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Capitalizing on Culture: Moral Ironies in Urban Fiji

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Henry J. Rutz
Henry J. Rutz
Affiliation:
Hamilton College
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Extract

To an historian or anthropologist familiar with land problems in Fiji, nothing would have been less predictable than the urban discontents over land rights since independence, for these disturbances, in an ethnically plural society whose colonial history is marked by hostility between Indians and Fijians, were among the Fijians themselves. During the whole of the colonial period, from cession of the islands to Britain in 1874 to independence in 1970, the coexistence of Europeans, Indians (first imported as indentured labor), and Fijians had been forged out of land law. Successive colonial administrations labored for four decades around the turn of the century to secure for Fijians a precapitalist system of property rights that would become a bulwark against encroachment by a white planter and settler community. The system “by law established” subsequently became the basis for hostility between several generations of rural Fijian landowners and a growing number of landless Indian peasants. By the time self-government arrived in the mid-1960s, Indian access to land and Fijian resistance thereto was the most important issue threatening the stability of the new state, and government-commissioned reports and legislative acts pointed to this conflict of interest as the most significant problem for an independent Fiji. But the authoritative history written from commission reports and based on administrative policy often conceals another history, that formed by the experience of everyday life, where opposed groups confront each other over interests not always visible to legislators and judges, and often less so to scholarly observers.

Type
Land and Law
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 29 , Issue 3 , July 1987 , pp. 533 - 557
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1987

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References

Research was supported by National Science Foundation Grant no. BNS 8120354 and a Hamilton College Faculty Fellowship. I owe to Konstantinos Gounis the initial insight into parasitism. Doris Rutz, Hy Van Luong, Grant Jones, Eugene Tobin, and David Gray read and commented on an earlier draft of this article, and Malcolm Blincow saved me from several grievous errors when an early version was delivered at the Anthropology Colloquium at York University, Toronto. Comments from anonymous members of the audience on two other occasions contributed to the argument: first, in a session on “Marxist Approaches to Social Transformation” at the Annual Meetings of the American Anthropological Association in 1983; and again during a session on “The Political Economy of Urban Development” at the Annual Meetings of the American Ethnological Society in 1985. Vula Saumaiwai, L. Q. Bulamaibau, Amani Masibalavu, and Sailosi Malimali helped me to see the diversity of Fijian motivation and interest in urban land. Whatever errors remain are my own.

1 Spate, O. H. K., The Fijian People: Economic Problems and Prospects (London, 1959)Google Scholar; Burns, Alan et al. , Report of the Commission of Enquiry into the Natural Resources and Population Trends of the Colony of Fiji, 1959 (London, 1960)Google Scholar.

2 Thompson, E. P., “The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century,” Past and Present, no. 50 (1971), 76–136CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 To my knowledge, urban Fijians have participated in only a single modem mass disturbance. In December 1959 an unsettled wage claim of the Wholesale and Retail Workers' General Union led to the stoning of European cars and shops “by Fijian and other youths. A meeting was dispersed with tear gas, the city was placed under curfew, and the Territorials were called out.” Mayer, Adrian C., Indians in Fiji (London, 1963), 116–18Google Scholar.

4 Thompson, “Moral Economy”; Gutman, Herbert, “Work, Culture, and Society in Industrializing America, 1815–1919,” in his Work, Culture, and Society (New York, 1977), 79–118Google Scholar; Scott, James C., The Moral Economy of the Peasant (New Haven, 1976)Google Scholar.

5 Williams, Dale Edward, “Morals, Markets, and the English Crowd in 1766,” Past and Present, no. 104 (1984), 56–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 By moral economy, I mean production, distribution, and consumption activities which occur within a matrix of social relations that are normatively prescribed, strongly obligatory, bounded by highly shared rules, meanings, and symbols, and perceived as more or less permanent or natural. My use of the term, although based on Thompson's pathbreaking analysis of English crowd behavior and the origins of the English working class, departs from it by stipulating the above criteria for its heuristic value. Williams's claim that the moral economy of the crowd is ephemeral next to the immediacy and materiality of market forces does not apply here.

7 By invented tradition, I mean the mistaken belief that current codes of conduct, whether legal or moral, have their origins in a distant past, receive saliency and legitimacy from that past, and act as a charter for present practice. My use of the term derives from Hobsbawm, Eric, “Introduction: Inventing Tradition,” in The Invention of Tradition, Hobsbawm, Eric and Ranger, Terence, eds. (Cambridge, 1983), 1–14Google Scholar. My usage departs from his in blurring his distinction between custom and tradition, and in his insistence on the symbolic and ritual aspects of traditions as opposed to their practical functions.

8 Of the total land area of Fiji, 84 percent is held under one or another form of customary tenure. Most of this land has been and continues to be cultivated under kin-ordered and tributary modes of production. Cash crops were absorbed into and reproduced these modes rather than transforming them. For the distinction between kin-ordered, tributary, and capitalist modes of production, see Wolf, Eric, Europe and the People without History (Berkeley, 1982), 73–100Google Scholar.

9 My discussion of the origins of customary tenure relies heavily upon the seminal work of France, Peter, The Charter of the Land, (Melbourne, 1969)Google Scholar. Recent research confirms his main thesis about customary tenure as invented tradition: Clammer, John, “Colonialism and the Perception of Tradition in Fiji,” in Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter, Asad, Talal, ed. (London, 1973), 199–222Google Scholar; Conn, Bernard, “Anthropology and History in the 1980s,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 12:2 (Autumn 1981), 227–52Google Scholar; Scarr, Deryck, Ratu Sukuna (London, 1980)Google Scholar; Chapelle, Tony, “Customary Land Tenure in Fiji: Old Truths and Middle-aged Myths,” Journal of the Polynesian Society, 87:2 (06 1978), 71–88Google Scholar; Walter, Michael A. H. B., “The Conflict of the Traditional and the Traditionalized: An Analysis of Fijian Land Tenure,” Journal of the Polynesian Society, 87:2 (06 1978), 89–108Google Scholar; Ruiz, Henry J., “Fijian Land Tenure and Agricultural Growth,” Oceania 49:1 (09 1978), 20–34Google Scholar.

10 France, , Charter, 107Google Scholar.

11 Compare Hocart, A. M., Lau Islands, Fiji (Honolulu, 1929), 96: “It is vain to look for definite rules of succession or any other acquirements of land.”Google Scholar

12 France, , Charter, 111Google Scholar.

13 Ibid., 113.

14 Fison, Lorimer, Land Tenure in Fiji (London, 1881)Google Scholar.

15 France, , Charter, 102–28Google Scholar.

16 Rutz, “Fijian Land Tenure.”

17 Historians have given insufficient attention to this early modern phase of Fijian culture and colonial administration; however, see Belshaw, Cyril S., Under the Ivi Tree, (Berkeley, 1964), 220–39Google Scholar; idem, “The Effects of Limited Anthropological Theory on Problems of Fijian Administration,” in Induced Political Change in the Pacific, Force, Roland W., ed. (Honolulu, 1965)Google Scholar.

18 Title XVI Land. Ordinances, Chapters 113–124, Laws of Fiji (Suva, 1967), 1533Google Scholar.

19 Ibid., 1534.

20 For the distinction between gifts and commodities, see Gregory, C. A., Gifts and Commodities (New York, 1982)Google Scholar. I dissent from Gregory's view that the property right underlying the distinction between gifts and commodities is alienability, and that this is a categorical right. Land that is commodified must be alienable, but alienable land need not be commodified: An alternative is to make a gift of it. A large catalog of such transfers could be collected from lexical and ethnographic evidence, including Capell, A., A New Fijian Dictionary (Portsmouth, England, 1941)Google Scholar; France, , Charter, 120ff.Google Scholar; Walter, “Conflict”; Farrell, Bryan, Fijian Land: A Basis for Inter-cultural Variance (Santa Cruz, 1977), 103–5Google Scholar; Hocart, , Lau Islands, Fiji, 90–98Google Scholar; Sahlins, Marshall, Moala (Ann Arbor, 1962), 219–20, 271–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rutz, “Fijian Land Tenure.” Recorded instances of land transfers that range along the whole continuum of alienability-inalienability among both persons and groups present overwhelming evidence against any received theory of primitive communism based on a premise of inalienability.

21 Title XVI Land, 1537.

22 Fisk, E. K., The Political Economy of Independent Fiji (Wellington, 1970)Google Scholar; Fiji: A Developing Australian Colony (North Fitzroy, Victoria, Australia, 1973)Google Scholar.

23 “Na Tubu,” Vanua (Suva), no. 2 (07–08 1979), 2Google Scholar. Vanua is the newsletter of the NLTB; the English translation of the name is land.

24 Native Lands Trust Board, Annual Report (Suva, 1979)Google Scholar; idem. Annual Report (Suva, 1976)Google Scholar.

25 “NLTB Is Now Dynamic,” Fiji Times (Suva) (22 03, 1982)Google Scholar; “NLTB: The Landed Fijians' Friend,” Fiji Sun (Suva) (23 03, 1982)Google Scholar; Native Lands Trust Board, Annual Report (Suva, 1979), 5Google Scholar.

26 For a quantitative description of urban Fijians, see Gounis, Konstantinos and Rutz, Henry J., “Urban Fijians and the Problem of Unemployment,” in Fijians in Town, Griffin, Christopher and Davis, Michael, eds. (Suva, 1986)Google Scholar.

27 Case study material was collected during field research on other problems in 1981–82 and recorded in field notebooks and the author's own “Daily Journal,” volumes 5 and 8. Government reports and newspaper accounts are cited in the text.

28 “First Royalty-First House,” Vanua, no. 1 (03 1979), 1Google Scholar.

29 Ibid.

30 “Veileti mai Delainavesi,” Vanua, no. 2 (07–08 1979), 7Google Scholar.

31 “Wind-up Writ on NLDC,” Fiji Times (17 12, 1981)Google Scholar.

32 “Injunction Move by Landowners,” Fiji Times (18 08, 1982)Google Scholar.

33 Vanua (07–08 1982), 7Google Scholar.

34 “Land Ruling Gets Welcome,” Fiji Times (5 02, 1982)Google Scholar.

35 “Vakamatatataki e na Veiulewai Levu na Kaukauwa ni Matabose ni Qele Maroroi ni i Taukei,” Nai Lalakai (Suva) (11 02, 1982)Google Scholar.

36 For fuller treatment, see Gounis and Rutz, “Urban Fijians.”

37 Fijians with sufficient income purchase lots and houses on freehold or native lease. In a modern subdivision adjoining the settlement of Naivi, for example, the governor general of Fiji, its prime minister, and the manager of the Native Lands Trust Board hold mortgages. Registrar of Titles, Government of Fiji, Native Leases for Lami Subdivision, NL 10039–12861. These, and other members of the Fijian elite, make public speeches exhorting Fijians to retain their traditions of sharing and generosity but to move more quickly into the world of business and profit. The dialectic is now a part of the socialization of every child.

38 Compare New Guinea in Gregory, , Gifts and Commodities, 165–66Google Scholar.