davie2005

Critical Perspectives on Accounting 16 (2005) 551–577
The politics of accounting, race and ethnicity: a

story of a Chiefly-based preferencing
Shanta S.K. Davie
University of Newcastle Upon Tyne Business School, NE1 7RU, UK
Received 9 December 2001; received in revised form 25 May 2003; accepted 26 June 2003
Abstract
This research utilises theories of institutionalised patterns of discrimination to tell a story about how
accounting becomes part of discourse orientations that are deeply rooted in notions of racial identity and
differentiation. By exploring the complex demands for a financial re-structuring of a South Pacific State-
owned enterprise, the research study not only highlights accounting’s enrolment in processes of
preferencing that assume hegemonic and exclusive strategies based on pre-existing patterns of Chiefly
power. But, through an ethnography of the Fijian pine industry, the study also shows how accounting
becomes involved in perpetuating existing institutionalised inequalities in a society practising forceful
racist exclusions. In the process, the paper also highlights that accounting change and requests for its
change emerge not only because there is a search for new financing strategies and performance
indicators, to sustain a Chiefly-based preferential initiative, but also because accountancy practice
institutes a certain faith and expectation. In doing so, the paper focuses on the way in which indigenous
identity initiates a new ethnic expression of accounting.
© 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Accounting; Chiefly hegemony; Development racism; Ethnicity; Preferential-initiatives; Race
... discourse orientations [are] rooted firmly in historic specific ... notions of socially
constructed racial differences and their sociological, political, and economic conse
quences. (Stanifield II, 1993, p. 4)
1. Introduction
Race and ethnic identities are not necessarily an issue giving rise to discrimination in
themselves, but may be so through the political economy policies of a society (Essed,
E-mail address: s.s.k.davie@ncl.ac.uk (S.S.K. Davie).
1045-2354/$ – see front matter © 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.cpa.2003.05.001
552 S.S.K. Davie / Critical Perspectives on Accounting 16 (2005) 551–577
1991; Fyfe, 1994; Schutte, 1995; Stanifield II, 1991). This study extends race research in
accounting through the experiences of a recently corporatised state owned enterprise in Fiji:
Fiji Pine Limited (FPL). The paper examines the role of accounting in the financial
restructuring of the Fijian pine industry within the Fijian State’s complex demand for the re-
regulation of its enterprises. The complexity of this demand is related to: (a) the attempts to
create a so-called indigenous Fijian economy based in part on the pine industry; and (b) the
1
nature of exclusion assumed through a mimicking of a pre-existing pattern of Chiefly
hegemony. Hegemony is here interpreted as the way in which “the domination of one class
over others is achieved by a combination of political and ideological means” (Abercrombie et
al., 1988, p. 111). The financial restructuring of the pine industry is part of a government
2
affirmative policy which according to the FPL Chairman represents a “unique model of rural
development” (FPL Annual Report, 1991, p. 3). Where legally enshrined racial exclusions
and restrictions are seen as necessary for a vaguely defined concept of “development” to
occur (FPL Annual Report, 1991, p. 3; Saran, 1994; Yabaki, 1994). As the government
3
appointed Roko Tui Pine sees it, the development of the pine industry is a moral
4
commitment: “The pine industry is important for us the Taukei ... [This is] because it is
designed to respect our hereditary chiefly system. This is indeed a moral commitment,” he
said (at a Consultative meeting, 7 September 1994). But as Hill (1991) emphasises, the moral
message of preferential acts or policies do not, in themselves, justify the way in which they
are conveyed. This study, informed by such concerns, is about understanding and exploring
the politics of indigenous development in Fiji. The principal aim here is to explore
accounting’s enrolment in processes that help translate existing Chiefly-based social and
political power to economic dominance. In doing so, this research shows how the financial
restructuring of the pine industry in Fiji assumes a hegemonic and exclusive strategy
ostensibly to indigenise all pine afforestation activities.
The significance of the extant Chiefly hegemony in Fiji has colonial roots. Fiji was a
British colony for 96 years until 10 October 1970. There are two consequences of British
colonial rule that relate to the arguments of this study. First, the introduction from 1879 on
wards of Indian indentured labourers from the Indian sub-continent introduced a new racial
group. The Indo-Fijians and the Ethnic-Fijians are today the two dominant racial groups.
Second, exploitation of a Chiefly system and the creation of various councils including the
Great Council of Chiefs for administrative purposes reinforced Chiefly rule. This idea of rule
helped create a recognised political and social aristocracy within the Ethnic-Fijian community
(Achary, 1996; Davie, 2000a; Durutalo, 1985a, 1985b, 1986). Since indepen dence in 1970,
the Great Council of Chiefs has been at the apex of political power in Fiji and affirmative
initiatives have as a result acquired a particular significance. This is
1
In this story, based on field common usage the term Chiefly is used in preference to Chieftaincy. 2 He
is also the Chairman of the Reserve Bank of Fiji and a high ranking Chief.
3
Roko Tui Pine is a government appointment initiated by the 1981 landowner strike. He is seen as the “watch dog”
who provides direct feedback to government about landowner views of the pine industry. 4 In accordance with colonial
conventions “Fijian” remains the official classification for those of native descent, usually of patriarchal lineage in the
Fiji Islands, and is accordingly registered in the statal Vola ni Kawa Bula (literally translated as: Book of the Living
Descendants). Because of the problematic nature of this term, in this paper the terms “Taukei”, “native” and
“indigenous” will be used interchangeably to refer to the native population, and the term Indo-Fijians to refer to
individuals of Indian descent.
S.S.K. Davie / Critical Perspectives on Accounting 16 (2005) 551–577 553
because most of the post-independence state policies have “been shaped by an elite which has
used ethnic identities as a basis for political mobilisation” (Cameron, 2000, p. 134). And as
Sutherland (2000, p. 206) points out: after the two military coups in 1987, “the reforms
pursued by the post-coup state were driven primarily by the demands of nationalist
indigenous Fijians”. This paper shows how more recently in the 1990s, it has been possible to
incorporate the Chiefly-based socio-racial philosophies of organising and ownership to
redefine the Fijian pine industry, both financially and in its work relations. Accounting’s in
volvement here is related to the way in which the Chiefly hegemonic system of socio-racial
relations and ownership is re-articulated and sustained in a capitalistic framework. The
“development” that accounting was to reflect is not explicitly articulated by the accounting
calculations. Instead the rationale of “development” and a desire for “expert”, “scientific” and
“quantitative” credibility, provides an opportunity for accounting’s intervention in the
emergence and deliberate manipulation of ethnicity based on race. The concern here is to ask
why and how accounting becomes implicated in debates of race and ethnicity? The question
helps focus analysis on the manner in which accounting concepts and numbers be come an
integral part of a constitutive, racist text of economic organisation. In this manner, the pine
industry in Fiji is as much a site for accounting intervention, as it is also for the invention of
new afforestation accounting practices. It provides a social network of relations in which one
can authentically problematise accounting in forms of racial sentiments and superiority as
well as of wealth entitlements. A site for exploring how accounting becomes an integral part
of hegemonic preferencing strategies is thus provided.
Whilst racial and ethnic differentiation and discrimination themes have traversed social
science analysis of everyday life, accounting researchers have been mostly remarkably silent
on such issues. There is little explicit problematisation of accounting’s calculative
interrelationships and explanations in institutionalised, race-based exclusionary practices.
There have been some attempts in accountancy practitioner journals to document the African
American experiences in public accounting practice in the USA (see Hammond and Streeter,
1994, for a brief review). These accounts have since been extended by Hammond and Streeter
to break the silence on race studies in accounting in academic journals. Their study provides
oral histories of racial discrimination against Americans of African origin from fuller
participation in US accountancy practice, such as by denying them professional status as
CPA’s. They apply theoretical models of exclusion used recently in feminist perspectives on
accounting to examine the process of exclusion utilised by public accounting firms in the
USA. In this way, both the feminist and race studies in accounting give attention to an anal
ysis of the labour of individuals doing accounting work. But accounting researchers have yet
to properly address the significance of the bases of constructing accounting numbers in
macro-societal exclusion of racial and ethnic identities. Relatively little attention and concern
seems to be given to accounting’s calculative implications for race and ethnicity as central
conceptions of capitalistic appropriation. As Stanifield II (1993) indicates, in the quote above,
discourse orientations are deeply embedded in notions of racial identity and differentiation.
This study is an attempt to help fill this extant gap in critical accounting research. It begins to
examine the differentiated alignments that call upon accounting to satisfy specific and
strategic calculations vital to racism. It also starts to explore “the du ality of the interactions
between accounting and ideas of its potential” (Hopwood, 1987, p. 211), in racialised
relations. This is a narrative about accounting’s involvement in an
affirmative-action initiative, which is rooted in race-specific assignments and differentia tion.

It provides provisional explanations as to how and why accounting becomes implicated in
racist processes of discrimination. For, not all preferential-initiatives are racist and asChua
(1995) points out, fabrication of accounting numbers “may take place quite differently in
different circumstances” (p. 115). The significance of accounting, for example, may be
related to what it succeeds in making absent and silent (Achary, 1996; Choudhury, 1988;
Hines, 1992; Lehman and Tinker, 1987).
2. Research methodology and methods used
This is a micro-ethnography of accounting’s role in institutionalised patterns of discrim

ination in affirmative-action initiatives. An ethnographic approach has been used here not
only to reconstruct accounts of historical race and ethnic relations, but also to unveil authen
tic personal experiences of accounting practice in such relations in search of explanatory
truths. Ethnographic studies of accounting are not common in social science (see Achary,
1996; Chua, 1995; Davie, 2000b, 2004; Power, 1991 for exceptions). Methodological cri
tiques of ethnography (Clifford, 1988; Clough, 1992; Hammersley, 1992; Maanen, 1995b)
have challenged the epistemological and ontological claims made about its traditions by
indicting ethnography: for its gendered silences and partiality; its heavy reliance on unques
tioned cultural conceits of “ours” and “theirs”; the unwarranted claims of objectivity; and its
inevitable subjectivity. The arguments developed in this paper quite evidently cannot be said
to be free from selective silences. They do not necessarily claim to provide an asubjective and
impartial interpretation of accounting’s involvement in race-based preferential-initiatives.
Rather, it is constructed from multiple, person-centred realities, which incorporate numer ous
5
tri-lingual accounts by participants in its arguments from a perspective that seeks alternative
explanatory truths about accounting’s engagement in socio-political processes of preferencing
and of excluding. The reflexive storytelling involved consideration of al ternative research
methodologies “within an epistemological framework” (Harvey, 1990, p. 8) to understand the
processes and practices that enabled accounting intervention and change in racial patterns of
privileging and of rules for entitlement. In sum, the research methodology adopted, to
construct this story about accounting as part of an exclusionary and differentiating initiative,
provides a translated synthesis, which strongly deviates from ‘armchair’ reflecting on
accounting ‘reality’. It involved multiple methods of observation and enquiry intended to: (a)
help in understanding and explaining the nature of the Fijian pine industry’s financial
restructuring; (b) and how its accounting system became an integral part of a discourse deeply
rooted in notions of racial identification and differentiation.
Living in Ethnic-Fijian villages in the pine forests with individuals and their families
enabled a deeper understanding of the social, economic and operational complexities sur
rounding the corporatisation of the pine industry. Individuals, who command the actual
5
The three principal languages are my natural languages: English, Fijian and Hindustani. As a result, these were used
intermittently at the respondents’ discretion, when searching for authentic insights based on lived experiences and
reconstructions of everyday concepts and meanings. Field stays were during 1992, August 1994–March 1995, August
2001, and August–September 2002.
doing and application of accounting and control procedures both at Headquarters and in the
pine forests, were observed and interacted with. These observations and interactions gave
invaluable insights into both the formal requirements of corporatisation, including the
practices of accounting, and the ways in which these have often been questioned and negated
in the pine forests. Observations of meetings at various management levels, includ ing larger
gatherings of villagers, and also a Workshop organised by FPL gave a deeper understanding
about the ways in which the preferential-initiative has been promoted. These open discussions
also gave much more insight about differing and contradictory viewpoints. Interview
discussions with the participants in these gatherings helped recognition and un derstandings
of the complex and varied kinds of demands of the financial restructuring. Non-participating
respondents were also identified from these meetings and subsequently contacted for
interview–discussions. Analysis of official relevant government documen tation, and FPL
organisational documents were important sources for understanding the official explanations
of the affirmative-initiatives and their policy requirements. Also, pe riodic FPL management,
financial and technical reports have been invaluable sources for understanding both the
workings as well as the difficulties experienced in the implementa tion of a Chiefly-based
preferential initiative. Archival searches permitted an understanding of the historical basis of
exclusion that informs the development of the pine industry in Fiji. This, multi-methods
researching approach adopted helped synthesise numerous com plementary as well as
contradictory narratives about the politics of accounting, race and ethnicity in the
development of a Chiefly-based preferencing.
3. Some theoretical notes on race and ethnicity
To explore accounting’s enrolment in debates of race and ethnicity, the meaning of race
and ethnicity as used in this paper requires some explication. Race is a fluid concept and just
like accounting, derives meaning from specific socio-cultural contexts in which it is created
and nurtured (Bobo and Hutchings, 1996; Goldberg, 1990b, 1993). Although racial distinc
tions often tend to be arbitrarily and opportunistically made (Baker and Redmond, 1989b;
Whitaker, 1992; Wieviorka, 1995), the dominant meaning of race is generally associated with
the attribution of people as groups distinguished by notions of “descent”, “somatic visibility”
and “physical phenotypes”. For instance, individuals in Fiji remain officially differentiated
and categorised according to the ex-colonial government’s classification into seven “race
6
groups”. These include: European; Fijian; Indian; Rotuman; Chinese; other Pacific Islanders;
and Part European—persons of mixed native and European descent. As a visiting British
doctor on contract found out: “Every government document, driving licence, medical record,
crime statistics, etc. contain [... ] this information” (Hurdley, 1996). The significance of race
here is in the way in which it is used in articulating conceptions of group identities in terms of
their “biologically conceived” “heritable” qualities and dispositions.
6
This is not to suggest that ontological claims of racial existence is not unproblematic. Similar to research findings in
Brazil (Sowards, 1993) and the demographic trends in the American Indian population (Nagel, 1995) racial lines are
crossed, in particular by individuals of mixed native descent, to take advantage of the so-called ‘positive
discrimination’ policies.
Indigenous Fijian identity, for example, is based on hierarchical clan lineage, and to this
extent, racial discrimination operating on racial phenotypes—of perceived group attributes
and deficiencies. Concomitant ‘correct’ and etiquette-conscious public demeanour remains
strong in Fiji. One example is found in the Fijian State policy on the “development of the
Taukei” where, inter alia, not only an official classification is required, but one must also, as
an indigenous Chief Executive uttered: “look, speak and behave like a Fijian” to take
advantage of government grants and favourable credit policies, including interest-free loans.
Racial discrimination can therefore be “overt and individual” as well as “covert and
institutional” (Wieviorka, 1995, p. 60). However race is ascribed, racial “ascriptions”, as
Goldberg (1990b, p. 296) notes, “do not merely propose racial differences, they as sign racial
preferences” and in doing so, racialised expressions of inclusion–exclusion and entitlement–
restrictions are defined. In addition, it has been emphasised that the politics of racialised
preferencing and forceful exclusions of those identified as being different tend to
circumscribe intra-racial hegemonies and differentiating identities (Marqusee, 1997; Moore,
1972; Nikolinakos, 1973; Reeves, 1983). In this paper, these are important points in rela tion
to the way in which elite indigenous supremacy is both constitutionally secured and
organisationally institutionalised. As has been widely pointed out, institutional or struc tural,
rather than only attitudinal racism, is more powerful in perpetuating discriminatory practices
and state race relation policies (Friedman, 1975; Genovese, 1971; Hammond and Streeter,
1994; Heer, 1959; Reeves, 1983; Schermerhon, 1956; Wieviorka, 1995).
Ethnicity on the other hand, is a “broader concept” of identification and distinction “sub
suming race” (Nagel, 1995, p. 947), and is created to promote “corporate rights” (Hamaseo,
1997, p. 10). Race-based ethnicity is but one form of ethnicity. As Anthias (1990) points out,
ethnicity, as a central organising principle in social relations, is reactive to material conditions
and is often socially constructed by the constraints on opportunities. Ethnicity may, therefore,
be used as an overt political instrument for the advancement of a diversity of political
projects. For instance, it has been suggested that existing ethnic identities, such as religion,
culture, kinship, language, and geographical space, are treated as “political instru ment(s) for
development gains” (Ronen, 1986a, 1986b, p. 6). And to this extent, it has been argued that
ethnicity is a “potentially useful factor in the process of development” (p. 7). It is perhaps for
this reason that ethnicity—as a way of identifying and distinguishing different communities,
as in Fiji—has become “accepted as the pivot of development” (Singh, 1990, p. 27) discourse
and affirmative-action initiatives. Important ethnic markers inquired into in this research, for
example, are rural area/sector and clan lineage. However, it has also been argued that in
practising a relatively covert form of racial differentiation and discrimination, sentiments of
racial superiority and entitlements are often concealed and justified by ethnic referents (Essed,
1991; Schutte, 1995; Steinberg, 1989). In this paper, this is a crucial point in relation to the
way in which preferential development policies are justified and deployed.
Articulation of forms of racial difference and ethnic identities in ex-colonial states, such as
Fiji, are seen as products of colonial administration (Bhabha, 1994; Fanon, 1970; Gilroy,
1987, 1990; Greenberg, 1980; Moore, 1972; Ross, 1982a, 1982b; Said, 1993; Schutte, 1995;
Stam and Spence, 1983). For instance, Ross (1982b) stresses the significance of the colonial
roots of racism, stating that: “colonial societies became so pervaded with and organised
around racist and related ideas [... ] that these ideas came to be internalised by the colonised
themselves” (p. 3). Moreover, not only were the most formidable symbols of
national organisation racialised in colonial societies, they were also gendered with specific
class dimensions (Emberson-Bain, 1994; Kilson, 1970; Robinson, 1972). In this study these
are important characteristics in relation to the ways in which Ethnic-Fijian communities are
structured.
Justification for preferential treatment is usually communicated from a moral perspective
as an ethically, upright act of equitable capital and income distribution. At the same time,
affirmative development programmes are usually rooted in race-specific assignments as a way
of differentiating people for the purposes of deploying affirmative policies (see, Means, 1986;
Milne, 1986 for specific examples; Cohen, 1996a, 1996b; Puddington, 1995a, 1995b; Radin,
1991 for affirmative action in general). The question then arises: are all racialised exclusions
and preferential development programmes racist? Goldberg (1993) drawing from Baier
(1978) suggests an answer. It appears that at least three criteria must be met to deem
preferential treatment programs as being racist. Goldberg defines these in the following way:
(a) “people would have to be excluded from institutional opportunities in virtue of their racial
membership” whatever the definition of race (p. 114); (b) “the range of opportunities”
available to the beneficiaries is not “readily available” to those excluded (p. 115); and (c)
there would have to be a history of “curtailed” “opportunities” for members of a racialised
group (p. 115). Conversely, for racism not to occur race-based ethnicity stressing
“encouragement” and “development opportunities” (Hill, 1991) must be a remedial policy of
preferences for victims of past discrimination. Inspired by Goldberg’s (1993) argument, that
different forms of racism can exist in space and historical time, one particular racist mode of
expression and exclusion is defined in this research: development racism. This is defined as,
forceful racist exclusions structured by preferential-initiatives ostensibly for development
purposes. In order to begin problematising accounting in such preferencing strategies, it is
necessary to describe the site of exclusion.
4. The site of exclusion
4.1. The antecedent world of racial segregation and privileging
European explorers, missionaries and traders were present in Fiji from the very early
1800s. But their presence became dominant and more politically, economically and socially
significant from about the mid-1800s. Diverse and complex processes of both voluntary and
enforced cooperation between the different interests led eventually to Fiji’s annexation to
Great Britain on 10 October 1874 (for an analysis of these processes see Davie, 2000a).
Similar to other British colonies the development of racist, masculine ideologies in Fiji
originates from its century of colonial imperial experiences. However, in the context of the
arguments of this paper, Fiji’s history is unique among the many countries colonised by
Europeans in the last century. While colonialism is generally characterised by the “dec
imation of the native peoples” and by the indigenous population as being “victim to the racial
tyranny” (Mandella, 1994), Fiji’s segregationist and discriminatory colonial expe rience
reinforced an imperial sense of epistemic superiority in selected native clans (see, e.g. Fiji
Legislative Council Paper No. 24 of 1943 [CP 24 of 1943]; CP 22 of 1944; Native Lands
Ordinance, Fiji No. XXI of 1880). This aura of superiority was partially achieved by
bolstering the authority of the Chiefs, through a rhetoric of ‘indirect rule’ and enactment of
Native Regulations (Davie, 2000a).
Padmore (1936, p. 315) defined the principle of indirect rule as “... . the system of gov
erning the Blacks through their own chiefs and political institutions under the control of
European officials ... . The Whites, however, hold the real political, financial, and mili tary
powers in their hands, while the chiefs serve as their marionettes”. Such a system of
governing enabled a few Europeans to rule the vast native populations. For example, in Fiji in
1879 there were approximately 110,000 native Fijians and less than 500 Europeans (CP 11 of
1886). The enactment of the Native Affairs Regulations Ordinance of 1876 not only defined a
particular style of rule but it also set the initial parameters of racial and clan distinction. Tribal
ethnic identities were simplified, sometimes created where not actually existing previously,
and encapsulated into four hierarchical and inclusive divisions of pa trilineal, landowning
rights, as well as a one-way obligation to the Chiefs (Belshaw, 1964; France, 1969; Ravuvu,
1988; Thomas, 1994). A framework was thereby developed which encapsulated indigenous
7
social relations and systems of accountability into: vanua, yavusa, mataqali, and tokatoka.
These social divisions continue to be exogenous, usually patrilin eal and have hierarchical
land-owning rights, with the vanua as being the largest grouping and the tokatoka as being the
least. That is, a grouping of tokatoka subdivisions makes a mataqali; a grouping of mataqali
subdivisions makes a yavusa; and finally all yavusa subunits together make a vanua. Despite
protests from various parts of the country (France, 1969; Ravuvu, 1988), the mataqali
subdivision has been made the official landowning and proprietary unit. Whilst such a
construction of indigenous identity and ownership rights, giving the mataqali supremacy, is
still being challenged in some parts of Fiji, the system, nonetheless, became a political
sacrosanct (Belshaw, 1964; CP 13 of 1959; CP 29 of 1959; Qalo, 1994; Spate, 1990). These
land-owning social units ‘own’ approximately 84% of the total land area in Fiji. The
important point to note here, is that each distinctive social unit and sub-unit, except the
tokatoka subdivision, is headed by a Chief. Consequently, Chiefs are placed at different levels
on the hierarchy with differentiated distributional rights. In addition, formation of various
institutional Boards within the Ministry of Fijian Affairs such as the Great Council of Chiefs,
the Native Land Trust Board (NLTB) and the Fijian Affairs helped crystallise Chiefly rule.
British policy on Native Regulations not only created and reinforced a hegemonic Chiefly
rule. But by restricting indigenous labour resources to communal production of crops for
taxation purposes the Native Regulations exacerbated the colonial sugar-cane planters’
demand for labour. Britain’s response was to indenture labour from the Indian sub-continent.
During the indenture period, between 1879 and 1916, 60,553 Indians arrived as indentured
(re)emigrants (Gillion, 1962, p. 59). By 1911 they were forcefully demanding increased
political representation to reflect both their economic dom inance as well as their rapidly
8
increasing demographic size. But the British colonial policy response was based on the
policy of ‘divide and rule’. That is, colonial rule ensured that
7
Peter France in his The Charter of the Land: Customs and Colonisation in Fiji (London: Oxford University Press,
1969), provides an extensive discussion on this topic. And particularly in Chapter 10, he critically analysed the process
of cataloguing the indigenous social structure and shows how it was created to facilitate colonial administration.
8
In 1911 there were approximately 40,286 Indians (colonial classification); 87,096 Ethnic-Fijians and 3707
Europeans (Ali, 1980, p. 133).
the two dominant racial groups remained economically, politically and socially separated and
at ‘loggerheads’ fundamentally. After independence, the 1970 Constitution reinforced not
only the socio-economic and political separation of the racial groups but also ensured
indigenous elite dominance of the executive. This was partly achieved through its electoral
system based predominantly on race-based communal seats and communal voting.
4.2. About the time of financial restructuring
After the two military coups in 1987, racial separation and elite indigenous dominance was
more firmly embedded in Fiji’s 1990 undemocratic decree promulgated constitution. That
Constitution tried to ostensibly, give Ethnic-Fijians, who, at the time represented about 51%
of the total population, political supremacy in perpetuity. It not only provided for the Prime
Minister to be an Ethnic-Fijian but also for a permanent majority in both the House of
Representatives (37 of the 70 seats) and the Senate (24 nominees out of the 34 seats) as well
as special veto powers on Constitutional amendments. Other exclusionary provi sions
included: preferential treatment for Ethnic-Fijians in public services; maintenance of separate
electoral rolls for different ethnic communities; and the abolition of cross-voting national
seats. Such exclusions help in pervading the macro-social institutions and poli cies of the
State in the name of protecting indigenous Fijian interests and in narrowing the perceived
economic disparity in particular between the two dominant groups—the native Fijian people
and the Indo-Fijians. A claim rigorously contested on both political and eco nomic grounds
(see, e.g. Durutalo, 1986; Ratuva, 2000; Reddy, 1997; Sutherland, 1992). That
notwithstanding, State-enforced exclusions are diverse and are justified as a process of
inclusion for the indigenous Fijians, supposedly unable to sustain themselves and prosper in
commercial business enterprise (Fiji Development Bank: Your Guide to Commercial and
Industrial Loans to Fijians). These exclusions are reflected in, for instance, government and
financial institution rules for allocating credit, which seemingly lack consistency and entertain
9
a distinct racial preferencing. A paid advertisement, in the two English-language national
10
newspapers, by The University of the South Pacific in defence of its alleged
9
For example, a government subsidised financial institution, Fiji Development Bank, has been established
specifically to cater for the “development of the Taukei”, where a less stringent borrowing criteria for the indigenous
peoples predominates (FDB Guide: Your Guide to Commercial and Industrial Loans to Fijians). According to the FDB
Guide, under the “soft loans scheme” for the indigenous Fijians, the Fijian Government subsidises all loans of up to
$F200,000 from the Development Bank by 5.5% so that on average the interest rate paid by Ethnic-Fijians is 8%.
There are also State promoted commercial organisations, such as the Fijian Holdings Ltd. and the National Bank of Fiji
(now Colonial National Bank of Fiji), whose principal objective is to promote native participation in the private sector.
Not only is shareholding and ownership in these companies limited to select indigenous Fijians, but they also enjoy
privileged financing facilities. In 1989, for example, the Fijian State advanced a $FM20 interest-free loan to the Fijian
Holdings Ltd., repayable over 20 years, to promote the familiar racial lines of economic and social privilege ( Fijian
Holdings Ltd., Annual Report, 1993). Privileges not readily available to many others, including indigenous Fijians.
Additionally, Fiji’s only pension scheme has recently revised its lending policies. It’s Small Business Equity Scheme
Procedures indicate that the Fund’s financial lending policies have been redesigned to favour development of an
indigenous economy, which allows native peoples special access to pension funds for business purposes. An access
denied to other racial groups.
10
The University of the South Pacific, located in Fiji, is “owned”, “operated” and “funded” by 12 Pacific island
nations, of which Fiji is one of the principal players.
“racist” “Admission Policy” against the Indo-Fijians in particular, is indicative of strong

discriminatory racial exclusions in education. A section of the extract reads: “Scholarships are
awarded based on criteria which appear to recognise race and ethnicity, as well as a policy of
affirmative action for the indigenous people of Fiji” (The Daily Post, 1997; The Fiji Times,
1997). By extension the University practices a differential entry qualification for the native
scholarship holders reflecting not so much the intrinsic merit of the candidate but rather merit
within the structured preferential program. Indeed, race-based ethnicity stressing development
is an important social cleavage in Fiji. However, similar to Malaysia the principal focus of
these policies has been to economically empower the indigenous elite (Durutalo, 1986;
Gometz, 1994; Ratuva, 2000).
Today, not only are discourses of racial difference and ethnic identities ‘fixed’ in Fiji, as
has also been argued elsewhere, but racist ideologies underpin segregationist and racially dis
criminatory State development policies (see, e.g. Durutalo, 1985a; Narsey, 1979; Robertson,
1986; Sutherland, 1992). As Sutherland (1992) points out, “a deep-rooted racism nurtured by
racist socialising processes and continuously reinforced by racialist constructions of class
11
difference” (p. 158) in the form of Chieftaincy and through a personalised State authority
pervades Fiji. For the notions of the State and the Government in Fiji are almost absorbed into
one through a nexus. That is a bonding based primarily upon Paramount Chiefs and the other
principal chiefs which connects and links together a political hegemony embracing all parts of
the State, the Government, and the Society. In this respect, contemporary state authority in
Fiji can be seen as a personalised and privileged legal and constitutional order. That is, a
system of control and surveillance vested in Paramount Chiefs. The two military coups in
1987 and a civil coup in 2000 have been conducted in the name of the indige nous Fijians to
give the Chiefly hegemony greater political power allegedly lost through embracing
democracy. In short, there is insufficient evidence to suggest that native Fijians have a history
of curtailed opportunities. What history indicates instead is that institutional arrangements
favour an Ethnic-Fijian aristocracy. This is because political power is vested in and exploited
by the indigenous aristocracy. In this narrative, this hegemony is illustrated by examining the
financial re-structuring rules, and the accounting and financing policies of the Fijian pine
industry.
5. The Fijian pine industry
5.1. Its political significance
Research for developing the country’s forestry industry began in the 1950s. A particular
species of pine, pinus caribea, was recognised as being ideal for degraded, infertile land in
Fiji. As a result of this research finding, the Fijian pine industry was established as a
department within the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry. On 1 July 1976, the
11
Theories of the state are heterogeneous, and theoretical distinctions are problematic. It is often defined in the
negative by stating that it is not equivalent to the government, which is transitory, and dependent upon the Constitution
of the State for legitimacy, at any time. In accounting discourse, Miller (1990, p. 315) defines the state and its
relationship with government “as a loosely assembled complex of rationales and practices of government”.
Fiji Pine Commission (FPC) was established as a government corporation by an Act of Par
liament (FPC Act No. 5 of 1976, Chapter 151). Increasing government interest in the pine
industry was explained by the industry’s export potential. But it has been well argued that the
development of the pine industry was also a political imperative for the Ethnic-Fijian aris
tocracy. The Alliance Government, representing the eastern Fijian hierarchical hegemony,
had been in power since 1970. It was imperative for that government to also secure strong
rural indigenous support in the west and the north of the Fiji Islands (Durutalo, 1985a, 1986;
Sutherland, 1992, 2000). Thus, the establishment of the FPC was to this extent a significant
part of a policy favouring government designated groups of Ethnic-Fijian people. It was,
simultaneously, a counter to the Indo-Fijian dominated sugar cane farming industry (FPL
Human Resource Manager, 1994). This preferential policy was promoted using the less
provocative banner of “the development of the rural sector of the economy” (FPC Annual
Report, 1977).
5.2. Accounting for a step towards financial viability
In accordance with the provisions of the FPC Act No. 5 of 1976, Chapter 151, Sections 2–
6, the Commission was charged with two primary objectives structured by race-based ethnic
perceptions:
(i) “to establish a viable forestry industry based on the planted forests” established on lands
leased from Ethnic-Fijian landowners and the State; and
(ii) “... to enable the acquisition by proprietary units by [Ethnic-Fijian] landowners ... ”
Hence, forestry rights give access to the pine trees on the ground and the lease gives
interest rights in indigenous land. It has been suggested by some FPL Managers that the
industry’s political significance enabled the industry to overcome financial impediments that
other kinds of business enterprises found difficult to manage (Carty, 1992; Clark, 2001;
Labati, 2001; Yalimaiwai, 1994). This is partly reflected in the way in which the pine
afforestation activities have been financially contrived including:
• two types of loans from the Fijian State: first, were those loans acquired between 1976 and
1983 (inclusive) accruing 7 and 5/16% interest per annum; and second, interest-free loans
acquired between 1984 and 1990 (inclusive);
• loans acquired at 2% interest from the European Investment Bank; and • grants in aid
received from Overseas Development Administration (UK), and government agencies of both
Australia and New Zealand.
However, debt financing through the Fijian State was soon perceived to be relatively
expensive. For instance, by the end of 1988 capitalised interest on loans from the Fiji
government alone accounted for approximately 27.2% of FPC’s afforestation expenditure
(FPC Annual Report, 1988, p. 4). Apparently, it seemed that creating an indigenous “viable
forest industry” (FPC Act No. 5, 1976, Chapter 151) by debt financing was not economically
and financially feasible. It appears that the “solution” to FPC’s financing problem, and a
means of attempting to rid government of its financial responsibilities, was corporatisation.
So in 1988 the Commission submitted a corporate restructuring proposal which, according to
the Annual Report (1988), provided for “a commercially acceptable equity-based capital
structure” (p. 41), and a step towards “achieving financial viability” (FPC Annual Report,
1989, p. 6).
According to the Chairman, for example, a dissatisfaction with FPC’s financial perfor
12
mance caused a major reappraisal of the organisation’s corporatisation to be undertaken
(FPC Annual Report, 1989, p. 6; FPL Annual Report, 1991, p. 3). The General Manager of
FPC at the time emphasised that corporatisation was necessary to set in place a commit ment
to a strong commercial approach (FPC Annual Report, 1990, p. 4). The government in its
1989 budget announcement supported the proposal for a financial restructuring, and in
September 1990, FPL was incorporated as a commercial organisation. The transfer of FPC’s
assets, liabilities, and obligations on 1 January 1991 to FPL constituted a financial restruc
turing. And accounting and finance expertise provided the rational, economic reasons for re-
structuring. The official explanations highlight commercialism and financial viability as being
significant. Organisational planning documents emphasise that the restructuring will “put into
place a mechanism” (emphasis in original) to achieve, in particular, the second objective of
indigenous acquisition (FPC Corporate Restructure Presentation, 1990, p. 5). Corporatisation
was associated with not only success and attainment of objectives but, as the Chief Executive
pointed out, it was also seen as a way of clarifying what was meant by “ownership” (Yabaki,
1994). A number of factors influenced the corporatisation process: a world-wide trend
(Achary, 1996; Davie, 2000b); a national policy on public sector refor mation (Ministry of
Finance and Public Enterprises, 1994); and the primacy of affirmative action after the military
coups in 1987 (Ratuva, 2000).
5.3. The financial restructuring rules
The financial re-structuring of the Fijian pine industry in the 1990s has been based on the
British colonial system of Chiefly hegemony, and in particular on the mataqali system of
ownership and social regulation. So in this respect, the mataqali system of ownership is
important as a point of analysis in this paper because the financial restructuring and
shareholding in FPL is based on it. Drawing from colonial official documents Davie (2000a,
2000b) highlights important aspects of this highly complex mataqali landowning system.
Aspects relating to the arguments of this paper are summarised in Table 1.
Native land in Fiji is collectively owned by the mataqalisub-groupings, the land-use rights
of which are highly complex and superimposed by a government system of indigenous clan
membership registration. Since land is inalienable, sale of mataqali land is strictly prohibited
by law, except to the State. The NLTB has been established to manage all administrative and
accounting work relating to the management of indigenous land for a “poundage fee” of 25%
of the rental income collected on behalf of the Ethnic-Fijians. The management
responsibilities of NLTB include the collection of land lease rentals and their distribution to
the Chiefs and the indigenous landowners. Finally, and crucial to the arguments of this paper,
distributional rights of this native system of ownership are very strictly differentiated by law.
According to the NLTB statutory accountability agreement, after the poundage fee
12
In response to the various changes brought about as a result of the financial restructuring, a Forest Area Manager’s
comment on 14 September 1994 appears to capture the commitment not to change in a general sense: “The more FPL
changes, the more it remains the same”.
Table 1
Mataqali system of ownership and organisation as incorporated in FPL
Mataqali system of ownership and organisation Reflected in “style of financial re-structuring in FPL”
I Mataqali is the landowning social unit FPT issues units of distributional rights to beneficiaries on the
II Land-use rights: a highly complex land tenure system basis of one unit for each hectare leased to FPL
superimposed by a government system of registration
III Land is inalienable, except to the State Beneficiaries are not entitled to sell or transfer their rights
If a mataqali ceases to exist land is alienated to the State
through NLTB and scheduled as “Reserve” for future use by If the lease lapses or is terminated the units are to be cancelled
indigenous Fijians
IV NLTB manages all land ‘owned’ by the mataqalis
FPT is responsible for managing all benefits accruing to
V Distributional rights are landowners from FPL and investments in other pine-related
differentiatory companies
Fiji government and FPT hold shares on behalf of indigenous Distributional rights are based on the Mataqali system
landowners leasing land to FPL
and VAT deductions, the Chiefs receive a total of 30% of the remaining 65% of the land lease
rental revenue available for distribution to indigenous landowners. Accordingly, the amount
received by a Chief is reflective of the position held in the Chiefly hegemony. Table 2
summarises the distributional rights within the Chieftaincy: the Chief of a vanua receives 5%;
Chief of a yavusa receives 10%; Chief of a mataqali receives 15%; and members of the
mataqali/tokatoka receive 70%. Hence, beneath a racial form of social organisation, as
Sutherland (1984, 1992), Durutalo (1985b) and Robertson (1986) also point out, lies a
masculine, Chiefly-based class relations of dominance and exploitation negotiated through a
distributional network of clan relations.
FPL’s equity-based capital structure and organisation mimic these race-based ethnic
concepts of identification and collective ownership. As a result, rules for participating and
shareholding are similarly based on racial and intra-racial differentiation and social
identification. Racial subdivisions in the form of clan lineage is the ethnic marker here. The
capitalist form of indigenous ownership and its entitlement rights is detailed in the Fiji Pine
Trust Rules (Republic of Fiji, Legal Notice No. 17, 1990), and are summarised here and in
Table 1. That Legal Notice gives the Fiji Pine Trust (FPT), created at the time of the pine
industry’s corporatisation, almost absolute control in terms of shareholding and entitlement
rights in FPL. It empowers FPT to collectively hold shares in FPL on behalf of landowners
leasing land to FPL and to issue entitlement rights on the basis of one unit for each hectare of
Table 2
Distributional rights of the Chiefly hegemony
Deduction at source (%): Analysis of the 65% to the natives (% (100)) Value added tax 10 Chief of the vanua 5
Administration costs paid to NLTB 25 Chief of the yavusa 10
Distributed to native Chiefs and landowners 65 Chief of the mataqali 15 Other members of the sub-groupings 70
100 100
land that is leased to the FPL. Moreover, similar to the mataqalisystem of ownership, shares
in FPL can only be alienated to the FPT as Section 15; (ii) uncompromisingly prohibits any
sale or transfer of shares in FPL. Furthermore, according to Sections 6 and 9, FPT is also
responsible for managing indigenous landowner investments in other companies associated
with the pine industry, such as native landowner limited liability companies.
In effect, the style of financial re-structuring in FPL is exclusionary, and is based on British
colonial imposed racialist and class structures of ownership and stratification. The forceful
exclusions structured by preferential-initiatives for the elite indigenous peoples express the
mode of preferencing in Fiji’s pine forest investment. At the same time, pine afforestation
activities are articulated in terms of these racial perceptions of ownership and organisation. It
is thus reasonable to argue that FPL’s financial re-structuring exhibits a general, race-based
institutionalised pattern of exclusion and preferencing.
To complete the indigenising process, the differentiatory mataqali system of financial
restructuring has also been proposed for amalgamating all other native private limited com
panies associated with the pine industry in each of its six forests, ironically in the name of
“equal distribution of benefits”. The use of the mataqali system of ownership and or
ganisation is symbolic. The meaning and significance now endowed in the pine industry
endorses the neo-colonialist obligations to the hierarchical Chiefly communal order. In this
way, the meaning and significance accorded to the mataqali system of financial restruc turing
assumes a priori claims to morality—it being an affirmative “rural development” program
which is “designed to respect” the Chiefs. But beneath the moral message lies a strategy that
underpins a system of racial and ethnic differentiation and privileging, as well as intra-
differentiatory discrimination. The financial restructuring of the Fijian pine industry is thus as
much a site for development racism as it is also for the invention of new preferencing acts
structured by perceptions of indigenous strategies.
The racialised capitalist expression not only provides a context for accounting interven
tion, but it also initiates calls for change in afforestation accounting practice and methods. It
has been called upon to satisfy the demands for specific and strategic calculations vital to the
programme. Not only has the exclusive strategy sought accounting justification to asso ciate
corporatisation with notions of financial viability but it has also generated a particular culture
of calculative rationality for the financial re-structuring to take place.
5.4. Accounting for effecting a mataqali form of financial restructuring
In order to establish a rational and “credible” development policy, pine forest values used
for the purposes of financial re-structuring were based on a valuation carried out by the
government nominated experts—Groome Poyry Limited of New Zealand. Accounting and
finance expertise was implemented as a key technology of decision-usefulness. Historical
afforestation activities were rendered classifiable, calculable and recordable in books of
account for the purposes of changing the extant nature of commitment and the status of pro
prietary rights through a financial re-structuring. Through accounting calculations financial
values were attributed to all financial statement categories of assets, liabilities and capital as
shown in Table 3.
The net acquisition amount owing by FPL to the government was valued at F$M61.102.
This was made of: 34,418 ha of pine forests valued at F$M53.578; plant and equipment
Table 3
The acquisition of assets, capital and liabilities by FPL
Assets F$M
Pine forests: FPC 46.312 Forestry Department 7.266 Plant equipment 2.576 Share investment in subsidiary 10.200
Working capital 0.211
Total 66.565
Claims
Share capital 61.102 Loans 5.463
Total 66.565 Source: FPL Annual Report (1991).
valued at F$M2.576; F$10,200 share investment in Tropik Woods Limited, now a subsidiary
of FPL; and working capital valued at F$M0.211. Loans from the European Investment Bank
totalling F$M5.463 were also transferred to FPL. According to the Groome Poyry Report
(1990, p. 2), the purpose of the valuation was to: “establish a fair market value at which the
loans can be transferred [in]to equity in Fiji Pine Limited” and in accord with best
commercial practice. The assets and liabilities of FPC and the pine forests of the forestry
department were thus acquired, at least on ‘paper’, by issuing three classes of shares. These
include: (a) 100,000 A Class $1 ordinary shares which have voting and dividend rights; (b) 1
Million B Class $1 redeemable preference shares which have voting rights only; and (c)
60,002,064 C Class $1 redeemable preference shares which have as such neither voting nor
dividend rights. The 100,000 bonus A Class $1 ordinary shares are held paternalistically by
the FPT on behalf of its Ethnic-Fijian landowners leasing land to FPL. The Fijian
Government holds the B and C Class shares, which are redeemable out of profits so as to
increase the bonus shares. The redemption of government shares, as the FPL Annual Report
(1991, p. 31) indicates, is dependent upon two requirements: (i) FPL completing its planned
estate size of 68,000 ha, by September 1994, however, the sustainable estimate was revised to
52,000 ha; and (ii) meeting its financial obligations from within its own resources and forestry
operations.
The centrality of accounting and finance in the restructuring process acquires a certain
familiarity. A desire for rational development policy has engendered the design of and
reliance on what could be perceived as scientific and rational financial management policy
tools. FPL’s ‘owners’ as shareholders are defined by a calculated number of $1 shares they
hold in FPL. Ownership rights are given meaning in terms of the number of $1 ordinary and
preference shares held, and the capitalisation of the acquisitions from FPC and the Forestry
13
Department. Private consultant valuation of the assets and liabilities gave the
13
Although important, the issue here is not whether pine forests on indigenous lands are assets or liabilities. Rather,
the concern here, is to illustrate accounting’s involvement in (pre)existing racial categories of exclusion. I am grateful
to Mike Power for highlighting this difference.
elaborate calculations of accounting and finance an expert authority in financial and forestry
management that the preferential initiative sought. The authoritative calculations also gave
capitalist legitimation so as to help persuade acceptance of a capitalist and indigenising form
of financial reorganisation. However, the numbers were calculated, once constructed, as
presented by independent expert advisors, the financial and accounting figures became a
powerful calculative means of both conceiving and justifying the conversion of loans to
equity capital. The expert knowledge of accounting and finance measurement held out the
possibility that one could define “ownership” and “distribution rights” through strict
application of rational, financial concepts of control and calculation. Accounting and finance
calculations became the scientific language of communication and development policy
implementation. Justification was not in racial terms or in terms of overt Taukei privilege, but
rather, in terms of being: “objective”, “scientifically credible” and of having economic and
financial “rationality”. The financial numbers had now become the common language into
which different forms of afforestation expertise, and exclusionary ownership rights and
privileges are translated. Accounting thus helped create and perpetuate differentiated and
racialised identities of social relations and economic power.
Moreover, by creating in-group racial and ethnic orientations the financial restructuring
helps perpetuate institutionalised, race-based discrimination within the afforestation activ
ities. The indigenisation of the pine industry is conventionally not explicitly articulated in the
accounting system. The racist nature of the language and the way it is uttered in accor dance
with the development racist context in which it is operationalised is implicit within the
calculative monolingualism. The language of calculations masks indigenous, Chiefly
dominance as the principle of organising. The significance of accounting here is related not
only to what it renders visible but, rather, more to what it seemingly succeeds in making
absent and silent. The significance is in the presence of silence in accounting, which masks a
specific type of preferencing implanted in the routine practices and functioning of FPL.
Racial and ethnic rationales silently sit along side afforestation financial management and
accounting calculations.
For example, the concept of ‘ownership’, as incorporated in the capital structure, is ra
tionalised with a specific form of racism based upon Chiefly hegemony and its “usufruct”
mataqali system of ownership. In this way, moral and economic rationalisation of discrim
ination reinforces primordial sentiments of difference and entitlements. Through an act of
mimicking, new forms of racism and ethnicity have been transformed into a capitalist frame
work. Racial and ethnic concepts of prejudice and exclusion have been silently inscribed into
FPL’s capital structure and transcribed into pine development policies and procedures, which
the languages of accounting and finance embody and help justify. Racial discrim ination is
thereby institutionalised through a discourse of development, and accounting calculations.
In essence, the argument here is that structures of racial exclusion are re-created and
presented in another way through new forms of accounting and finance expertise. The lan
guage of numbers is but an end point of a complex and paradoxical political process of
negotiations between a network of interests and policy makers. A new way of objectifying
discriminatory, clan-based ownership rights and organisation has been sought through ac
counting and finance expertise. Both accounting and finance calculations helped to define a
financial boundary that could be perceived to be neutral, objective and calculable. Indeed,
in enabling the financial re-structuring to be based on calculated “facts”, both accounting and
its financial values thus calculated can be seen to be justified, fair and rational. Racist
practices represented by the development of the Fijian pine industry are thereby evaluated
both in terms of rational, quantitative measurements, as well as, in terms of racism con sistent
with state development policies of racial discrimination and inequality. In this way,
accounting and financial expertise helps replace awkward racial expressions and details with
the government nominated experts’ financial and risk management calculus. The cal culative
routines of accounting and finance thus strongly assist in transforming a racialised, Chiefly-
based, hierarchical arena of obligation and responsibility into a language of eco nomic and
financial markets relations. The discriminatory action, accordingly, can then be explained in
terms such as that of “efficiency” and of technical rationality, for instance.
A desire for elaborate techniques of quantification and calculative rationality in the Fi jian
pine industry is a process of differentiation informed by, as well as enabling, a state
development programme engaged in elite preferencing initiatives. Ethnicity based on racist
exclusions and entitlements are now expressed in the name of a more acceptable, seemingly
neutral and impartial social and scientific discourse in the form of the number and type of
shares held. In aggregating the various records of transactions, an overall inscription of
ownership is created by the use of accounting and finance expertise. In disaggregating the
inscription so created accounting plays a significant role in relating to the differentiatory
ownership and entitlement rights. In this way, the re-regulation policy on the change of status
of ownership and appropriation rights came to be both interdependent and identified with the
accounting representation of it. The financial restructuring has thus been concep tualised in
racial and ethnic terms. In sum, accounting has become seemingly reasonably associated with
the reproduction of situations structured by race and discrimination. But this story of the
rational and the calculative does not end here. The rules of preferencing ensure a highly
restricted participation, which has trenchant implications for its financing. And so the success
of the perceived rational development policy is reliant on more evaluative calculations of
exclusive strategies. It is to this that attention is focused on next.
5.5. The rules of preferencing: or what triggered another epidemic of calculations?
Giving corporate meaning to the mataqali principle of ownership and organising has been
argued here to be part of a State policy to create a Chiefly-based economy. By emphasising
the interests embedded in the Chiefly order, one is able to understand the interdict as a
contingent outcome of the State’s policy relating to Chiefly ownership of public enterprises.
The questions then arise: what is the meaning and significance of this racially prejudiced and
interdictory policy in terms of the preferential-initiative’s financial management policies?;
how is accounting mobilised in such a discourse of development? Such concerns call for an
understanding of the accounting environment’s distinctive features. They also suggest an
understanding of the ways in which ideas of cost became increasingly significant as new
afforestation strategies for sustaining the preferential-initiative emerged.
The cost structure in which FPL’s racial epithets operate is insensitive to the changes in
programme levels. As the Corporate Plan, 1995–1999 indicates, 60% of the costs are con
sidered to be fixed (p. 2). The Financial Controller emphasised that this is a characteristic and
very significant economic feature of a logging industry such as FPL (Saran, 1992a,
1992b, 1994). A further distinctive feature of the preferential-initiative is the way in which it
finances its forest growing activities and the divergent forms of social and economic dis
crimination. The concern does not seem to be whether it is an attractive financial investment
commercially. Rather, the question is who would want to risk making a long term capital
investment, such as by lending to FPL? As one manager put it: “Who would want to invest in
FPL? Lend money to the Chiefs? The Indians won’t do it” (August 1994). Government
advances and overseas grants-in-aids seem to be the answer for such an investment. There is
no provision for equity financing as this has been replaced by a British imperial remnant of
paternalism, and racial and ethnic norms of inalienability which restrict and a priori exclude
others from participating (see Table 1). By corporatising univocality and exclusivity the fi
nancial re-structuring not only conveys signals, which seem mutually contradictory and
“impossible”. But in Fiji’s very particular context also creates a new habitat for accounting
investment. The Human Resource Manager analyses the situation from a capitalist view point
as: “The whole thing was set-up on an impossible basis ... the capital structure was designed
to fail ... Chiefs? Capital structure? the whole thing is so complicated” (August 1994). But it
seems the complexity and the seeming ambivalence is a strategic inbuilt limi tation necessary
for the emergence of a Chiefly-based preferencing in the development and ownership of the
pine industry. Important for the analysis of accounting here is the way in which clan-based
exclusivity desires and invests in, calculative rationalities in search of a new financing
strategy.
As part of the corporatisation “deal”, FPL secured a generous arrangement with the Fiji
government regarding the financing and subsidising of its activities. A $MF24 principal sum
was estimated for a full production capacity of 64,000 ha at the end of 1990. At the time,
stocked area totalled 33,671 ha. The government “agreed” to advance $MF12 which was
exhausted in early 1995. Thereafter, according to the Financial Controller, FPL was to make
its own financing arrangements (Saran, 1992a, 1992b, 1994). As a result, between 1991 and
1994 its operations have been partly financed by a $MF12 interest-free loan from the Fiji
government, the repayment of which does not begin until the 1 December 2006 (FPL Annual
Reports, 1991–1993). The Annual Reports and planning documents also show that between
1991 and 1995 the costs incurred for the afforestation activities were subsidised by grants-in-
aid. The total sum subsidised during that period amounted to approximately $MF3.6. In
addition to the interest-free loan from the government and the grants-in-aid, a further loan of
approximately $M2.7 at an interest rate of 2% per annum was acquired, in 1993. This loan
came from the European Investment Bank through the government in order to finance an
increase in equity in a subsidiary company whose principal activity involves the logging of
FPL pine forests (FPL Annual Report, 1993, p. 34). In sum, the preferential project’s financial
and long term forest management planning had been based mostly on interest-free loans and
grants-in-aid.
An awareness of government’s hesitation to guarantee new loans from the private sector,
created an anxiety and nervousness at the Headquarters. Suddenly FPL management was
exposed to another kind of pressure; one that has been described by the Financial Controller
as an “extreme pressure”. That resulting from a search for alternative means of financing for
restocking, for development of new plantations, for “the shortfalls in revenue”, and for the
imposition of “other objectives ... which may be close to a welfare objective” particularly for
pine forest villagers. As a result, a search for a new financing strategy emerged. This
had at least two important effects: (a) it highlighted some strategic considerations; and (b) it
also triggered a flood of calculative activities and routines. For example, management was
troubled, inter alia, by the very important related financial issues of securing both a
government guarantee and of providing very expensive insurance for its pine forests. This is
because the difficulties and problems of searching for a suitable funding arrangement had
been further exacerbated by a lack of an insurance for the pine forests. The main asset—pine
forests planted on native leased land—is extremely vulnerable to forest fires and other natural
occurrences, such as cyclones and hurricanes. The commercial insurance costs are very high.
As a result the forests are not insured with any private insurance companies. Effectively, FPL
insures its own pine forests through its fire fighting capabilities and provisions, so far as it is
able to afford the related costs. In addition, since a relatively low expected rate of return of
between 3.3 and 4.22% had been calculated, the search, in effect, became especially for a
‘cheap loan’:
An interview meeting, 22 August 1994
The Chief Executive: At the moment we are wanting the government to guarantee loans.
The forests are not insured and the risks are high. If we don’t get the loan, future de
velopments will stop. The guarantee will maintain the $M60 asset. At the moment the
Permanent Secretary is most resisting.
An interview meeting, 22 August 1994
Human Resource Manager: We need soft loans from either the government, banks or other
financiers. But the forests are not covered [insured]. We need the government to give a
guarantee.
Meeting of the FPT Trustees, 25 August 1994
The Chief Executive: We have asked for loans from the commercial banks, but they require
a government guarantee. We are hoping to take our request to the Parliament before the
1995 budget.
The Planning Workshop, 15 September 1994
A Forest Technical Manager: The best way to protect our forest is to take out the risk by
managing the fires.
Furthermore, new afforestation strategies continued to emerge, culminating in an or
ganisational planning document and a high-level 3-day Planning Workshop organised by
management between 13 and 15 September 1994. It was said to be the first of its kind in the
history of the industry in Fiji. The participants included FPL’s Principal Officers, Divisional
and Forest Area Managers, landowner representatives, Senior Forest Rangers, various
government representatives, and the Roko Tui Pine. Deliberate efforts were made to critically
evaluate accounting and financial numbers and calculations provided by manage ment. For
example, after the Forestry Operations Manager’s presentation on related topics of “Risk
factors and plantation estate size” and “Fire protection strategies”, the partici pants were
divided into small groups and asked to consider various questions related to the issues raised
by the Forestry Operations Manager whose presentation was saturated with
accounting numbers and calculations. One of the questions asked was: “How do we best
protect our forests?” I observed Group 3, which consisted of FPL managers and officers, and
government representatives.
More importantly, there was yet another epidemic of calculations. For instance, statistics
relating to losses caused by fire, previously neither collated nor coalesced with management
decision-making and control, is now available as part of FPL’s planning document ( FPL
Planning Workshop and Policy Statement, 1994). These statistics are now produced and
analysed in terms of reduction of plantation value, forest breakdowns of plantation areas and
costs written-off. Since 1994, forests are now also classified on the basis of fire records and
the costs incurred in fire losses. As a result, the extant practice of restocking burnt forests is
14
now being challenged, and forests long known for their notoriety are threatened in terms of
restocking and surrender of leases (FPL Corporate Plan 1995–1999, p. 8). As part of the
analysis of expected future costs, and thus the construction of a conception of costs and
values, a sensitivity analysis using interest rates (from 0 to 10) for the cost of capital, has been
carried out. Costs were analysed as never before:

A Forest Area Manager: We have never attempted to plant a cover crop, why? Perhaps we
are still civil servants ... Forest fires are very costly! You just have to look at Jim’s
[Operations Manager] figures.
A Principal Manager: Why are there so many fires?
Another Forest Area Manager: It comes out from the landowners that if there is a dissat
isfaction, they deliberately start the fires.
A Forest Technical Officer: Don’t care how the fire starts. One fire in the Nabou Forest
destroys 10s of hectares of trees. And those figures that Jim gave us ... the amount of
money spent is enormous. The only thing to do is don’t plant unless we manage the fires.
The Financial Controller: We need $M15.7 to complete the forest size and reach full
production. [He asks:] O.K. what if we don’t plant, can we then avoid borrowing? No! Just
to restock the logged areas we will still require $M8 of borrowing. This is a typical feature
of a logging industry... . We are looking for a 12 to 15-year loan. Based on our current cost
estimates the real return is marginal, 3.3 percent, and if we include our investment in
Tropics then our return goes up to 4.22 percent. It is not what a real commercial investor
would expect. [He asks again:] So what does that mean? It means, that there is an extreme
pressure on the management to manage the place.
14
Discussions with many individuals, at various levels, suggest that pine-forest-fires are used by the indige nous
landowners to communicate their feelings and concerns. For instance, a senior management staff said: “If landowners
feel genuinely aggrieved they are more likely to put the fires outside ... . Fires are just warnings, latent reaction to
management decisions”. And, as a result, according to the Chief Executive: “While the company may have a strong
legitimate and lawful reason to force the issue with landowners, the fear of losing large areas of plantations to fires
often sway management to take a more softer approach” (Yabaki, 1994, p. 16).
In addition, technologies were developed to enable objective measurement in both phys ical
and financial terms. At the Workshop, for instance, not only was the preferential initiative’s
performance and financial viability under intense assessment and re-appraisal, but a new
database was also being created and used. It was used to construct a particularistic narrative
about the preferencing programme, which seemed to say something new about the affirmative
action, something that had been left unsaid before. It, for instance, highlighted that the
company’s wood supply was far from optimal and was therefore “unable to meet Tropik’s
wood supply requirement, both in terms of quantity and quality” (FPL Corporate Plan, p. 13).
Tropik Woods Limited is FPL’s only subsidiary and secured market. Its Chief Executive
points out that the current wood supply agreement has forced FPL to reduce the clearfell age
to an average of 15 years in order to enable its subsidiary to stay in operation (Ward, 1995).
Accordingly, the drop in the clearfell age from 20 to 15 years means, accord ing to
15
management calculations, a stagnant drop in sawlog proportion from an expected 32% to an
extant 26% of throughput (FPL Corporate Plan 1995–1999, Schedule 2). Indeed, it is
expected that the supply of wood will be critical over the next 15 years, as only about 50% of
the forest resources are currently being harvested. The problems have been further
exacerbated by the company failing to achieve its now reduced “full production capacity” of
52,000 ha. The increase in plantation size has been slow. The forest estate size as at 31
December 1993 was 37,291 ha. In order to achieve the targeted 52,000 ha by year 2005, a
principal sum, net of interest, of $MF11.3 has been estimated.
In parallel with wood production analysis, technical, product quality, and work assess
ments were also carried out for presentation in the Planning Workshop. There, not only did
the vocabulary of cost permeate strategic considerations, such as the silvicultural contracts,
but the idea of cost was also associated with tacit Taukei etiquette:
A Forest Technical Officer: “We have to decide whether to have centralised or satellite
nurseries. The problem with satellite nurseries is standards. So what are we looking at:
costs, standards or what?”
A Forest Area Manager: “The nurseries should be located at each forest, and there should
be no subcontracting of silvicultural work. That is why there is so much cost.”
A Divisional Manager: The problem lies here with us in the room. For example, silvicul
tural contracts of more than $1M go to those not leasing land ... . How is this equitably
distributed to landowners?
A FPT Trustee: It was very sad to hear what one of our fellow colleagues said this
morning. That when FPL came to stop the fire he did not stop and help because he was
15
There are two crop types in FPL: sawlog and pulplog which seek $19.50 and $8.50 stumpage rates, respectively. A
weighted average of $14 has been calculated. This means that price variability is not a significant factor for FPL. It is,
however, to Tropiks. The Chief Executive of Tropiks summarises the situation in the following way: “On world prices
the stumpage is quite high I believe ... a company who owns another company, it’s just a matter of who makes money.
Yes it’s a transfer. If the stumpage goes down Tropiks would make big profits and transfer the profits to FPL, if the
stumpage goes up FPL makes the profit and Tropiks profits are reduced”.
attending to his own business. I was very sorry to hear that. We must remember not to
forget our Taukei way of life ... . It was a shameful behaviour.
A Forest Technical Officer: In [name of the forest] the forest fire was taken care of before
FPL arrived.
And more recently, concerns about costs and financing have been associated with politics.
According to a FPT Trustee: “it is difficult to control costs in FPL ... . Where the money
comes from depends on who wins the election” (August 2001). Indeed, there is an extreme
pressure, since the general complexity of preferencing is compounded by concerns about its
financing. Whilst giving significance to racial and ethnic recognition is imperative for the
preferencing policy, it appears that the exclusionary policy has also contributed to the
program’s financing problems. Consequently, the search for a new financing strategy resulted
in an increased encroachment of calculative, financial-based forms of representation more
generally, and of management and financial accounting rationalities in particular. On account
of these engagements, it appears that accounting has secured a continuing, significant
presence in these tribal relations of preferencing.
6. Concluding remarks
The case-study suggests that affirmative-action initiatives can constitute a form of racism
in which accounting is fundamentally implicated. In looking beyond the moral message we
shall need to recognise whether or not a certain style of excludability, which values discrim
inatory racial preferencing, is a value among others that informs preferential-initiatives. By
problematising accounting in racial patterns of preferencing, the paper underscores the ar
gument that, beneath the seeming acts of protective discrimination may not lie a programme
of more equitable distribution of income and capital. Rather, the professed acts of affirma tive
action can be constitutive of a capitalist form of racial discrimination and intra-racial inequity.
It has been emphasised that accounting systems of social control embody and communi
cate radically different and conflicting rights, roles and obligations in different ensembles of
social relations (see, e.g. Chua and Degeling, 1993; Funnell, 2001; Llewellyn, 1998; Miller,
1990). In this narrative, an appeal to the discourse of development and Chiefly hege mony,
and to reliance on calculative rationality enables accounting to be seen as a rational
development policy tool. Accounting provides the fundamental form of rationality that de
velopment racism seems to seek here: classification, order, and attribution of acceptable
financial values. There are at least three important components to the study’s exclusionary
and differentiatory investment decision-making that promotes racist forms of accounting
change and other calculations. First, the calculation of acquisition values and sunk costs is not
an unproblematic response to a restrictive and a priori exclusive racial and ethnic under
standing of ownership, organisation and distributional rights. Accounting–finance expertise
enabled a highly sensitive and controversial political issue of indigenous preferencing to be
hidden under a veneer of acceptable calculations. Accounting in this respect became not only
a camouflaging rhetoric, but it also provided a substitute for, or a way out from some of the
moral dilemmas of the preferential initiative. Second, the a priori exclusionary policy
is simultaneously a medium for indigenising preferencing as well as a cause for financ ing
problems. As a consequence, ascendancy in calculative rationality helped create a new
knowledge base for managing the development enterprise. Through the use of calculative
technologies in the financing requirement decisions a new knowledge base that would fa
cilitate differentiatory, indigenous development has been created for assessment purposes.
Third, an interminable desire for objectivity, through quantitative data has promoted not only
new calculations, but it has also initiated a new way of expressing ethnic difference. The
incessant use and idolising of accounting’s calculations not only helps create an im pression
of rationality that development racism needs and seeks. But accounting also helps reinforce
pre-existing racial conceptions of acceptability and excludability. Accounting, in this
instance, became both constitutive and promotive in social action and decision-making.
The discourse orientations of the pine development programme and of accounting ratio
nales and practices are both firmly rooted in racial differences and in their consequential
socio-political and economic distinctions. Locating accounting in interdictory discourses of
tribalism and market regulation helped demonstrate two points. Firstly, it demonstrates how
accounting can become aligned with racially discriminatory development policies as the
handwriting of capitalism. Secondly, it shows how accounting rationales can effectively and
significantly help translate race-based ethnicity as an organising principle of a society’s
investment and development policies. Concomitantly, the racialist ideology that account ing
numeracy was called upon to help install and evaluate assisted in authenticating the
development racism that the pine industry in Fiji presently represents. Thus, race-centred
arguments and thinking has determined the production of an accounting knowledge that
strongly assists in politicising ethnicity. The arguments and evidence of this study show the
way in which the speaking and writing of accounting is immersed within a racial prin ciple of
social organising which establishes germane rules of entitlement and restriction, as well as
endowment and appropriation. Essed (1991), for instance, argues that “racism is a system of
structural inequalities” which are “created and re-created through routine practices” (p. 39).
Accounting’s practice in such contexts becomes, by definition, racist, because it is thereby
implicated, through its routine double-entry practices and its financial statements in the
quantification, the justification and the perpetuation of existing structural differences and
inequalities in a society practising forceful racist exclusions. That is, ac counting is not in
itself racist, but can become racist through the context in which it is practised.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to FPL Management and landowners for their enormous support and for
granting me access into FPL. The financial support of the University of the South Pacific, the
Overseas Development Administration, Heriot-Watt University and Edinburgh Center for
European Financial Studies are gratefully acknowledged. Special thanks are extended to
Trevor Hopper, Tony Lowe, Sue Llewellyn, Nick Paisey, Lee Parker, Mike Power and the
two anonymous reviewers of this journal for their encouraging comments and helpful
suggestions on earlier drafts. Comments received from participants at the APIRA Con ference
held in Adelaide, Australia 15–17 July 2001; Critical Perspectives on Accounting
Conference held in New York, April 25–27, 2002; and Glasgow Caledonian University
Accounting & Finance Seminar Series, 13 November 2002 have been helpful too.
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Critical Perspectives on Accounting 16 (2005) 551–577

The politics of accounting, race and ethnicity: a

E-mail address: s.s.k.davie@ncl.ac.uk (S.S.K. Davie).

affirmative-action initiative, which is rooted in race-specific assignments and differentia tion.

2. Research methodology and methods used

This is a micro-ethnography of accounting’s role in institutionalised patterns of discrim

4. The site of exclusion

4.1. The antecedent world of racial segregation and privileging

4.2. About the time of financial restructuring

“racist” “Admission Policy” against the Indo-Fijians in particular, is indicative of strong

5. The Fijian pine industry

5.1. Its political significance

5.2. Accounting for a step towards financial viability

5.3. The financial restructuring rules

5.5. The rules of preferencing: or what triggered another epidemic of calculations?

The Planning Workshop, 13 September 1994

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