Kerekere and Indigenous Social Entrepreneurship

Abstract

Since the colonial period, kerekere as an indigenous Fijian mode of exchange has been blamed for stunting the economic development of indigenous Fijians. It has often been reduced to ‘begging’ and it has been used in connection with terms such as ‘corruption‘, and ‘dependency‘. This article strives for a more balanced and culturally complex account of kerekere. Business and vanua; modernity and tradition; moral economy and market economy are often imaged as dichotomous and irreconcilable by indigenous Fijians and others. However, this paper will show that these are false dichotomies, and yet the way they are imagined has a significant bearing on indigenous Fijian business discourse and practices and indigenous Fijian identity. After surveying politics of tradition and indigenous development literature, the authors appeal for integrated economic approaches in business discourse in Fiji which acknowledges kerekere as a potentially positive element in indigenous social entrepreneurship.