Initial notes on Matt Tomlinson’s work

Tomlinson, M, and M Engelke 2006, 'Meaning, Anthropology, Christianity', in M

Engelke and M Tomlinson (eds.), The Limits of Meaning: Case Studies in the
Anthropology of Christianity, Berghahn, New York.

2 Interesting point about the anthropology of failure and lack of efficacy – what happens when
sermons fall flat, people fall asleep, or decry their old beliefs as meaningless?

Tomlinson, M 2014, Ritual Textuality: Pattern and Motion in Performance, Oxford

University Press, New York.

Vi interested in speech – primary fieldwork was recording and analysing speech in church
services. Trying to get at an understanding of beliefs and practices regarding authority and the
efficacy of ritual. Effective religious practice in Fiji ‘depends heavily on the use of particular forms of
speech’. ‘eventful things like sermons, prayers, and storytelling are the vital substance of Fijian
Methodism’.

2 general Fiji context: both too young and too old. Many Fijians venerate the past as an ideal
traditional order. But there have been four coups since 1987, and dominant Methodist Church has
lost a significant proportion of membership. ‘although the social fabric has not quite been shredded,
some of the thicker strands are being unraveled’. There is now the ‘new pulse of Pentecostalism, the
social saturation of the beverage kava, and the snorting aggression of the military-led government’.
These show the workings of ritual in this context.

3 treats ritual not as something ‘to be isolated and dissected’, but as ‘a practical tendency –
specifically, as entextualization’. Influenced by keane, robbins, silverstein, stasch.

5 ‘pentecostals care so much about literal, physical movement’. ‘it makes little sense to
discuss Pentecostalism without analysing the ways people and things bounce around’. See chp 2 on
Suva crusade. But signs can also be metaphorical.

6 drawing on J.L. Austin how to do things with words. E.g. ‘I find you guilty’ can make one
legally guilty, just like saying ‘praise God’ is to actually praise God there and then, not just describe
it.

15 ‘christianity has a vibrant public presence throughout Fiji’ e.g. large well-kept churches. Also
aggressive evangelists taking over public spaces. But in suva no religion dominates, as ‘suva is
multicultural, multi-ethnic, multifaith, multi-everything’.

Chapter 2

23 at crusade in Albert Part in Suva of Unicted Pentecostal Church International. Is tempted at

first to try and compare this to Methodist services, but comes to realise that ‘talk itself isn’t the
point of this event. Motion is’. Very different to calm, spoken Methodist services which centre
around a sermon.

Tomlinson, M 2012, 'Passports to Eternity: Whales' Teeth and Transcendence in Fijian

Methodism', in Lenore Manderson, Wendy Smith and Matt Tomlinson (ed.), Flows of
Faith: Religious Reach and Community in Asia and the Pacific, Landes
Bioscience/Springer Science+Business Media, Dordrecht Heidelberg London New York,
pp. 215-231.

215 Whale’s tooth, representing the god takei, was presented to Methodist missionary james
Royce in Kadavu island, Fiji.

216 Notion of transcendence

217 ‘christianity is often considered distinctive for its emphasis on transcendence’ cannel 2006.
‘This emphasis helps motivate its global evangelical mission’. Its seen as surpassing worldly
boundaries. Robbins argues to this end.

218 Methodism has been dominant in Fiji since David Cargill and William Cross of Wesleyan
Methodist missionary society arrived at lakeba island in 1835 as first European missionaries. ‘The
Wesleyans Experienced dramatic success especially after the 1854 conversion of a paramount chief,
Ratu Seru Cakobau, was followed the next year by his victory in a long way against the chiefdom of
Rewa’. 1874 became british colony.

218 indigenous Fijian concept of vanua. ‘vanua encompasses place and people’. ‘the term carries
terrific emotional resonance in indigenous Fijian discourse, as it draws together land, people, and
chiefdoms, threaded through with strong connotations of the old time-tested system of indigenous
Fijian society’. ‘the vanua is inextricably tied to an idealized tradition’. But it is also under threat.

219 key thing is the configuration of category of vanua with category of lotu (Christianity). These
are spoken of frequently and prominently.

219 whales teeth used as tokens to ‘apologize for ancestors’ misdeeds, atoning for the past and
hoping for a better future’.

227-8 conclusions: ‘Fijian Methodists, like many Christians, understand God’s relationship to the
world in terms of transcendence. Transcendence can be studied ethnographically because it
necessarily has material aspects. It cannot be entirely ineffable, ethereal, or inaccesible’.
understandings of transcendence are grounded in human actions, experience, and representations’.

228 ‘whales’ teeth…are inevitably the objects that indigenous Fijian Methodists present in
seeking this kind of transcendence’. But at the same time they are so deeply associated with the
vanua, that apologies to the church using whales’ teeth can actually ‘reinscribe the vanua’s
authority’.