli
cate the hope contained in anthropology's past hopes, that is, the
task of anticipating a new ki nd of anthropology on another terrai n.
My hope is that i n the incongruity between the temporality of the
current anthropological aesthetic of emergence and that of this turn
to my own hope, such anticipation of the new wi l l indeed arise.
r Notes
F Notes
Chapter 1 . Hope as a Method
I. In hi s " panoramic" expl orati on of the category of hope, Vincent
Crapanzano repeatedl y points to the " uneasy relati onshi p" between the
two categories ( 2003 : 4, 1 9) : " Hope i s . . . intimately related to desire. It
i s its passi ve counterpart, though it is sometimes used as an equi val ent to
desire. Desire i s effective. It presupposes human agency. One acts on
desi re-even i f that act i s not to act on desi re because one has j udged it
i mpossi bl e or prefers the desi re to its ful fi l l ment" ( 6) . In contrast, accord
ing to Crapanzano, " hope depends on some other agency-a god, fate,
chance, an other-for its ful fi l l ment" ( 6) . Ul timatel y, however, i n di s
cussi ng Kenel m Burridge's cl assi c work on Mel anesi an cargo cul ti sts,
Mambu: A Melanesian Millennium ( 1 995 [ r 96o] ) Crapanzano points to
the entanglement between desire and hope as categories of anal ysi s, on the
one hand, and desire and hope as what prompts the anal ysi s itsel f, on the
other: " Yes, the hope and desi re of the cul tists cannot easi l y be di sti n
guished from those of the anthropologists. They are both caught. Though
we pl ace them i nsistently i n the i ndi vi dual , neither desi re nor hope can be
removed from social engagement and i mpl ication. We are al l , I suppose,
caught " ( 2 5 ) .
2. The three volumes of Das Prinzip Hoffnung were origi nal ly pub
l i shed between 1 9 5 4 and I 9 5 9 The 1 9 8 6 Engl ish transl ati on ( Bloch 1 98 6)
i s based on the I 9 5 9 edition of the book.
3 Mol tmann di stanced hi msel f from Bloch in hi s l ater works ( Molt
mann 1 993 b [ I 974] : 5 ) . See Bentley 1 98 2 for a di scussion of German the
ologi ans' reception of Bl och's work.
4 Other commentaries on Bloch in the Engl ish l anguage i ncl ude Jones
1 995 and T. H. West 1 99 I , i n addition to some fine introductory essays
for Engl i sh transl ati ons of Bl och's books.
5. Bl och's fi rst maj or work, The Spirit of Utopia ( 2ooo) , origi nal l y
publ ished as Geist der Utopie in I 9 I 8, is sai d to have i nspi red a number
of German intel lectual s, i ncl udi ng Theodor Adorno, Walter Benj ami n, and
Herbert Marc use ( see, e. g. , Geoghegan I 996: I 5-I 6, 1 62) .
1 44 Notes
6. Al though Bl och's anal ysi s of fascism through the concept of " non
synchroni ci ty" ( 1 99 1 ) has been often di scussed (e. g. Harootuni an 2000:
2 1 6; Jameson 1 99 1 : 307) , hi s numerous books rarely draw substanti al
attenti on today. Bl och's bi ographer Vi ncent Geoghegan cites hi s strong
commitment to Marxism and his active approval of Stal i n during the
1 9 3 0s as the pri mary reason for hi s excl usi on from the i nfl uenti al ci rcl e of
other German emigres such as Adorno and Horkhei mer ( Geoghegan 1 996:
1 9) . Jack Zi pes speculates that Bl och's di sti ncti ve wri ti ng style, i nfl uenced
by expressi oni sm and German i deal i sm, has made his work l ook some
what ol d-fashioned and i naccessi bl e ( Zi pes 1 9 8 8 : xxix; cf. Kaufmann
1 997) .
7 Susan Buck-Morss has noted that the focus of Bl och's phi l osophy on
reformi ng academi c knowl edge " l eft soci al real i ty untouched" ( Buck
Morss 1 977: 4) . One of the goal s of my current ethnographi c i nqui ry i nto
hope i s to obvi ate thi s di vi de between the i deati onal and the soci al by
drawi ng attention to a paral l el i n the way hope i s generated i n knowledge
formati on, academi c and otherwise.
8. Here I limit my di scussi on to some phi l osophi cal reflecti ons on
hope. There i s al so an extensive body of l i terature on hope i n psychol ogy
that l argely focuses on the functi on of hope ( e. g. Breznitz 1 999; Lazarus
1 999) . As one of the three Chri sti an theological vi rtues ( see, e. g. , Sai nt
Augustine 1 96 1 ) , hope obvi ousl y al so has theological i mpl i cati ons, and
there have been many theol ogi cal wri ti ngs on hope ( see, e. g. , W. F Lynch
1 96 5 ; Mol tmann 1 993 a [ 1 967] ; Otto 1 9 9 1 ; cf. Godfrey 1 987; Marcel
1 962. )
9 Bl och, who spent a l i ttle over ten years i n exi l e i n the United States,
from 1 9 3 8 until 1 949, strongly di sl i ked American cul ture ( Geoghegan
1 996: 1 8-1 9) , and his work has l i ttle i n common with that of Rorty, whose
proposal that we set " hope i n place of knowledge" ( 1 999) l argely rests on
his own fai th i n America ( see Rorty 1 998 ) .
1 0. Ri chard Roberts has noted that the ul ti mate goal of Bl och's grand
project on hope was "the posi ti ve recovery of the divine i n the human,
rather than the negative ( and orthodox Marxi st) excl usi on of God as i l l u
sory projecti on, " argui ng that Bl och's project ai med at "the rel i gi ous
assi mi l ati on of athei sm" ( Roberts 1 990: 1 2) .
1 1 . My effort t o approach hope i n terms of t he probl em of the present
resonates wi th Andrew Benj ami n's approach to hope i n his project, Present
Hope: Philosophy, Architecture, Judaism (A. Benj ami n 1 997) .
1 2. As Peter Szondi poi nts out, Walter Benj ami n's hope i s not the same
as Theodor Adorno's sol uti on to despai r. Szondi quotes the wel l -known
fi nal paragraph of Adorno's Minima Moralia: " In the face of despai r, the
onl y way phi losophy can still be j ustified i s as an attempt to consider al l
thi ngs as they l ook from the standpoi nt of sal vati on. Knowledge has no
Notes
1 4 5
light other than that which shines down on the world from sal vati on:
everything el se spends i tsel f in reconstruction and remai ns a merely tech
ni cal matter. Perspectives must be establ ished in which the worl d comes
apart, al ienates i tsel f, and reveal s its cracks and fi ssures, as it will be one
day when it lies poor and di sfigured in the Messiani c light" ( Adorno 1 974,
quoted i n Szondi 1 98 6: 1 5 6) . Adorno's hope l i es i n a retrospective per
spective from the end of the worl d.
1 3 . After completing a fi nal draft of t hi s book, I encountered t he recent
work of Nigel Rapport, which in my understanding is a si mi l ar effort to
mi ne to take phi losophy ( i n his case Friedri ch Ni etzsche's phi l osophy) as
an ethnographi c subj ect ( see Rapport 2003 ) . Other anthropologists have
sought to appl y modernist and postmodernist phi l osophi cal i nsights to
speci fic ethnographi c si tuati ons. For exampl e, in his work on I ndonesi a,
James Siegel has drawn on the work of and the writing styl e of Jacques
Derrida. Siegel notes, "the path of thought [ Derri da] has opened . . . has
yet to be expl oited by anthropologists and hi stori ans i n the way it mi ght
be. It i s in the fi rst pl ace because he shows the impossi bi l ity of our di sci
pl i nes, preci sel y thei r lack of foundati on. To conti nue after hi m means to
accept thi s i mpossi bi l ity. But we must respond al l the same, taki ng up i n a
context never imagined by hi m issues he has rai sed" ( Si egel 1 997: x) .
Siegel 's conscious adoption of the Derridian style of i nquiry makes hi s
work more than a si mpl e appl icati on of phi l osophy.
I 4 See, e. g. , Wayne Hudson's di scussi on of Bloch in light of Marxi sm
( 1 98 2) and Martin Jay's excel lent di scussion of Bl och's concepti on of total
i ty ( 1 984) .
1 5 . It i s i nteresting t o note how German pol i ti cal theologi ans such as
Jirgen Mol tmann and Johannes Bapti st Metz responded t o Ernst Bl och's
atheist commitment. Al though Bl och's i nfluence permeates these theolo
gians' earl y work ( see, e. g. , Mol tmann 1 993 [ r 967] ; Metz 1 9 69) , both
Moltmann and Metz subsequently di stanced themselves from Bloch. Their
problem with Bl och was grounded i n Bl och's atheism and "mi l itant opti
mi sm" ( Bloch 1 972: 247; emphasis removed) , which they found i ncapabl e
of deal i ng with the problem of suffering and death. In The Crucified God,
for exampl e, Mol tmann shi fted hi s origi nal focus, as expressed in hi s much
celebrated Theology of Hope, on "the remembrance of Christ in the form
of the hope of his future" to a new focus on "hope i n the form of the
remembrance of hi s death, " saying that " [ u] nless it apprehends the pai n of
the negative, Chri sti an hope cannot be real i sti c and l i berating" ( Mol tmann
1 993 b [ 1 974) : 5 ) . In confronting thi s suffering and death, only God coul d
emerge as the source of hope, these theologi ans i nsi sted. As Mol tmann put
it, " For Ernst Bloch, atheism was the presuppositi on of active hope . . . .
But for me, the God of promise and exodus, the God who has raised Chri st
and who l ets the power of the resurrection dwel l in us, i s the ground for
Notes
active and for passive hope" ( 1 993 a [ 1 967) : 9) . My effort to j uxtapose
Fi j i an Chri sti ans' hope with Bl och's atheist phi losophy of hope may seem
destined to encounter the same probl em faced by Moltmann and Metz as
they sought to deploy Bl och's i nsights i n a Christian context. For Suvavou
people, as for many other Fi j i ans I knew, God's presence was overwhel m
ingly sel f-evident. Even so, I wi sh to argue, it woul d be a mi stake to assume
that for Suvavou people, God was the ul ti mate source of hope. Rather,
hope in God's efficacy needed to be ritual l y produced. As di scussed i n
chapter 5, what was i nstrumental i n the ri tual production of hope was
ironical l y the backgroundi ng of God's agency. From thi s perspective, the
insi ghts of Bl och's athei st phi l osophy of hope are i ndeed apposite.
1 6. Anthropologists have often framed theoretical problems i n terms of
incongruity between di fferent temporal modes, such as cycl ical versus lin
ear time, myth versus hi story ( see Obeyesekere 1 992, 1 997; Sahl i ns 1 9 8 1 ,
1 9 8 5 , 1 99 5 ) , and the epistemological stasis characterized by the device of
the ethnographic present versus cultural and strategic i nnovation (Thomas
1 9 89; cf. Fabi an 1 9 8 3 ; Wagner 1 9 8 1 [ 1 97 5 ] ) . Some have focused on posit
ing the complementary nature of these modes. For exampl e, Terence Tur
ner has noted that '"mythic' and ' historical ' consciousness are not mutu
al l y excl usi ve but are compl ementary ways of framing the same events,
which can, and usual l y do, coexist i n the same cul ture, indeed in the same
utterance by the same person" ( Turner 1 9 8 8 : 2 1 2-1 3 ) . Others have drawn
attention to other ways temporality can be experienced, using metaphors
such as " rhythm" ( Guyer 1 9 8 8 ) and notions such as "everyday mi l lenari
ani sm" ( Robbi ns 2001 ) . Meanwhi l e, Carol Greenhouse has drawn atten
tion to the central i ty of "temporal i mprovisation" in political legitimation
( Greenhouse 1 996: 1 0) . In contrast to these studies, the present study seeks
to bring into view temporal incongruity as an engine of knowl edge forma
tion itsel f ( see al so Miyazaki 2003 ) .
Chapter 2. A Hi story of Thwarted Hope
1. In the 1 9 6os, the government had no hesitation i n turni ng a l arge
portion of Suvavou l and into residential developments. There i s al so a
l arge rubbi sh dump for the ci ty of Suva on the seashore near the vi l l age.
2. A typical household consi sted of three generati ons: a couple, their
sons and daughters and their spouses, and the l atter's chi l dren. On aver
age, therefore, seven people might share a three-room house. Most house
holds depended on two cash incomes. Men worked as occasi onal manual
l aborers, cal l ed "cash-holders, " or security guards, whi l e women worked
in clothing factories, stores, and restaurants, or as so-cal l ed house girl s in
Lami and Suva. At the time of my fi eldwork ( 1 994-96) , a wage for such
Notes 1 47
work was F$ 1 o per day, and the average househol d weekl y expenditure for
food was F$6o. Many househol ds al so received remittances from their
overseas relatives. There were a number of registered members of Suvavou
mataqali (clans) l i vi ng i n Sydney and other Austral i an and New Zeal and
ci ti es who contributed regul arl y to vi l l age mortuary exchanges and church
acti vi ti es. In most cases, these members had origi nal l y moved overseas in
search of empl oyment, and many sent contributions to individual house
hol ds on a monthly basi s. They al so returned regul arl y for ceremonies,
married i n the vi l lage, and sponsored mataqali members for extended vis
its in search of temporary employment or medi cal attenti on.
3. Bau i s an i sl and off the eastern coast of Vi ti Levu. Si nce the mi d
ni neteenth century, Bau's paramount chief, the Vuni val u, has been regard
ed as the highest-ranki ng chi ef of Fi j i .
4 Agreement of Polynesia Company with United States Consul in Fij i ,
Jul y 24, 1 8 68, i n Uni ted States n. d. , Appendix, exhi bi t 4 5 , p. 2 5 5 .
5 . Apparently, Cakobau offered to sel l more than 2oo,ooo acres of
l and ( Charter of Polynesia Company, Jul y 23 , 1 8 68, i n United States n. d. ,
Appendix, exhi bi t 46, p. 25 7-5 9) . Acting British Consul John B. Thurston
persuaded Cakobau to reduce the area for sale ( France 1 969: 8 r-8 2) .
6. The mother of the Roko Tui Suva of the time, Ratu Avorosa Tui
vuya, was one of Cakobau's daughters, and Ratu Avorosa's father, Ratu
Ravulo Tabakaucoro, was also the son of a Bauan l ady, a daughter of Ta
noa, Cakobau's father ( Cargi l l 1 977: 1 79) . Customari l y, uterine nephews
( vasu) could demand anything from their mother's brother ( see Hocart
1 9 1 5 ) . However, i t was usual for Bauan chi efs to use thi s tie to make
demands on their own vasu ( see Thomas 1 986: 46) .
7 See, e. g. , LCC reports nos. 43 5 and 444, Nati onal Archives of Fi j i ,
Suva. See al so Scarr 1 984: 42.
8 . Thi s was i n accordance with Lord Carnarvon's instruction t o Gov
ernor Arthur Gordon that "as the readiest mode of settling this cl ai m, and
with a view of preventing annoyance to the native occupiers, an offer
shoul d be made to the company, without prej udice to repay them the
9, 000 advanced to the American Government, and to leave them in pos
session of 400 or 5 00 acres now i n the occupation of the tenants of the
company i n the Suva di strict, and actual l y under cultivation; the remai n
der of the 9o, ooo acres, and al l further cl ai ms under the charter, bei ng sur
rendered to the coloni al government" ( C. 1 3 3 7, August 6, 1 87 5 , quoted i n
"The Case of Benson Robert Henry, " in Uni ted States n. d. , p. 3 6) . A 1 963
confi dential report on Suva l and confirms t he government's payment of
9,000 t o the Polynesia Company. A Lands Department offi ci al told me i n
1 994 that thi s payment was one of t he legal bases for the government's title
to Suva l and.
q8 Notes
9 Derrick 1 9 5 3 : 207; Whitelaw 1 966: 3 7, 42-4 3 . See also "The Case
of Benson Robert Henry, " i n United States n. d. , pp. 3 4-5 1 , which exhi bits
all relevant records concerning the sal e of the Suva l and.
ro. " Report of George H. Scidmore, U. S. Speci al Agent, " jul y 3, 1 89 3 ,
i n United States n. d. , Appendix, exhi bi t 6o, p. 3 2 1 . The site of the col oni al
capi tal was hotly debated in Fi j i soon after the establ ishment of the col ony
in 1 874. As earl y as 1 876, Governor Gordon was i ncl i ned to choose Suva
and confidently stated that "the l and on which the town would be bui l t at
Suva can be obtai ned without di fficul ty and without expense" ( Despatch
No. 1 8 5I I 876, " Report of Commission on Savu-savu, as Si te for a Cap
ital , " November 1 8, 1 876, National Archives of Fij i , Suva; see al so Derrick
1 9 5 3 : 205-8; Whitelaw 1 966: 42) .
I I . " Report of George H. Scidmore, U. S. Speci al Agent" and "The
Case of Benson Robert Henry, " in United States n. d. , p. 3 7
1 2. The publ i c auction took pl ace on November 22, r 8 8o. See john B.
Thurston, acting commissioner for l ands, " Sal e of Land, Suva, " August
1 6, r 8 8o, i n Coloni al Secretary's Office [ henceforth cited as CSO]
26o7! I 8 87, encl osure in CSO 25 99!I 8 8 8, National Archi ves of Fij i , Suva.
1 3 Nari koso origi nal l y belonged to Lami peopl e, who l i ve on a hi l l
located on the other side of Queens Road. According to the Nati ve Lands
Commi ssi on record, the government origi nal l y had pl anned to relocate the
i nhabitants of the Suva Peni nsul a to Ki uva, in Tai l evu. However, Suva
peopl e desi red to remai n near Suva. Whi l e Suva peopl e suggested Sama
bul a ( today a suburb of Suva) as an al ternative site, john B. Thurston
instead selected Narikoso, in Lami ( sec Ai tukutuku raraba kei na yalayala
ni vei Tikina ko: Suva, Raviravi, Sawau, Native Lands and Fisheries Com
mission, Suva) . In a Native Lands Commission report, Lami people are
described as having "a far lower social rank" than Suva people ( Basi l
Thomson and Mari ka Toroca's report on the di spute between Suva people
and Lami people, September 22, 1 89 3 , in CSO 3 22 r ! I 8 93 , Nati onal
Archi ves of Fi j i , Suva) . A. M. Hocart, who vi si ted Suvavou in I 9 I O, noted
that Lami people constituted a border state ( bati) for Suva people and had
a duty to provide food for the chief of Suva ( Hocart n. d. a: 25 08 ) . Ac
cording to the Native Lands Commission records concerning Lami people,
Lami was subj ect to the chief of Suva ( see Ai tukutuku raraba kei na yala
yala ni vei Tikina ko: Suva, Raviravi, Sawau) .
1 4. Here I have i n mi nd Carol Greenhouse and Laura Nader's attention
to the link between religious and secul ar pursuits of j ustice ( see Greenhouse
1 9 8 6; Nader 1 990: 29 1 -3 08) .
1 5 . The Wesleyan missionaries David Cargi l l and Wi l l i am Cross, with
the hel p of josua Matei nani u, who had converted to Christianity in Tonga,
successful l y converted the Tui Nayau, the chief of Lau Islands, in 1 8 3 5 ( see
Garette 1 9 8 2: 1 02) . Following the conversion of Cakobau, the paramount
Notes
1 49
chief of Bau, i n 1 8 54, more Fi j i ans fol lowed ( see Garette 1 9 8 2: 1 1 4-5,
284) .
1 6. Upon Ratu Avorosa's request, t he pioneering SDA mi ssi onary John
Fulton establ ished the mission base in Suvavou. From Suvavou, Ful ton
expanded mi ssi on activities to other parts of Fi j i . Paul i asi Bunoa, a
Methodist mi ni ster married to a Suvavou woman, became the fi rst Fi j i an
SDA ordai ned mi ni ster in 1 906 and served as a mi ssi onary to outer i sl ands
( Hare 1 9 8 5 [ 1 969] : 1 05-1 7; see al so Krause 1 9 8 6) . Accordi ng to a letter
written by Ratu Avorosa and his SDA fol l owers in 1 900, there were twen
ty-nine members of the SDA church in the vi l l age at that time ( Avorosa
Tuivuya et al. to governor, September 2 1 , 1 900, in CSO 6o6! I 9oo, enclo
sure i n CSO 225 6I I 902, National Archi ves of Fi j i , Suva) .
1 7. Avorosa Tuivuya et al . t o native commissioner, November 1 9,
1 898 , in CSO 4 6 5 5I I 8 98 , Nati onal Archives of Fij i, Suva.
1 8 . Assi stant Col oni al Secretary Wi l l i am L. Al l ardyce's mi nute, Decem
ber 1 5 , 1 898, in CSO 465 5I I 8 98 .
1 9. Ibi d . .
20. Letter t o commissioner for Rewa, August 1 8, 1 903 , i n CSO 3 8 2o/
1 903 , National Archives of Fi j i , Suva.
2 1 . Nati ve commi ssi oner to coloni al secretary, August 27, 1 903, in
CSO 3 8 20/ 1 903 .
22. Letter to native commissioner, January 25 , 1 904, in CSO 5 62/
1 904, Nati onal Archives of Fi j i , Suva.
2 3 . Commi ssi oner of works to nati ve commissioner, January 29, 1 904,
in CSO 5 62I I 904; emphasi s i n origi nal .
24. Governor Henry Jackson to coloni al secretary, February 1 8, 1 904,
i n CSO 5 6 2!I 904.
25. Native commissioner's letter to Suvavou, February 19, 1 904, in
CSO 3 84! I 9o4.
26. Avorosa Tuivuya et al . to native commissioner, August 2 1 , 1 907, i n
CSO 4469II 907, Nati onal Archives of Fij i, Suva.
27. In 1 905 , Governor Im Thurn removed restricti ons to the al i enation
of further Fij ian land and enabl ed non-Fij i ans to acqui re land for settle
ment ( see France 1 969: 1 49-54; Scarr 1 984: 1 1 2) .
28. Im Thurn t o col oni al secretary, September 1 6, 1 907, i n CSO
44691 I 9o7.
29. Richard Ranki ne, cl erk to the Executive Counci l , to col oni al secre
tary, September 20, 1 907, in CSO 4469/1 907.
30. At the ti me of my fiel dwork, Suvavou people described the money
they received as the government's "ex gratia compensation, " or /aloma
( l iteral ly, " l ove" or "chari ty" ) .
3 1 . According t o Si r Francis Winter, "qui t rent" meant "the rent that is
pai d by a tenant to the lord of the manor, " and, in hi s opinion, thi s should
Notes
not be used i n Fij i . " Lands are some times granted i n fee si mpl e subj ect to
the payment of an annual rent properly cal l ed a ' fee farm rent,"' he noted,
and he therefore i nterpreted the money granted to Suvavou people annu
al l y as an " annui ty" ( CSO 2908/ 1 8 87, quoted in Acting Attorney General
Gi lchri st Al exander to colonial secretary, October 8, 1 907, in CSO
44691 1 907) .
3 2. Gi lchri st Al exander t o coloni al secretary, October 8, 1 907, i n CSO
44691 1 907.
3 3 I bi d.
34 The fi rst mi l i tary coup took place on May 14, 1 9 8
7
, onl y one
month after the formation of the National Federation-Labour coal ition
government led by Dr. Ti moci Bavadra, a commoner Fij ian from western
Viti Levu. The Bavadra government came into being when a coal i ti on of
the Nati onal Federation Party l argely supported by lndo-Fij i ans and the
mul ti-ethnic Fiji Labour Party defeated the Al l i ance Party government led
by the paramount chief of Lau Isl ands, Ratu Sir Kami sese Mara, who had
been prime mi ni ster since Fij i 's independence in 1 970. As a l ieutenant
colonel of the Royal Fi j i Mi l itary Forces and a commoner Fij ian from
Cakaudrove, northern Fi j i , Rabuka led soldiers into the Parl i ament House
to topple the Bavadra government. Fol l owing the fi rst coup, Rabuka let his
chi ef, the Tui Cakau, the paramount chi ef of Cakaudrove, and Governor
General Ratu Si r Penai a Gani l au lead negoti ati ons between the Al l i ance
Party and the National Federation-Labour coal i ti on. However, di ssati sfied
with the process of Gani l au's negoti ations, Rabuka l ed the second mi l itary
coup on September 25 , 1 9 87, to seize leadershi p of the country himself ( see
Dean and Ri tova 1 9 8 8 ; Lal 1 9 8 8 ) .
3 5 . The Suva vou people I knew di d not share these views. Instead, thei r
perception of themsel ves often focused on the posi ti ve di fferences between
their l i festyle and that of other Fi j i an vi l l agers because of their fami l i arity
with Suva's city l i fe. A Suvavou woman observed to me, for example, that
Suvavou people were more " i ndi vi dual i sti c, " meaning that their dai l y
activities focused more on each fami l y ( matavuvale) than on the vi l lage,
and that vi l l age women tended to be more vocal than other women.
Suvavou people's perception of the l anguage that they spoke al so marked
a di fference from other Fij ians. They described thei r l anguage ( na vosa
vaka Suvavou) as " pidgi n, " meaning that they used Engl ish words in Fi j i an
sentences.
3 6. By 1 994, the Department of Lands had received 83 appl ications for
fundi ng to acqui re 1 20 titles in total from Fi j i an groups who cl aimed to be
the origi nal l andowners of freehold and state l and ( i nterview with Samu
Levu, permanent secretary to the mi ni ster for l ands, October 3, 1 994) .
Contention surrounding the rights of commoners t o l and al ienated by thei r
chiefs had become so great that the 1 98 7 coup l eader and subsequent
Notes
Prime Mi ni ster Sitiveni Rabuka even cal l ed into questi on the security of
freehol d property during the election campaign in earl y 1 994, when, as
l eader of the Soqosoqo ni Vakavulewa ni Taukei ( SVT) Party, he promised
to " revi ew" the val idity of the ori gi nal transactions of al l freehol d l and.
See Si rel i Korovul avul a, " PM to Review Freehol d Land, " Fiji Times,
February 8, 1 994. This statement was made at a meeting with Suvavou
peopl e. The Rewa provi nci al constituency, of which Suvavou is a part, had
el ected a non-SVT candi date in the 1 992 el ecti on, and in promisi ng such a
review, Rabuka urged Suvavou people to vote for SVT candi dates in the
coming electi on. However, as a result of cri ti ci sm from other pol i ti cal par
ties, Rabuka was forced to retract the statement a few days later and
assure voters that the government would not put freehol d property own
ers in danger. See Sirel i Korovul avul a, " Freehol d Land Worries Tora:
Revi ew Can Cause Instabi l i ty, Says ANC, " Fiji Times, february 9, 1 994;
and " Freehold Ti tles Secure, Says PM, " i bi d. , February 1 0, 1 994.
3 7 For exampl e, i n 1 99 1 , when t he i sl and of Kanacea in northern Fi j i,
which the paramount chi ef of Cakaudrove, the Tui Cakau, had origi nal l y
sold to a European settler in 1 8 68, was sold by an Austral i an company,
Carpenters ( Fi j i ) Ltd. , to an American company, the government persuad
ed Carpenters to pay compensation to the i sl and's origi nal l andowners,
Kanacea people, who had been relocated to the island of Taveuni at the
time of the original sale. However, to the outrage of both the chief of
Kanacea and the Tui Cakau, a number of Kanacea commoners demanded
that the i sl and be returned to its ori gi nal l andowners because the ori gi nal
sal e by the Tui Cakau had been i nval i d. See "Group Hi ts Kanacea Sal e, "
Fiji Times, February 1 4, 1 99 1 ; " Sal e of Kanacea Is Legal : Mi ni ster, " edi
tori al , i bi d. , February 1 7, 1 99 1; " Kanacea Questi on, " i bi d. , February 1 8,
1 99 1 ; "US Firm Buys Kanacea, " i bi d. , May 1 8, 1 99 1 . In response to the
popul i st attack of Kanacea people's consul tant Franci s Waqa Sokoni bogi
on the Tui Cakau for having sol d his peopl e's land, the government and
chiefs of Cakaudrove pressured the chi efs and people of Kanacea to dis
tance themselves from Sokoni bogi ( see Franci s Waqa Sokoni bogi, "The
Kudru na Vanua: A Review of the Issues, 1 989-1 994, " pp. 8-9; on fi le
with the author) . As reported in the Fiji Times, the Bauan chi ef Ratu
Wi l l i am Togani val u, who was mi ni ster for lands i n the interim govern
ment, said that the Tui Cakau, Ratu Golea, had sol d the i sl and of Kanacea
because Kanacea people had sided with Tongans in a war between the peo
pl e of Cakaudrove and Tonga. "The Tui Cakau at that time owned all the
land because he was the 'Head Chief' and for that reason he did not need
the permissi on from anybody to sel l the l and, " Ratu Wi l l i am reportedl y
sai d ( " Sal e of Kanacea Is Legal : Mi ni ster, " Fiji Times, February 1 7, 1 99 1 ;
see al so Sayes 1 9 8 2, 1 9 84; LCC reports nos. 3-4, Nati onal Archives of
Fi j i , Suva; Ai tukutuku raraba, Cakaudrove, Native Lands and Fisheri es
Notes
Commi ssi on, Suva) . The government rej ected Waqa's demand, and the
government, chiefs of Kanacea, and Carpenters agreed that out of the
F$6, ooo,ooo for which the island was sold, Carpenters would pay the sum
of F$ 1 ,ooo,ooo as compensation to the people of Kanacea.
3 8 . Epel i Kanakana, "To Commemorate the Internati onal Year for the
Indigenous Peopl e: Suva Land, " Fiji Times, june 4, 1 9 9 3 .
3 9 For exampl e, when three Publ ic Works Department workers were
ki l led i n the course of a reclamation project at Wal u Bay in Suva i n the
early 1 990s, Suva City Counci l offi ci al s concluded that the accidents might
have resulted from their fai l ure to seek the Tui Suva's permission for the
project. They visited the Tui Suva and presented val uabl es, but the Tui
Suva refused to accept the gi fts and instead poi nted out that he hi msel f
needed to perform a speci al and very publ ic ceremony to seek the forgive
ness of the spirits residing at the bay. Shortly thereafter, he performed the
el aborate ceremony before members of the l ocal press ( see "Tui Suva
Performs Bri dge Ceremony, " Fiji Times, March 1 9, 1 99 1 ) . Si mi l arl y, when
the Austral i an government proposed to use the si te of an ol d house i n
Naul uvatu, Suva, for its new embassy, it fi rst engaged the Tui Suva to per
form a ceremony at the site ( "Tui Suva Exorcises Aust Govt Property, "
i bi d. , May 9, 1 99 1 ) .
40. " Squatter Tol d to Leave Park Land, " Fiji Times, February 26,
1 994; Rusi ate Matai ka, " It's State Land, Says Govt, " i bi d. , March 1 ,
1 994; " Suva Land Furore, " i bi d. , April 1 6, 1 994.
4 1 . See "Team t o Review Chi efs' Proposal , " Fiji Times, May 1 8, 1 9 84;
Rodney V. Cole, Stephen I . Levine, and Anare V. Matahau, "The Fi j i an
Provi nci al Admi nistrati on: A Review, " Parl i ament of Fi j i , Parl i amentary
Paper No. 5 5 of 1 9 8 5 , National Archives of Fiji, Suva.
4 2. The ful l Fi j i an name of the foundation i s Yavutu ni Taukei ni Vanua
ko Vi ti ( l iteral l y, " Foundation of the Owners of Land i n Fij i " ) . The word
yavutu means " foundation" i n the sense of one's origin place and is thus
very di fferent i n connotation from the Engl i sh equi val ent.
4 3 See Wai ni kiti Waqa, "Fi j i an Watchdog Group Formed, " Fiji Times,
August 7, 1 9 9 3 . I visited Matahau's office on occasi on i n October and
November 1 994, but I did not observe the subsequent development of hi s
movement firsthand. Suvavou people had di stanced themselves from
Matahau by the end of 1 994, because Prime Mi nister Sitiveni Rabuka di d
not l i ke Matahau's involvement i n Suvavou people's negotiations wi th the
government. Although Matahau continued to cl ai m a portion of compen
sation that Suvavou people might receive in the future as payment for his
services i n producing the report, Matahau's own i nterest i n the Suva land
case seemed to have faded when we met agai n i n late 1 9 9 5 . At the time,
he was busy with another controversi al di spute concerning Namoli vil
lagers, Lautoka Town's ori gi nal l andowners.
Notes 1 5 3
I n 1 994, Matahau had begun to el aborate a religious character for hi s
movement. At hi s office, there was a curtained space where Yavutu mem
bers prayed each day for one parti cul ar vanua ( chiefdom) in Fij i . Matahau
had al so begun to cl ai m that hi s movement and company were successors
of Apolosi Nawai 's Viti Kabani , which had attracted a l arge number of fol
lowers i n the earl y twentieth century ( see Kasuga 2001 ; Macnaught 1 979,
1 9 8 2) . According to hi s associates, Matahau's father was the pol ice officer
who had been assigned to throw Apol osi into the ocean. When Matahau's
father l ater encountered Apol osi in Suva and apol ogized to hi m for what
he had done, Apol osi told hi m that hi s son would become hi s successor. I n
1 995 , Anare Matahau conducted archi val research on Apol osi to locate
the reportedl y hi dden bank accounts of the Viti Kabani . He hel d a widel y
publ icized meeting with the governor of the Fi j i Reserve Bank, who
expl ai ned that the Reserve Bank di d not handl e pri vate accounts and sug
gested that he try the National Bank of Fij i instead ( Robert Matau,
" Getting Back a Heritage, " Fiji's Daily Post, Jul y 8, 1 9 9 5 ) . From late 1 994
t o earl y 1 995 , Matahau al so teamed up with Apol osi 's son to provide tra
ditional medi ci nal treatments at Matahau's office, which was packed with
patients.
Yavutu's evolution into a quasi-rel igious movement was probabl y part
l y because its origi nal purpose was completely sati sfied i n l ate 1 994 by the
government's announcement that i t woul d return state land to its origi nal
owners.
44 Anare Matahau and Associates 1 99 1 : 206.
4 5 Fiji Government Gazette, no. 1 October 1 0, 1 874, Nati onal Ar
chives of Fij i, Suva.
46. Governor Arthur Gordon l ai d the foundations for Fij i 's l and pol i
ci es. Hi s pol i ci es aimed at protecting the Fi j i an popul ati on and preserving
and making use of what he understood to be Fi j i an chi efl y custom ( France
1 969: 1 02-28 ) .
47 Anare Matahau a nd Associates 1 99 1 : 207.
48. I bi d. , 208-1 4.
49 According t o the file, reviewed by me, forty-five copies of thi s map
were produced and di stri buted to vari ous sections of the Department of
Lands. It thus seems unusual that no copy of the map has survived.
50. Ann Stoler has drawn attention to archives' power to seduce re
searchers into uncovering " state secrets " as their obj ective ( Stoler 2002a:
98-99) . What underl ies t hi s observation i s Stoler's i mpul se to reestabl i sh a
more critical perspective. In contrast, here I seek to use the seductive power
of archives as a tool to bring into view what Suvavou researchers, govern
ment offi ci al s, and anthropologists like myself share.
5 1 . " Apparently no formal Deed was ever executed . . . but there i s sub
stanti al evidence to show that the whol e transaction had been careful l y
1 5 4 Notes
arranged, " the coloni al secretary wrote the governor concerning the Suva
land case on February 1 7, 1 904 (in CSO 5 6 2! I 904, Nati onal Archives of
Fi j i , Suva) .
5 2 Im Thurn t o col oni al secretary, September 1 6, 1 907, i n CSO
4469I I 907, Nati onal Archi ves of Fij i , Suva.
5 3 Col oni al Secretary Arthur Mahaffy to Crompton and Muspratt,
November 1 2, 1 907, i n CSO 4469! I 907.
54 Col oni al Secretary Arthur Mahaffy to Crompton and Muspratt,
December 4, 1 907, i n CSO 4469! I 907.
5 5 . Col oni al Secretary Arthur Mahaffy to acting attorney general , No
vember 3 0, 1 907, i n CSO 4469! I 907.
Chapter 3 A Politics of Self-Knowledge
1 . Such disputes about chiefshi p are very common i n Fi j i an pol i ti es.
Christina Toren has demonstrated that these di sputes constitute an i ntri n
sic feature of Fi j i an soci al i ty, predicated on a tensi on between equal ity and
hi erarchy ( see Toren 1 990, 1 998, 1 999) .
2. The rel ationship between parts and wholes i n ethnographi c writing
has been the subj ect of considerable scrutiny i n the past two decades as the
image of a coherent social whol e that neatl y i ntegrates soci al parts such as
economics, rel i gi on, and l aw has been rendered fictional . The resulting
effect i s that an aesthetics of partiality domi nates current ethnographi c
wri ti ng. Thi s noti on of parti al ity emphasizes the impossi bi l ity of defi ni ng
a whol e. From Strathern's point of vi ew, thi s aesthetics of partial i ty i s si m
pl y a natural outcome of the di rection of the parts/wholes rel ati onshi p
entai l ed i n Euro-American knowledge.
3 The titling work of the NLC continued until the mi d 1 960s ( see
France 1 969: 1 8 1 , n. 34; Nayacakal ou 1 97 1 : 208 ) .
4 Rutz 1 978 : 23 ; emphasi s i n original . However, Rutz al so acknowl
edged that vi l l agers had begun to stress offi ci al l y registered boundaries of
mataqali l and i nstead of ri ghts to " fal low l ands " ( veimada) deri vi ng from
actual use, reasoning that they had begun to use mataqali as l andowni ng
uni ts because of their need to " secure more permanent rights" ( i bid. : 3 1 )
owing to their entry i nto commerci al farming.
5 Hocart 1 970 [ 1 9 3 6] : 1 04. It i s interesting, i n thi s respect, that when
Hocart vi si ted Suvavou i n 1 9 1 0, i nstead of attempting to identify actual
groups or l andowni ng uni ts, he recorded vi l l agers' methods for di vi di ng
exchange i tems, feasts, and tasks. Hocart recorded the exi stence of ni ne
mataqali for these purposes and detai l ed each mataqali's duti es and shares
of food i n feasting within Suvavou ( Hocart n. d. a: 25 1 3-1 5 , 2 5 8 8-9 1 ;
Hocart n. d. b : 3 74D) . Hocart further noted that Suvavou di vi ded i nto two
Notes I 5 5
for the purpose of preparing feasts: the people of the l and ( kai vanua) and
the peopl e of the sea ( kai wai ) . He noted that Mataqal i Roko Tui Suva, as
the chiefly mataqali, was neither kai wai nor kai vanua ( Hocart n. d. b:
3 7 3
Cl -
6. Hocart's use of the term " mutual " i s somewhat mi sl eadi ng, i n that
the term veiqaravi itsel f does not connote equal i ty. My conceptual ization
of the veiqaravi form fol l ows Hocart's i nsi ght about the i mportance of
havi ng two sides i n Fi j i an rituals rather than the idea of equal ity between
the two sides that the term "mutual " may i mpl y. I thank Marshal l Sahl i ns
for requesting cl ari fication on thi s matter.
7 Hocart al so observed that di vi si on focused on the di stri buti on of
ceremoni al duties in col l ectively performed ri tual s: " In Fij i the chi eftai ns
are not the heads of ri tual s which can be carri ed out separately, but office
bearers i n a great common ri tual . The herald cannot carry out alone the
duties he carried out i n that state ritual . The clans are not di stinguished by
having di fferent cults, but by having di fferent functions i n the common
cul t" ( Hocart I 970 [ I 9 3 6] : I 07) . By "common cul t, " Hocart meant the
offering of feasts to the chi ef and to the god the chi ef represented.
8 . Hocart I 9 p: 5 8 . As a resul t of the repeated operation of di vi si on,
whi ch produced di chotomi es at every l evel of social l i fe, Hocart noted, a
new version of these di vi si ons had surfaced: "A new and more solemn
i nterest seems to have al ready encroached upon the ol d dualism weakened
by excess. That newer enthusiasm was the service of the chief. He and his
fami l y were exal ted so far above the rest as to upset the ol d bal ance of
pai red groups . . . . The two sides that used to face each other, equal except
i n precedence, have begun to break up into units which all face the chi ef,
l i ke pl anets round the sun" ( i bid. ) .
9 The NLTB i s a body establ i shed by, but independent of, the govern
ment and under the authority of the high chiefs of Fi j i ( see Nayacakal ou
I 9 7 I ) .
I O. There was a hotel on Suvavou l and unti l i t was closed after a fire
i n the I 98os. The Seventh-Day Adventist Church took over the hotel site
and turned it into a secondary school .
I 1. Thi s i ncl uded not onl y approximately twenty-two acres of vi l lage
land reserved for the exclusive use of vi l l agers but al so vi l l agers' pl anti ng
ground ( kanakana) and many tracts of leased l and outside the vi l l age prop
er.
I 2. The Eastern Ward, in whi ch Del ai navesi is located, had a popul a
tion of 5 ,097 i n I 996 ( Bureau of Stati sti cs, I 996 Fi j i Census) .
I 3 . The original sum of 2oo was increased t o F$4,000 i n I972 and
agai n to F$9, 400 fol lowing the I 9 87 coup. See " Annuity Payments for
Crown Land at Suva Peni nsul a (The Domai n Si te) , " Cabi net Decision 1 28
Notes
of I 972, August 2, I 972, i n Cabi net Paper ( 72) I 2 I , i n Mi nistry of Fi j i an
Affai rs 3 6l92l7, Nati onal Archi ves of Fi j i , Suva; and " Suvavou to Get
More for Domai n, " Fiji Times, March 23 , I 9 8 8 .
1 4 Every June and December, when NLTB offici al s, accompanied by a
pol ice officer, came to the vi l l age to di stri bute rent money to representa
tives of each mataqali of the Ti ki na ko Suva ( the Fij i an District of Suva ) ,
assembl ed at the residence of the Tui Suva, Suvavou people received the
"Turaga ni Qal i , " "Turaga ni Mataqal i , " and "Mataqal i members " por
tions as one undi vi ded sum. A representative of Suvavou received the
money from the NLTB offici al s and then took i t from the Tui Suva's house
into a house across the vi l lage green, where representatives of each
mataqali were assembl ed. There, they di vi ded the rent. Household shares
of rent were mi ni mal , al though some mataqali pooled them and used them
for purchasing necessary exchange items.
I 5. One si gni ficant i nnovation Suvavou people made i n the convention
was to cl assi fy their mataqali into three categori es: l arge, medi um-sized,
and smal l . After the Tui Suva, the three yavusa heads, and the ten mataqali
heads had each taken their shares in I 99 5, for exampl e, the remainder was
divided as fol l ows:
Large Mataqal i ( mataqali levu)
Medium-sized Mataqal i ( mataqali veimama)
Smal l Mataqal i ( mataqali lailai)
Suvavou people cal led thi s " percentage" (pasede) .
F$2, 3 68 . 74
F$ 1 ,03 6. 28
F$8 1 4. 22
I 6. Davi d Wi l ki nson t o Bul i Suva, December 27, I 905 , i n Mi nistry of
Fi j i an Affai rs 3 6l92l7.
1 7. These rights were usual l y passed on from a parent to hi s or her chi l
dren. They were not excl usi ve to mataqali members but rather mi ght leave
the mataqali with a woman: When a vi l l age woman married a vi l lage man,
a pi ece of her mataqa/i's pl anting ground or house foundati on was often
transferred to her husband's mataqali, leading to di sputes i n l ater genera
tions. The origi nal l andhol di ng mataqali might claim such land, but i t
rarel y reverted to its origi nal owners at the death of a woman.
1 8 . The popul ati on of these settlements al so consisted of members of
the mataqali that owned the l and and other Suvavou residents who had
mari tal ties with that mataqali.
1 9 . The chiefly mataqali's last mal e member and holder of the title of
the Roko Tui Suva, Ratu Ravul o, died on Apri l 2 I , I 9 I 6 ( SNA I 3 67II 9 I 6,
Nati onal Archives of Fij i , Suva) . He had been married to a part-European
woman from Nukuwatu, Lami , but they di d not have any children. The
l ast survivor of the mataqali, Adi Salote, who had married into the
mataqali that held the chi efl y title of the Ka Levu i n Cuvu, Nadroga, died
i n August I 9 I 8 (A. J. Smal l to J. B. Suckl i ng, August 3 0, I 9 I 8, i n Meth-
Notes I 5 7
odist Church Record FII I I 9 I 8, Nati onal Archives of Fi j i , Suva; provi nci al
commissioner, Rewa to acti ng secretary for nati ve affai rs, September 3 0,
I 9 I 8, in CSO 8 3 I 8ll 9 I 8, Nati onal Archives of Fij i , Suva) . Following the
death of Adi Salote, Suvavou people attempted to bring her son, Ratu
Orisi, from Cuvu to Suvavou to be instal led as the Roko Tui Suva ( see SNA
29 3 sll 9 I 8, National Archives of Fi j i , Suva) . However, the government did
not al low this, because Ratu Orisi was not regi stered i n the i vola ni kawa
hula ( l andowners' register) for Suvavou.
20. cso 8 3 I 31 1 9 I 8 .
2 1 . I bi d.
22. CSO 72I 0I I 920, National Archives of Fij i , Suva. Subsequently, a
number of Bauan chiefs requested that the rent money reserved for Mata
qal i Roko Tui Suva be pai d to them, on the theory that Bau rul ed Suva
( Ratu Edward Wai ni u et al. to Roko Tui Tai levu, Jul y 20, I 9 2 I , in SNA
1 soo/ I 9 2 I , Nati onal Archives of Fij i , Suva) . See Ratu Popi Seni l ol i to sec
retary for native affairs, August 29, I 9 29, in SNA I 743l l 929, National
Archives of Fi j i , Suva.
2 3 . See CSO 3 22 I I I 8 93 , National Archives of Fi j i , Suva. At the ti me of
the resettlement of Suva peopl e i n I 8 8 2, a pi ece of Lami people's l and was
given to Suva people as a gift. Later, however, a conflict between the two
groups arose and the government proposed this sol uti on.
24. Robert Boyd to secretary for nati ve affairs, May I O, I 9 2 I , in CSO
2 I 3 2I I 923 , National Archives of Fij i , Suva.
2 5 . Ibi d.
26. Letter to provinci al commissioner, Rewa, June I 5 , 1 9 2 3 , NLC
I 09h3 , i n SNA 78 61 T 923 , Nati onal Archives of Fij i , Suva.
27. Ibi d. ; my transl ati on.
28. Ai tukutuku raraba kei nai yalayala ni vei Tikina ko: Suva, Ravi
ravi, Sawau, Native Lands and Fisheries Commission, Suva, p. I 9; my
transl ati on.
29. Ibi d.
30. Ibi d. , p. 23; my transl ati on.
3 1 . Cf. Lederman I 9 8 6; Verdery I 999= I I 7-24. My focus on the aes
thetics of Suvavou people's narratives of the past al so resonates with Arj un
Appadurai 's attention to the formal constraints i n the representation of the
past ( Appadurai r 9 8 1 ) .
3 2. At the time of my fieldwork, however, Suvavou people recal l ed that
the government had not di stri buted shares of rent money for leased por
tions of the vi l l age l and i n thi s manner until the 1 960s. According to them,
each mataqali had received rent for its own kanakana, or pl anti ng ground.
Indeed, according to government records, some ti me i n the I 9 sos, a sec
tion of the vi l l age petitioned the government to make the method of di vi
si on of rent conform to the method of vi l lage l and registration in the NLC
Notes
records. In response, the chai rman of the Native Lands Commission wrote
to Suvavou people i n 1 962:
The three yavusa of Suvavou own t he vi l lage l and i n common. As far
as rent money for [leased portions of l and] is concerned, it bel ongs to
al l members of the three yavusa as they own the l and in common. While
the Turaga i Taukei of the Vanua ko Suva receives the usual portion of
the rent money al located to the holder of that title, there are no shares
for the Turaga ni Qali or Turaga ni Mataqal i because the land i s owned
i n common. Shares that the Turaga ni Qali and the Turaga ni Mataqal i
have usual l y received are put together with money for the mataqali i n
the three yavusa. Members of mataqali i n these yavusa must select their
representative who wi l l come and col lect the money. It is an important
duty for this representative to take the money on behal f of the members
of the mataqali i n the three yavusa and to divide it i n a proper way
among al l mataqali members. [The method of division] is entirely up to
you and the Native Lands Commission has no further decision to make.
(J. S. Thomson, chai rman of the Native Lands and Fisheries Com
mission, "Nai !avo ni l i si ni veivanua ni vei yavusa ena koro ko Suva
vou [Rent money for yavusa l and i n Suvavou vi l l age] , " February 1 8,
1 9 62, in possession of a resident of Suvavou; my translation)
Vi l l agers cal l ed this new method Tu Levu from the expression taukeni
levu tu ( owned as a whole) , referring to the fact that the vi l lage land i s
owned i n common i n i ts entirety as an undi vi ded whol e. The introduction
of this system i ntensi fied di sagreement among vi l l agers over the correct
method of distribution of rent shares duri ng the 1 960s. This was also a
period when a l arge tract of vi l l age l and on a hi l l known as Del ainavesi
was developed by the NLTB i nto a residential area. As a resul t of this
development, the amount of rent money col lected dramatically increased.
Some vi l l agers fel t that the Tu Levu system was unfair. They clearly recog
ni zed thei r own cl an's planting ground ( kanakana) as separate and wished
to receive the entire amount of rent deriving from that portion of the l and.
The subsequent development of the percentage system further intensified
these vi l l agers' di ssatisfaction with the Tu Levu system. Mataqali such as
the Tui Suva's had already gi ven away al most al l of thei r own kanakana to
outsiders on a vakavanua basi s but sti l l received shares of rent ari si ng from
the kanakana of other mataqali. Furthermore, critics pointed out that the
percentage system al lowed the Tui Suva's mataqali, as a l arge mataqali, to
receive greater shares than others.
3 3 At the time of my fieldwork, there were at least three companies
( kabani) i n Suvavou. One of them was a company formed by an i tokato
ka within Mataqal i Vakal ol o i n 1 9 9 1 to develop the i tokatoka's own
pl anting ground ( kanakana) into a resi denti al development. The company
Notes 1 5 9
heads negotiated with the leaders of the three yavusa to al low the i taka
taka to develop its own separate kanakana. Endorsement was needed from
the three yavusa, because Suvavou l and was offi ci al l y owned by the three
yavusa of the vi l l age as common property. The company approached the
NLTB and received permission to attempt a new form of development in
which the company would market its own land rather than handing it over
to the NLTB for development. The i tokatoka company mentioned above
also i nvested i n Fij i an Hol di ngs, a company establ ished by the Great
Counci l of Chiefs, which i nvested in successful local companies with the
help of loans at favorabl e rates from the government. Fij i an Hol di ngs sold
its own shares to companies owned by provinci al counci l s ( yasana) , to vi l
l age-based companies such as the Suvavou i tokatoka company, and to
i ndi vi dual Fi j i ans. Fij i an Hol di ngs was typical of a new post-coup form of
development ai med at increasing the wealth of i ndigenous Fi j i ans by com
bi ni ng corporate and traditional forms.
3 4 The consultant Anare Matahau acted as the "advi ser" to the com
pany and the office of the fi rm of Anare Matahau and Associ ates was reg
istered as the company's offi ci al address.
Chapter 4 Setting Knowl edge in Motion
1 . Cf. Merry 2000. I have in mi nd the stri ki ng shi ft i n focus from
Bernard Cohn's attention to the uni ntended consequences of col oni al pol i
cies such as the obj ectification of castes i n the census i n South Asi a to Ann
Stoler's attention to the fai l ed schemes of Dutch colonial offi ci al s ( Cohn
1 98 7b; Stoler 2002b) .
2. Joanne Rappaport and others have drawn attention t o i nstances of
l ocal appropriation of bureaucratic means such as l and registration ( see,
e. g. , Rappaport 1 994) . For example, David Hol mberg and Kathryn March
have observed the significance of l and records for Tamang i n Nepal : "The
meani ng of writing . . . is di fferent for nonl iterate Tamang vi l l agers than
l i terate admi ni strative officers. In the perspective of admi ni strative or j udi
ci al officers of the state, written documents have a legal force i n reference
pri mari l y to what is written. In vi l l age contexts, the soci al and di scursive
context of the production of written documents pl ays an essenti al part to
their meaning. The production of a l ocal document i s a ri tual ized event in
which the document symbol izes the understanding reached oral l y and
gi ves an authority as much to the context as to the words set down on
paper. Documents have metaphoric val ue for Tamang vi l l agers that is not
recorded i n the written word as read" ( Hol mberg and March 1 999: 1 3 ) .
These observations are certai nl y pertinent to my discussion of Suvavou
people's approach to l and records. However, in the present study, I seek to
demonstrate that there is as much commonal ity and resonance as di sj une-
1 60
Notes
ture between knowledge practice of Suvavou researchers and government
offi ci al s. My general claim i s that careful ethnographi c attention must be
paid to seemingly bureaucratic techni ques as wel l as seemingly local and
di stinctive practices entailed i n the production of documents ( see also
Riles, n. d. a ) .
3 My present attention t o what some may characterize a s the " di a
logical " character of Suvavou petitions resonates, for exampl e, with the
general orientation of Mi chael Si l verstei n's careful anal ysis of Edward
Sapi r's recounting of a Ki ksht ( Wasco-Wishram Chinookan) narrative
( Si l verstein 1 996) . Si l verstein draws attention to "an earlier otherwise
secret discursive l i fe of the text ( s) " seen i n its di al ogical ity ( Si lverstein
1 996: 8 1 -8 2) .
4 I thank Jane Col l i er for drawing my attention t o Natal i e Zemon
Davi s's work.
5 Suvavou people's interest i n documents reflects a local articul ation
of l i teracy as a system of authority ( cf. Shryock 1 997) . Literacy and i n par
ti cul ar, the abi l ity to conduct archival research has generated a complex
interrel ati onshi p between education and rank. Suvavou people repeatedly
told me that educated people such as schoolteachers, church mi ni sters,
lawyers, and consul tants were more capabl e of conducting archival
research but, at the same ti me, the very possession of archival records al so
i nfl uenced their eval uati on of the truthful ness of a story. Therefore, people
i n Suvavou tended to regard those vi l l age elders capable of demonstrating
the correspondence between their stories and archival records i n their pos
session as knowledgeabl e ( kila vinaka) regardless of their educational
background.
6. Letter to mi nister for Fi j i an affairs, May 24, 1 973 , i n Mi ni stry of
Fi j i an Affairs 3 6l92l7, National Archives of Fi j i , Suva.
7 Al l heads of mataqali wi thi n two yavusa of Suvavou possessed NLC
l i sts of i tokatoka and mataqali members, but none of the mataqali heads
i n the other yavusa had NLC records of their own mataqali membershi p.
Not even Mataqal i Koromakawa had a l ist of its own members. Thi s
might have resul ted from the reluctance on the part of Mataqal i Kai wai ,
the present chi efl y and l eadi ng mataqali of this yavusa, to di stri bute these
NLC records within the yavusa. At the time of my fieldwork, both gov
ernment offici al s and vi l l agers were under the impression that only the
chief or leader (i liuilu) of the vanua ( chiefdom) could request these records
from the NLC.
8. For exampl e, the head of a Suvavou mataqali kept a record prepared
by Native Lands Commissioner Davi d Wi l ki nson i n 1 899 showing that hi s
mataqali was registered as a l andowni ng uni t i n another peri -urban vi l l age
near Suva. He had kept the record as evidence of his mataqali's entitlement
to shares of rent arising from leased properties i n that vi l l age.
Notes I 6 I
9 Avorosa Tuivuya et a! . to native commissioner, November I 9, I 898,
i n CSO 465 5l l 898, Nati onal Archives of Fi j i , Suva.
I O. See, e. g. , CSO 269ol l 923 , CSO 2689l l 923 , Nati onal Archives of
Fij i , Suva.
I 1 . Governor Henry Jackson to col oni al secretary, February I 8, I 904,
i n CSO 5 62ll 904, Nati onal Archives of Fij i , Suva.
I 2. Nakauvadra is also the name of an actual mountai n range. Many
studies have drawn attention to the importance of topographic knowledge
i n maki ng cl ai ms to ri tual precedence and l and rights i n the Paci fic ( see,
e. g. , J. J. Fox I 979; Fox and Sather I 996; Kahn I 990; Lederman I 98 6;
Parmentier I 9 87) .
I 3 . Osea Kai bal e Rokosele, "Serekal i kei Suva, " cl i ppi ng from Nailala
kai ( i n possession of a resident of Suvavou) .
I 4. My argument echoes Elizabeth Povinel l i 's cl ai m that Austral i an
Aboriginal women strategi cal l y invoke the " l anguage of i ndeterminacy" i n
their efforts to " negotiate and i nterrel ate" di fferent domai ns of knowledge
( Povi nel l i I 993 = 68o) .
Chapter 5. Intimating Fulfillment
1 . Chakrabarty I 997= 3 5; and see al so Douglas I 9 89; Herzfel d I 990;
Keane I 997a, I 997b. My discussion of Fij i an Christians' uses of l anguage
builds on Richard Bauman, Wi l l i am Hanks, Susan Hardi ng, Webb Keane,
and others' pioneering work on religious l anguage ( see Bauman I 9 8 3 ,
1 98 9 [ 1 975 ] ; Hanks I 996a; Hardi ng I 987, 2ooo; Keane I 997a, I 997b;
and see al so Toml i nson 2oooa, 2ooob, 2004) . These scholars have drawn
particul ar attention to religious practitioners' own conceptions of the lim
its and possi bi l i ties of l anguage i n accessing experienti al l y i naccessible
entities.
2. According to the I 9 8 6 census, the vast maj ority of Fij i 's ethnic Fi j i an
popul ati on ( 74. 2 percent) belongs to the Methodist Church, whi l e
Seventh-Day Adventists constitute onl y 4 percent of the ethnic Fi j i an pop
ulation ( Fi j i Government I 98 9: I ?; cf. Ernst I 994: 202) .
3 . Sabbath School cl asses fol lowed a booklet entitled The Adult
Sabbath School Lessons, produced at the SDA Church's international
headquarters. Classes usually focused on a particul ar section of Scripture,
such as the Book of Joshua ( Apri l-June I 99 5 ) , on a particul ar subj ect,
such as the Holy Spirit (July-September I 99 5 ) , or on the proper method
of Bible study ( January-March I 996) .
4 The Sabbath School di scussi on took place at the Suvavou Seventh
Day Church on July 29, I 995 All translations are mine unless otherwise
i ndicated.
5 Sermon at the Suvavou Methodist Church, June I 8, I995; my translation.
Notes
6. Sermon at the Suvavou SDA Church, February 3, 1 996; my trans
lation.
7 Sermon at the Suvavou SDA Church, January 1 3 , 1 996; my trans
lation.
8. Although some Adventist men, especi al l y young members of the
church, preferred to wear trousers instead of a sulu ski rt, especi al l y i n the
winter, SDA elders i n Suvavou usually wore sulu vakataga.
9 Cf. Hocart 1 9 5 2: 5 1 -52, 57; 1 970 [ 1 9 3 6] : 270. The veiqaravi form
i s used in every ki nd of gift-giving, ranging from marriage ceremonies and
mortuary rites to apology ( see Arno 1 976b; Hickson 1 979; Hocart 1 970
[ 1 9 3 6] ; Ravuvu 1 987; Toren 1 990; Wi l l i ksen Bakker 1 98 6) .
1 0. The role of the spokesman i n Fi j i an gi ft-giving may have derived
from a more institutional ized role of the high chief's spokesman ( matani
vanua, l iteral l y, " face of the l and" ) . Unl i ke that of the i nfl uenti al Samoan
tulafale ( orator) ( see Duranti 1 994; Shore 1 9 8 2; cf. Yankah 1 99 5 ) , the
political role of the matanivanua i s l i mited to the proper arrangement of
ritual attendance ( Hocart 1 970 [ 1 9 3 6] : 1 9 1 ) .
1 1 . For example, when a delegation consi sted of women or young men,
a man from the gi ft-receiving side might speak on behal f of the delegati on.
1 2. For Fi j i an conceptions of the causes of i l lness and death more gen
eral l y, see Becker 1 9 9 5 : 1 1 2-23 ; de Marzan 1 98 7: 5 8; Spencer 1 94 1 . See
al so Bel shaw 1 964: 1 44-4 5 .
1 3 . The identity of the " si de" was ambiguous and opened u p to i nter
pretation at infinitely recedi ng levels of general ity. The group of men and
women assembled for the ceremony was a " delegation" representing mul
ti pl e entities, which might or might not be present. A gi ft-giving event was
located at the end of a longer chai n of numerous gi ft-giving events on the
gift-givers' side i n that the delegation had accumul ated gifts from among a
wider range of people than the gi ft-giving group speci fical l y represented i n
their spokesman's speech. Each smal l er gi ft-giving event took a less el abo
rated but similar veiqaravi form. At each level, the gi ft-receivers' si de
assumed ful l responsi bi lity for the use of the gi fts they received. As the
Fi j i ans I knew stressed, the gift-givers had no say over the way the gi ft
receivers di stri buted the gi fts at the next stage of exchange. In other words,
at the time of exchange of gifts and speeches, the question of who actual
ly contri buted to this event behi nd the scenes or who would recei ve a por
tion of the gifts was not important. That was a question each si de con
templated independently before and after the event.
1 4. Al l ceremoni al speeches di scussed i n this section were recorded i n
Suvavou on September 27, 1 99 5 . Al l translations are mi ne.
1 5 . Cf. Ravuvu 1 9 87: 25 4-60. The Fij i an l anguage distinguishes be
tween the first person pl ural " i nclusive" pronouns daru, datou, and da, by
Notes
which the speaker refers to both him- or herself and those to whom he or
she i s speaki ng, and the first person plural "exclusive" pronouns keirau,
keitou, and keimami, by which the speaker excludes those to whom he or
she i s speaking.
I 6. The meaning of this phrase is not clear. Capell I 94 I focuses on the
meani ng of the word mudu ( to cut or cease) and translates the phrase as
" It is over! " Ravuvu I 98 7 translates i t as "Accepted with deep reverence! "
Hocart I 929 ( ? I ) does not provide a translation.
I ?. When the relationship between the gift-givers and the gi ft-receivers
was very close, the gi ft-receivers' offer to make a return gift was often
turned down by the gift-givers.
I 8 . In focusi ng on strategic devices entailed in ri tual form, Keane has
extended the work of Judith Irvine and others (e. g. , Irvine I 979; Myers
and Brenneis I 98 4) ai med at correcting a si mpl istic view of form in ri tual
and ri tual speech as l i miting the possi bi l ity of chal lenging the preexisting
power relations ( see Keane I 997b: 54; Keane I 99?C: 6, I 44; cf. M. Bloch
I 975
l
I 9. In di scussi ng the relationship between hermeneutics and faith, Paul
Ricoeur proposes goi ng beyond the study of faith "through its l i nguistic
and l iterary expressions " :
Faith i s the attitude of one who accepts being interpreted a t the same
time that he or she i nterprets the world of the text . . . . This is not to
say that faith is not authentical l y an act that cannot be reduced to l i n
gui stic treatment. In this sense, faith is the l i mi t of al l hermeneutics and
the nonhermeneutical ori gi n of al l interpretati on. The ceaseless move
ment of interpretation begins and ends i n the risk of a response that is
neither engendered nor exhausted by commentary. ( Ricoeur I 995 = 46;
original emphasis )
As i mpl i ed in Ricoeur's defi ni ti on, faith involves taking a ri sk, that is,
exposing oneself to what is beyond i nterpretive control . We overcome this
ri sk, Ricoeur i mpl i es, by keeping hope al ive: " [ Faith] could be cal led ' un
conditional trust' to say that i t is inseparable from a movement of hope
that makes its way i n spite of the contradictions of experience and that
turns reasons for despair into reasons for hope" ( Ricoeur I 99 5 = 47) .
Chapter 6. Repeating Without Overlapping
I . The present study draws on an ethnographic and archival proj ect
focusing on U histori cal l y significant Fi j i an vi l l age, and i n that sense, it
inherits the ethni cal l y divided character of the anthropology of Fij i ( see
Kel l y and Kapl an 2ooi ; Norton I 990; Riles 2000 for notable excepti ons) .
Notes
This chapter represents my effort to remedy this aspect of my ethnography
by drawing attention to the i mpl ications of my discussion of hope for
issues surrounding the pol i tics of multi cul tural i sm in Fij i .
2. The Native Lands Commission recorded a si mi l ar story concerning
Suvavou people ( see Ai tukutuku raraba kei nai yalayala ni vei Tikina ko:
Suva, Raviravi, Sawau, pp. 1 9-20) . Present-day vi l l agers knew little about
the war, however.
3 My transl ati on.
4 My transl ati on.
5. " Adventists al so teach that gambl i ng, card pl ayi ng, theater going,
and dancing are to be avoided ( 1 John 2: 1 5-1 7) . . . . Any activity that
weakens our relationship with our Lord and causes us to lose sight of eter
nal i nterests helps to bind Satan's chai ns about our soul s" ( SDA General
Conference 1 9 8 8 : 284) .
6. Mi nutes of the Church Board, Suvavou SDA Church, December 26,
1 996.
7 Al though a vi l l age elder stood up t o confess hi s s i n of dri nki ng
yaqona when he was with his guests, others who stood up si mpl y
expressed thanks to God for the year.
8 . Mi nutes of the Church Board, Suvavou SDA Church, December 3 0,
1 996.
9 Ratu Epeli Kanakana's speech, Suvavou Seventh-Day Adventist
Church, December 3 I , I 995 ; my transl ati on.
I O. The reference to a fence here deri ves from a common Fi j i an expres
sion, lama ni bai ( l iteral ly, " i nside a fence" ) , meaning a church compound.
In the past, mi ssi onary compounds were fenced. I thank Matt Toml i nson
for reminding me of this.
I 1 . Dharmend Prasad, " Please Forgive Me, Cries Rabuka, " Fiji Times,
November 26, 1 996; see al so "PM Begs for Forgiveness at Church
Service, " Fiji 's Daily Post, November 26, 1 996. The church service was
held at the Nati onal Gymnasi um i n Suva on November 24, 1 996, on the
occasi on of the opening of a new radio stati on devoted to Chri sti an
themes, and was attended by approxi matel y 4,ooo people. Rabuka and hi s
party, Soqosoqo Vakatulewa ni Taukei , went on to l ose the 1 999 general
election to the Fiji Labour Party.
I 2. Prasad, " Please Forgive Me, Cri es Rabuka. "
1 3 . This perception has been chal lenged b y sympathizers of the
National Federation-Labour coal ition government, who have emphasized
a wider basis of support for the coal i ti on ( see Lal 1 98 8 , 1 990) .
1 4. Sitiveni Rabuka, speech del ivered at a meeting with Fi j i ans i n
Nadroga, Nailalakai, June 1 6, 1 987, trans. Martha Kapl an i n M. Kapl an
1 990a: 1 40-4 1 .
Notes
I 5 . Apart from articles cited below, see Butch Grant, "A Crying
Shame, " Fiji Times, November 29, I 996; Prudence A. Rouse, "Action Not
Words, " i bi d.
I 6. " Cry the Beloved Country, " Fiji Times, November 27, I 996, edito
ri al .
I 7. Si r Len Usher, "Acts of God, " Fiji Times, November 27, I 996. See
also Vi nay Kumar Si ngh, " Reason for the Coups, " i bi d. , December 1 2,
I 996, for a si mi l ar view.
I 8. Imrana Jal al , "Action, Not Words: To Forgive or Not to Forgi ve, "
Fiji Times, November 28, I 996.
I 9. Ibi d.
20. Ibi d.
2 1 . A number of Rabuka's Christian sympathizers wrote i n to the l ocal
press and expressed support for Rabuka's apol ogy. See " Sequel to PM's
Confession, 'We Weep with You, "' Fiji 's Sunday Post, December I , I 996;
Mere Bul i vuata, "A Case of Forgiveness, " Fiji Times, November 3 0, I 996;
Losal i ni Mavoa, " Cartoon Not Funny, " i bid. , November 3 0, I 996; Mi
chael Ah Koy, "Offensi ve Caricature, " i bi d. , November 3 0, I 996; V. De
laimatuku, "Begin at Jerusalem, " ibid. , December 5, I 996; Emelita W.
Wilson, "Time to Reconci l e, " i bi d. , December 5 , I 996; and i d. , " PM's
Apology" ( the same content as the letter publ ished in the Fiji Times) , Fiji 's
Daily Post, December 4, I 996. See al so Jerry B. McCl un, "A Cheap Shot, "
Fiji Times, November 29, I 996, and Ani ! K. Sharma, "To Err Is Human, "
i bi d. , December 6, I 996.
22. Michael Ah Koy, "Offensi ve Caricature, " Fiji Times, November 3 0,
I 996.
23. S. V. Taka, " Rabuka's Lament, " Fiji Times, December 2, I 996. The
then rul i ng party of Fij i , the Soqosoqo ni Vakavulewa ni Taukei ( Fi j i an
Political Party) l ed by Rabuka, was known by the i ni ti al s " S. V. T. " Given
that many letters to the editor are written under pseudonyms, this letter
may have been a disguised statement by the party.
24. Taka, " Rabuka's Lament. "
25 . To some extent, al l Fi j i an gift-giving entai l s elements of apol ogy
and expression of humbleness about the i nadequacy of gi fts and speeches
(cf. Arno I 976b; Hickson 1 979) . For example, the spokesman for the gift
giving side apol ogizes for the i nsuffi ciency ( lailai) of the gi fts and people
on the gift-receiving side respond immediately by saying that the gifts are
pl enty ( levu) . In this interchange, the question of whether this is false
pol iteness is overshadowed by the immediate concern with the repeated
and rhythmic completion of the exchange of words. Here the intention and
strategy behind the gi fts and speeches do not constitute guiding principles
for immediate action ( see Miyazaki 2oooa) .
1 66
Notes
26. Prasad, "Please Forgive Me, Cries Rabuka, " Fiii Times, November
26, 1 996.
27. Taka, " Rabuka's Lament. "
28. "Time to Back Off, " Fiji 's Sunday Post, December 1 , 1 996.
29. Denni s Si mpson, "Onl y Time Wi l l Tel l , " Fiji Times, December 3,
1 996.
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c Index
I n thi s index an " f" after a number indicates a separate reference on the next page,
and an " ff" indicates separate references on the next two pages. A continuous dis
cussion over two or more pages i s indicated by a span of page numbers, e. g. , " 5 7-
5 9 " Passim is used for a cl uster of references in close but not consecutive sequence.
Adams, Robert, I 3
Adorno, Theodor, I o, I 43 n5 , I 44n6,
I 44n 1 2
Aesthetics, s , s 6, 6 3 , ? I , 89, 99,
1 54n2, 1 5 7n3 1 ; and Christian ritu
al s, 96f; of emergence 1 3 7-40. See
also Anal ytical aesthetics
Agency, 7f, r 6-r 8, 27f, 8 6, 92, I 1 2,
I 24f, I 3 8; of God, 2, I 6, 98, I os ,
I r 6-2o passim, 1 43 nr , r 46n r 5 ; i n
abeyance, 97, 99, r os-8 passim; of
humans, r os f, l l 2, I 2 5
Alexander, Gi lchrist, 40
Al l ardyce, Wi l l i am L. , 3 6f, 77
Analytical aesthetics, s f, 5 2, 1 3 7
Analytical di stance, I Sf, 1 3 2
Anamnesis, I 5
Anare Matahau and Associates, see
Matahau, Anare
Annuity, 4of, s r f, 5 9-65 passim,
1 49n30, 1 5 0n3 I , 1 5 5-56n r 3
Anthropology, 3-8 passim, 2 5 , 29f, 5 2,
1 3 o-4o passim; of expert knowl
edge, 3, I 3 2; and hope, 5, 1 29-40
passim; and phil osophy, 24-2 5 ,
I 3 3-3 5 ; temporal strategies of, 29f,
1 46nr 6; as secul ar knowledge, 86;
critique of, I 3 5 ; of Fi j i , r 63 nr . See
also Hi storical anthropology
Anticipation, 1 4, 26f, so, 70ff, 8 2,
I I O, 1 3 6-40 passim
Anti-essenti al i sm, I ?
Apol ogy, I 6 2n9, r 65 n25 ; Rabuka's,
29, I I o-r i , r 2o28, r 6 5 n2 I
Apolosi Nawai , r 5 3 n43
Appadurai, Arj un, I 5 7n3 1
Archi val research, 3 ff, 1 2, 24, 4 5-47,
49. ?5-7

I 5 3 n43 I 5 3 ns o, r 6ons
Arno, Andrew, 8 8 f, r oo
Assemblage, 1 3 7
Atheism, see under Bloch, Ernst
Attendance, 8 5 , 95 , 98, I 04, r o6,
r 62nr o. See also Response;
Veiqaravi
Austral i an Aborigines, 42
Avorosa, Ratu, see Tuivuya, Ratu
Avo rosa
Bakhtin, Mi khai l , I 3 7
Battagl i a, Debbora, I 05
Bau, p
f, 63 , 76, 78, r oi , I I 3 , 1 47n3,
1 47n6, I 48-49ni 5 , 1 5 7n22
Bauman, Richard, I 6 r n r
Bau-Rewa War, 63 , 7 8 , I I 3
Belatedness, 29, 1 3 6, 1 3 9-40
Benj ami n, Andrew, 1 44n r r
Benj ami n, Walter, 1 43 n5 , 1 44n1 2; and
Ernst Bloch, 4f, r o, 1 2, 2o-23 , 1 3 9;
and messianic historian, 2 1 , I I o;
and critique of history, 22; and
spark of hope, 24, I 40
Bete, 74, 8 I
Bi bl e, I 3 , 8 8-95 passim, I 03-1 1 pas
sim, I I 8, r 2o, I 6 r n3 ; and parables,
95 f. See also Psalms I 2?: I
Bible study, 9o-93 passim, 1 03 , r o6,
r 6 r n3
Bloch, Ernst, 3 ff, I I -I 6, 25-28, 1 28ff,
1 94
1 44n6, 1 44n7, 1 44n9; The Principle
o( Iope, 9-1 4, 1 7-r 8 , 1 28-29; and
critique of metaphysics r s , 7o-7 I ;
and atheism, 1 7-r 8, 1 44nr o,
1 4 s nr s ; The Spirit of Utopia, 1 9,
1 43 ns ; and the problem of the pres
ent, 1 8-24, 1 3 s ; and disappoint
ment, 69-70
Bohman, James, 70, 1 3 7-3 8
Bourdieu, Pierre, 8, I I
Brenneis, Donal d, 89
Buck-Morss, Susan, 1 44n7
Bureaucratic knowledge, see
Documents
Butadroka, Saki usa, 43
Cakobau, Ratu Seru, 3 2, 1 1 3 , 1 47ns ,
1 47n6, 1 48n r s
Capital i sm, 6s ff, 1 3 2
Cargi l l , David, 1 48m s
Cargo cul ts, 3 2, 1 43 m
Catechi sm, 89-90, 92 f
Cause and effect, 23 , r oo, r 62n 1 2
Chakrabarty, Dipesh, 8 6, r 6 mr
Chiefdoms, 4 3 , 47, p-s s passim,
62-67 passim, 74, 78, 8 r , 1 1 3 f,
I S 3n43, I S S n8, 1 60n7
Chi efl y ti tl e: disputes over, 46, s o-s I ,
s 9-67 passim, 73-77, I S 4ni
Chiefs, 4, 8r , 98, I 2 I-2S passim,
r s 9n3 3 ; sale of land by, 4, 3 2, 42,
I s o-s I n3 6, I p-s2n37 See also
Cakobau, Ratu Seru; Kanakana,
Ratu Epel i ; Qarani qi o, Ro; Ravul o,
Ratu, father of Ratu Avorosa Tui
vuya; Tuivuya, Ratu Avorosa
Christianity, 1 2, 28, 3 6, 87, 94, 1 02,
1 04, r r r-27 passim, 1 3 9, r 48n r s ;
and business 3 , I I I -I S passim; i ndi
genization of, 88, 97ff. See also Lotu
Christian vi rtues, 1 44n8
Cl osure, 27f, 7D
-73 , 79-84 passim, 97,
ro6, 1 09. See also Openness
Cohn, Bernard, I S 9ni
Col l i ns, Harry, 6
Col onial Secretary's Office ( CSO) :
records of, 7 s
Commoners, 4 r f, r son34, r s on3 6,
I s m 3 7. See also Chiefs
Companies, 27, 29, 6s-68,
r s 8-s9n3 3 I S 9n34. See also
Nadonumai Hol dings
Index
Compensation, 2f, 26, J I , 3 6-3 8,
42-5 1 passim, 6s , 67. See also
Annuity
Completion, 54, 92f, 98, r or-9
passim, r 6s n2s
Consultants, 4, 42, 4S , 49, 7 1 ,
r s m3 7, r 6ons . See also Matahau,
Anare
Conversion, 92; Ratu Avorosa
Tui vuya's, 3 6, 87, 9S ; Ratu
Ravul o's, 3 6; stories of, 94-96; Ratu
Seru Cakobau's, r s 8-s9n r s . See
also Christianity; Methodism;
Seventh-Day Adventism
Coups-d'etat (of 1 987) , 26, 4 r ff, so,
1 2 1-27, r son34, r son3 6
Crapanzano, Vincent, 1 43 n1
Critique, ?; of metaphysics, I s-r 6, 22,
1 3 3 ; of history, 2 1-22; of govern
ment records, 77-79; retrospective
nature of, 1 09, 1 24, 1 28; and hope,
1 27; of anthropology, I 3 S
Cross, Wi l l i am, 1 48n r s
Cruickshank Park, 3 4 , 66, I I 3
Davi s, Natal ie Zeman, 7 1
Deed o f Cession, 3 8 , 6 r ; Cl ause 4,
44f
Del ai navesi, 34f, r s s n 1 2, r s 8n3 2
Del aitoga, 8o-8 3
Delegation, 84, r oof, 1 07, r 6 2n i i ,
1 62m3
Deneen, Patrick J. , 1 7
Derrida, Jacques, I 4S ni 3
Desire, s , 1 43 n1
Development, r 1 4f, r s 9n3 3
Dewey, John, 1 4f, 1 7, 1 3 3
Di alogical ity, r 3 7, r 6on 3
Di na, 3 , 49 See also Truth
Discipl inary gap, I 3 3
Di suni ty, p, r r 2 . See also Unity
Di vi si on, 27, 3 9, s 2-68 passim, 8 2,
87; of ceremoni al duti es, s r ,
r s sn7, r s s n8; Fi j i an i nterest i n,
S 6-s?; of rent, S 8-6s , I S 7n3 2.
See also Parts-whole rel ati onshi p
Documents, 4, 4o-49 passim, ?I -?S ,
8 s , 1 09, r s 9-6on2; access t o gov
ernment records, 4, 4s-47; and
mataqal i , 28, r 6on7; col lection of,
72-73 , 76; and appendices ?s f;
and l i teracy, I 6on s . See also
Index
Native Lands Commi ssi on;
Petitions
Emergence, s-IO passim, I 6-29 pas
sim, 65 , 75 f, 93 , I o6-I 2 passim,
1 20, I 3 3-40 passim
Empathy, I o6
Epel i , Ratu, see Kanakana, Ratu Epeli
Eschatology, I 2, 22
Essenti alism, I 3 I
Ethnographic present, I 3 7, I 46nr 6
Ethnography, 4, 6f, 2 5 , 3 0, I 3 o-3 7
passim
Evidence, 3, 6, J I , 46-49, 5 3 , ? I-?8
passim, 8 2-84, 93 , 96, 1 1 2, 1 1 6,
I 5 3 n5 1 , I 6on8. See also Docu
ments; Truth
Exchange, see Gi ft-giving
Fabi an, Johannes, I 3 7
Fai l ure, 29, 48f, 1 1 0, 1 1 2f, I 24, I 26,
I 3 8
Faith, Sf, I 3-I 8 passim, 2 5 , 88, 96,
I I 2-I 6 passim, I 20-2 5 passim,
I J 3 ff, I 6 3 ni 9
Fi j i an Hol di ngs, I 5 9n3 3
Fi j i an l anguage, I 6 2-63 nr 5
Fi j i Development Bank, 66
Finitude, I 6f
Fischer, Mi chael , 29, I 3 7
Foundation for the Indigenous People
of Fiji, 43 See also Matahau, Anare
Fox, Richard G. , I 3 I , I 3 7
France, Peter, 5 4
Freehold land, I 5 o-5 I n3 6, I 5 1-5 2n3 7
Fulton, John, I 49n r 6
Future, I , 5 , 1 1 -22 passim, 69f, 9 5 f,
I 08ff, I I s . I 30, I 3 s f, I 3 9 See also
Anticipation; Hope; Prospective
momentum
Geertz, Cl i fford, I 3 3-3 6
Gel l , Al fred, I 9-20
Geoghegan, Vincent, I 44n6
Gi ft-gi ving, 3-I 2 passim, 24-28
passim, s 6, 86, 97. 99. I 09, I 28,
I 62n9, I 62n i 3 , I 65 n25 ; oratory in,
I ooI o?; and apology, I oi f. See
also Mortuary rite; Temporality; Vei
qaravi
God, 6, 28f, 94ff, I o2f, I o9, I 44mo;
blessing of, 7f, I O, 23 , 9off, 1 1 d,
1 9 5
I I 4f; response of, I 04f; and Rabu
ka's apology, I 2 I-26. See also
Agency
God's pl an, I S-I 8
Goldman, Laurence, 79
Goody, Esther, 79, 90, 97
Gordon, Si r Arthur, 44, 48, I 47n8,
1 48mo, I 5 3 n46
Government House Land, 3 7, 3 9, 47,
59 See also Annuity
Greenhouse, Carol, I 46n i 6, I 48 ni 4
Hage, Ghassan, 2
Hanks, Wi l l i am, I I , ?I , I 6 mi
Harding, Susan, I 6 I n i
Harvey, Davi d, 1
Havel, Vaclav, I ?
Herzfel d, Michael, I o, I 05 , 1 2 5 ,
I 6 I ni
Historical anthropology, 4, I 3 2-37
passim
Hi story, I S , I 3 2, I 3 7, I 46n i 6; critique
of, 2 I-22; as secul ar knowledge, 86.
See also Archival research; Docu
ments; Evidence
Hocart, A. M. , 49. 5 s f, I I 3 , I 48n i 3 ,
I
H
-s s ns , I 5 5n6, I 5 5n7, I 5 5 n8,
I 62n9
Holmberg, Davi d, I 59n2
Holmes, Douglas, I 3 2
Holy Spirit, 89-93 passim, I 04, I 23
Homological operations, I O?, I 3 9
Hope: academic, I ff, 6 , 2 5 , I 3 0,
13 5-4 I passim, I 44n7; political uses
of d; as a method of knowledge,
2-5 , ?-I 9, 23-29 passim, I o8,
I 27-3 0, I 3 5 , I 3 9f; Christi an, 3 ,
1 2f, 86, I 09-I 5 passim, I I 9f, 1 26f,
I 3 9, I 44n8, 1 45 n 1 5 ; Fi j i an term for,
3 ; and God, 6, 8, 1 2f, I ?f, 86, I 04,
I I 2, I I 5 , I I 9f, 1 26f, 1 43 n1 ,
I44ni o, I 45 n i 5 ; moments of, 7,
2 1-24, 28f, I 06f, I I Of, I 20, I 24,
1 27, 1 3 8f; i n gift-giving, 8, I O, 25 ,
86, I o6-9, I 24, I 3 o; retrospective
treatment of, 8, I 6, I 08-I 6 passim,
1 20, I 4o; ritual production of, 8,
I O, 23-24, 86, Io6, I o8f; Bloch's
phi losophy of, 9-Io, 1 3-I 4, 25 , 27,
I 45n i 5 ; and optimism, I ?; and
despair, 2 1 f, 44n 1 2, I 63 n1 9; unful
fi l l ed, 2 I f, 1 3 9; Suvavou people's,
47, 49-5 3 , 69-72
passim, 8 2-8 5 ,
1 1 0, 1 1 5 , 1 1 9f, 1 28f; and disap
pointment, 69f; replication of,
I 27-3 0, I 3 9f; in psychology, I 44n8
Hudson, Wayne, I 5
Humi l ity, I 6f, I 27
Husserl, Edmund, I 9-20
Im Thurn, Everal d, 3 9f, 45 , 47,
I 49n27
Indeterminacy, I s f, 20, 27f, 69-72,
8 2-8 5 passim, I 09, I 3 7ff, I 6I ni 4
Indigenous rights, 26f, 4 I ff, 5 0
Indi rection, 8 4, I o 5
Indi vi dual s, 93 , I 5 0n3 5
Indo-Fi j i ans, 26, 89, 1 1 0, I 2 I , I 23 ,
I 50n34
International Year of the World's
Indigenous People ( I 993 ) , 42f
I tokatoka, 5 3 f, 73 . 76, I s 8-s9n3 3 ,
I 6on7
Jal al , Imrana, 1 22-24, I 26
James, Wi l l i am, 20, I 3 3 ff
James McEwan & Co. , 3 3
Jameson, Fredric, 25-26
Joking debates, 8 8-93 passim
Kanakana ( pl anting ground) , 6o,
I 5 I -52n37, I 5 6ni 7, I 5 7-5 8n3 2
Kanakana, Ratu Epel i , 42ff, 65 f, 74,
1 1 8-I 9, I 5 2n3 9
Kant, Immanuel , I 2f
Kapl an, Martha, I 3 7
Kastom, I 3 I
Kasuga, Naoki , 9
Kava, see Yaqona
Keane, Webb, I O, I 05 , I 6 I n i
Keesing, Roger, I 3 I
Kel ly, John, I 3 7
Knowledge, I-29 passim, 3 7, 40, 84f,
99, I 3 5 , I 3 7-40, I 44n9, I 44n 1 2,
I 54n2, I 6on2, I 6 I ni 4; academic,
I ff, I 3 0, I 3 2, I 44n7; expert, 6, I 3 2;
formation of, 9, I 6, I 46n i 6; con
templative, I O, I 3; temporal direc
tion of, I 5, 24, I 20, I 27, I 30; self
reflective, I 3 1 . See also Sel f-knowl
edge
Lami , 34f
Lami people, 6I , I 48n 1 3 , I 5 7n23
Index
Land, see Freehold l and; Kanakana
( pl anting ground) ; Native land;
Rent; State land; Suvavou l and;
Vanua
Lasaro, Rev. Manasa, 43
Lasch, Chri stopher, I 7
Levi-Strauss, Claude, 8
Levuka, 3 3
Lloyd, D. T., 4of
Lotu, 99, I I 5
Love, 8, I o3 f, 1 1 8f, I 49n30
Lukacs, Georg, I o
Mahaffy, Arthur, 48
Mal inowski, Bronislaw, 8, 97
Mana, 3 , 49, 98, I 03
Maoris ( of New Zeal and) , 42
March, Kathryn, I 59n2
Marcus, George, 13 I f
Matahau, Anare, 43 ff, I 5 2-5 3n43,
I 5 9n34
Matani vanua, 62, I 62n i o
Mataqal i , 4, 27f, 3 8-4 I passim,
s o-68 passim, 72-87 passim,
I Oo-I 03 , 1 1 I -I 9 passim, I 47n2,
I 54n4, I 5 4n5, I 5 6n1 4, I 5 6n i 5 ,
I 5 6n i 7, I 5 6n i 8, I 5 7n3 2, I 60n7,
I 6on8
Mataqal i Roko Tui Suva, 3 6, 6o-62,
87, 1 1 3 , 1 5 5 n5 , 1 5 6-57n1 9,
I 5 7n22
Matei nani u, Josua, I 48n I 5
Maurer, Bi l l , I 3 2, I 3 6
Mauss, Marcel, 8
Mead, George Herbert, 20
Memory, 2 I f, I I I -I 4, I 28. See also
Past; Retrospective perspective
Metaphysics, I 5 , 24, 70, I 3 3
Methodism, 34ff, 4 3 , 87-96 passim,
I 04, 1 1 2-I 9 passim, I 48-49n 1 5 ,
I 6 I n2; and pol itics, 8 8
Metz, Johannes Baptist, I 45-46n 1 5
Migration narratives, 5 3 , 62f, 7 I-75
passim, 8o-84, I 09, I 6 I n i 2
Mi nistry o f Fi j i an Affairs, 43 f, 76
Mol tmann, Jirgen, 9, I 43 n3 ,
I 45 n i 5
Mortuary rite, 50, I oof, I 03 , I 07,
I 47n2, I 62n9
Muani kau, 34, 43
Mul ti-ethnic state, 26, 1 1 0
Munn, Nancy, I 9f
Index
Nader, Laura, 1 4S n1 4
Nadonumai Hol di ngs, 5 1 , 65 ff, r r o-
1 9 passim, 1 2S . See also Companies
Naiqasiqasi, 3 1
Naitasiri, So, S 2
Nakauvadra, So, r 6 r n 1 2
Nari koso, 3 3 , 1 4Sn 1 3
National Archives o f Fi j i , 4, 46f, 76,
s3, s 5
Native l and, 2 S , 5 4 ; al ienation of, 3 3 ,
40, 1 49n27. See also Kanakana
( pl anting ground)
Nati ve Lands Commi ssi on, 2S, 5 3 f,
1 54n3, 1 5 7-5Sn3 2; records of, 2S,
46f, 5
3
-67 passim, 7
3
-S 2, S4,
1 4Sn 1 3 , 1 5 Sn3 2, 1 60n7, 1 60nS
Native Land Trust Board, 5 S ff, 1 5 5n9,
1 5 6n1 4, 1 5 Sn3 2, 1 5 9n3 3
Native Reserve l and, 3 3 , 3 7
Nayacakal ou, Rusi ate, 5 4
Newness, S, 3 0, r oS, 1 2Sff, 1 3 5-40
passim
Nostalgi a, r , 1 05 , 1 2S
Not-yet ( Noch-Nicht) , 9, 1 1 , 1 4, 69f,
1 3 9
Now ( j etzt) , 1 9-2 1
Openness, 1 0f, 27, 70f, 79-S 2 passim,
1 1 0. See also Closure
Optimism, 1 , I 7, I 45 n i 5
Origin place, 5 3 , 63 , 75-S 3 passim,
1 5 2n42
Pancayat, S9
Parti al i ty, 49, I 54n2
Parts-whole relationship, 5 , 5 2, 5 S, 66.
See also Division
Past,
4
, 2 I f, 70,
73
, S r ,
93-9 5 , 1 09ff,
1 2S, 1 3 0, 1 3 5 , 1 3 9f, 1 5 7n3 1 . See
also Hope; Memory; Retrospective
perspective
Peirce, Charles Sanders, 20
Petitions, 3, 27-3 2 passim, 3 7, 47, p,
64, 7 1 ff, 77, S4f, 1 09f, 1 5 7n32,
I 6on 3 . See also Documents
Phil osophy, 2 1-25, 27, 1 3 3 , 1 44n7,
I 44n1 2, I 45 ni 3 , 1 46n 1 5
Plotnitsky, Arkady, I 3 S
Political economy, 26, 49, 1 3 2
Politics, 1 f, 5 2, 64f, 1 20-2 7 , 1 34; of
tradition, I 3 I-3 2
Polynesia Company, 3 2f, 3 7, 1 47nS
1 97
Povinel l i , Elizabeth, r 6 m1 4
Pragmatism, 1 2, 1 4-1 5 See also Rorty,
Richard
Prayer, 1 03 f, 1 1 2-22 passim, 1 27. See
also Christianity
Present: problem of, r r , I S-I 9, I 3 5 ,
I 44n i i
Problems and solutions, 9 3 , 97, 1 04,
I 06
Proof, see Evidence; Truth
Prospective momentum, 4, S, 1 4, 26-
29, I OS, I I O, I I 6-20 passim, 1 2S,
1 3 5-3 9 passim. See also
Anticipation; Hope
Psalms 1 27: 1 , ur f, r r 6, I I 9
Psychoanal ysis, 5 , 1 4
Qarani qi o, Ro, 1 1 3
Questions and answers, 77-So, 92-93 ,
97, 1 04, r o6. See also Response
Rabuka, Sitiveni, 43 , 65 , uo, 1 1 3-1 6,
1 5 0n34, 1 5 1 n3 6, 1 5 2n43 . See also
under Apology
Rappaport, Joanne, 1 59n2
Rapport, Nigel, 1 4 5 n1 3
Ratulevu, Rev. Samuel a, 66, 1 1 1-1 9
passim
Ravul o, Ratu, father of Ratu Avorosa
Tuivuya, 3 6, 7S, 1 1 3 , I 47n6
Ravul o, Ratu, son of Ratu Avorosa
Tuivuya, I 5 6n 1 9
Reciproci ty, S, 9 S , 1 63 n1 7
Rent, 24, 27, 3 6-40, 4 5-5 2 passim,
5 6-65 passim, 1 49nJ I , 1 5 6n1 4,
1 5 7n3 2, r 6onS
Repeti tion, 69, 92, 1 07, 1 2Sf
Replication, 6, 25 , 2S, 65 , r o6-7, 1 r o,
1 27-3 0, 1 3 9f
Response, I, 7f, 25, 3 2, 79, S 5 f, 96ff,
1 04-7, uS, 1 24, 1 6 3 n1 9
Retrospective perspective, I 6 , 22-29
passim, r oo, r oS-1 6 passim, 1 20,
1 27-2S, 1 3 0, 1 40. See also Past
Rewa, 43 , 6 I , 63 , 6S, I I 3 f, I 5 I n3 6
Ricoeur, Paul , 1 63 n1 9
Ril es, Annelise, 6 , 1 3 2, I 3 S
Ri sk, 73 . I OO, I os f, I 6 3 ni 9
Ri tual language, r o-r r , 1 05 , r 6 r n1
Ritual poli ty, see Chiefdoms; Chi efl y
ti tl e; Division
Roberts, Richard, 1 44n1 0
Rorty, Richard, 1 2, 1 4-1 7, 28, 1 44n9
Rutz, Henry, 5 4-60 passim, 1 5 4n4
Sabbath, 8 7, r r 9
Sahl i ns, Marshal l , 4, 49, 72, 78, r r 3 ,
r 46n r 6
Sai d, Edward, r 3 I
Sauturaga, 6 2 , 74, S r
Science studies, 6
Self-knowledge, 3 , 1 9, 24-28 passim,
45 , 49-5 3 passim, 57, 65 , 68-73
passim, So-84 passim, r o6-r o pas
sim, 1 28, 1 3 5 , 1 3 8
Sermons, 87, 93-96, 1 03 . See also
Methodism; Seventh-Day Advent
ism
Seventh-Day Adventi sm, 34ff, 5 6, 5 8 ,
6s f, 87ff, 95 . 97, r r r -r 9 passim,
1 49n r 6, r 6 r n2; and Fi j i an custom,
3 6; food prohibitions of, 87ff; prohi
bition of dancing i n, r r 6, r 64n5
Shares, 27, s r -67 passim, r s 6nr 4,
r s 6n r s , I 5 7n3 I 5 9n3 3 r 6on8
Siegel , James, 1 45 n1 3
Silverstei n, Mi chael , r 6on3
Smi th, Barbara Herrnstei n, r 3 8
Soqosoqo ni Vakavulewa ni Taukei
( SVT) , 1 5 I n3 6, I 64n r r , r 65n23
State l and, 43 , 66, 1 1 2, T J 4, 1 5 3 n43
Stoler, Ann, 46, r 5 3 n5o, 1 5 9nr
Strathern, Mari l yn, s ff, 29, 5 2, 5 9,
1 3 2, 1 54n2
Structural i sm, 6, 8, 1 05
Structural Marxism, 5
Subversion, 79-84 passim
Sukuna, Ratu La Ia, 3 r f, 49
Suva: as capital , 3 1 , 33, 3 7, 45 ,
r 48nr o; a s chiefdom, 62, 66, 74,
S r
Suva l and, 3 2-48 passim, 5 3 , 72, 79,
1 47n8; European cl ai ms to, 3 2; sale
of, 3 2, r 48n9, r 5 3-54n p. See also
Annui ty; Compensation
Suva Peni nsul a, 2, 3 r-39 passim, 43 ,
48, 69, 72, 77, 1 48n 1 3
Suva people, J i ff, 40, 8 3 , 1 5 7n23 . See
also Suvavou people
Suvavou, J I , 3 3-37, 49ff, 5 6-8 8 pas
sim, 95 , r oo, r r o-r 6, r 48n r 3 ,
I 54n5
Suvavou l and, I 5 snr 1 , I 57n23; di vi
sion of rent for, 5 8-62; as common
Index
property, 64, 75 , 1 5 7-5 8n3 2; leases
of, 1 5 5nr o; residential developments
on, r s 8n3 2, 1 5 9n3 3 . See also
Kanakana ( planting ground) ; Lami
people
Suvavou people, 2-7 passim, 24-8 8
passim, 9 5-r or passim, 1 09-20 pas
sim, 1 28, 1 3 1 , 1 46n2, 1 5 0n3 5 ,
I 5 2n43 . r s 6nr 4, r s 6n r s , r s 8n3
1 6on5 ; government attitude toward,
J I , 3 6, 4 r f; conversion to
Christianity, 3 6, 94ff. See also under
Hope
Synchronicity, r r , 23 , 29, r oB, 1 3 8,
I 44n6
Szondi, Peter, 2 r f, 1 44n r 2
Tabua, see Whale's teeth
Temporal incongruity, rof, 23 , 27, 29,
r o8ff, 1 3 0, 1 3 8, 1 46n r 6
Temporal ity, r r f, r 6, r 8, 22, 27, 3 2,
93 , 1 3 7, 1 40. See also Future; Hope;
Newness; Past; Present; Prospective
momentum; Retrospective perspec
tive; Synchronicity
Temporal orientations, 1 o-r 4 passim,
96, 1 3 8
Temporal reorientation, 5 , 9 , 2 3 , 5 2,
1 3 6, 1 3 8
Temporal resetting, 1 27
Temporal strategies, 8, 1 3 6
Temporal subversion, 8 2
Thomas, Nicholas, 1 3 r-3 2
Thurston, John B. , 1 47n5, r 48n r 3
Toren, Christina, 9 8 , I 54nr
Truth, 3 , r s , 45 , 49, 76, 8 2, 8 5 , 95 ,
I I 2, I 20, I 6ons
Tuivuya, Ratu Avorosa, 3 6, 6 r , 87,
1 47n6, 1 49n 1 6
Turaga, 4 so, s B , 6off, 66, I OI . See
also Chiefs
Turner, Terence, I 46n i 6
Unity: Fi j i an Concept of, r r s f. See also
Di sunity
Val eri, Valerio, 98
Vanua, 4, 47, s r , 5 3 , 5 8-62 passim,
66, 72, 99, I I 5 , 1 1 9, 1 5 3 n43 ,
I 6on7. See also Chiefdoms; Chiefs;
Lotu; Turaga
Veiqaravi, ?. 1 8, 5 s f, 84, 98, 1 03 ,
Index
I 5 5 n6, I 62nn9, I 3 . See also
Attendance; Gi ft-giving
Viti Kabani, see Apolosi Nawai
Wal l , Col man, I I 3
West, Cornel , I5
Whal e's teeth. 7, 6o, 72, I oi f, I 26
Wil kinson, David, 75 f, 78, I 6on8
Winter, Si r Franci s, 40, I 49n3 I
1 99
Wittgenstei n, Ludwig, 70, I 3 3
Yaqona, 47, 87, I 26, I 64n7
Yavusa 5 I -67 passim, 74-8 3 passim,
I 5 6n 1 5 , I 5 8n3 2, I 5 9n3 3
Yavutu, see Origin pl ace
Zipes, Jack, I 44n6
Zournazi, Mary, I-2