Rural Fiji Research Articles

Men's physical strength moderates conceptualizations of prospective foes in two disparate societies.

Across taxa, strength and size are elementary determinants of relative fighting capacity; in species with complex behavioral repertoires, numerous additional factors also contribute. When many factors must be considered simultaneously, decision-making in agonistic contexts can be facilitated through the use of a summary representation. Size and strength may constitute the dimensions used to form such a representation, such that tactical advantages or liabilities influence the conceptualized size and muscularity of an antagonist. If so, and given the continued importance of physical strength in human male-male conflicts, a man's own strength will influence his conceptualization of the absolute size and strength of an opponent. In the research reported here, male participants' chest compression strength was compared with their estimates of the size and muscularity of an unfamiliar potential antagonist, presented either as a supporter of a rival sports team (Study 1, conducted in urban California, and Study 2, conducted in rural Fiji) or as a man armed with a handgun (Study 3, conducted in rural Fiji). Consistent with predictions, composite measures of male participants' estimates of the size/strength of a potential antagonist were inversely correlated with the participant's own strength. Therefore, consonant with a history wherein violent intrasexual selection has acted on human males, a man's own physical strength influences his representations of potential antagonists.

HOW IS DISASTER AID ALLOCATED WITHIN POOR COMMUNITIES? RISK SHARING AND SOCIAL HIERARCHY

AbstractHow disaster aid is allocated within poor communities is little understood. Using original post‐disaster survey data in rural Fiji that capture household‐level traditional kin status, cyclone damage and aid allocations over post‐disaster phases, this paper demonstrates that allocations are driven by informal risk‐sharing institutions and social hierarchies. On one hand, in response to a disaster with moderate severity, private risk sharing can strongly make up limited aid, making targeting aid on damage appear weak as a result. On the other hand, local elites can dominate not only aid allocation for given damage but also the targeting on damage. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Assessing reported use and microbiological performance of a point-of-use household water filter in rural Fiji

A non-governmental organisation has distributed point-of-use water filtering units in the Western Division of Fiji. We sought to understand filter utilisation and water quality: both water flowing directly out of filters and stored water. We surveyed 270 households and 6 schools on filter use and performed hydrogen sulphide bacterial indicator testing on 24 water samples directly from filters and 37 stored water samples. Our response rate was 95%. Of these, only half (52%) reported consistently filtering their drinking water. Very few (8%) reported consistent use when preparing kava, a traditional drink. Factors associated with limited filter use included lost or broken filter parts (22%) (p < 0.05) and perception of source water quality as 44% of respondents who believed their source water was safe to drink reported consistent filter use compared to 68% of respondents who did not (p < 0.01). Bacterial indicator testing using hydrogen sulphide paper-strips showed that most water samples directly from the filter (71%) and from storage vessels (76%) were contaminated. Limited levels of use and high levels of contamination in both water directly from the filter and stored water raise serious questions as to the benefit of the filter even as an interim water quality solution in this setting.

The Potential of Fijian Traditional Housing to Cope with Natural Disasters in Rural Fiji

Fiji is, as an island country in the Pacific Ocean widely recognized to be vulnerable to natural disasters due to its location and characteristics. Recent studies show the increasing emphasis on a capacity of disaster affected people and communities rather than their vulnerability and on what they can do for themselves. In the light of resilience, indigenous knowledge that has been generated and accumulated over years in adapting to the local environment has the potential to enhance the capacity of the local people to cope with natural disasters. Despite the increasing recognition of the advantages of such indigenous knowledge, its potential use in present day is little known. This paper explores the potential use of Fijian traditional housing as an alternative in restoring the living environment in rural Fiji where housing reconstruction depends heavily on the external assistance. Field study was carried out to understand current conditions and the potential of traditional housing construction in the modern context. Although traditional housings hardly exists in Fiji, field study results show the availability of natural resources, skills and knowledge, communal work and challenges in knowledge transfer and challenges brought by the life-style changes.

Natural Disasters, Gender and Handicrafts

Using original post-disaster household survey data gathered in rural Fiji, this article explores the disaster–gender nexus. Female-headed households are disadvantaged, not because of bias against them in disaster damage or relief, but because of a newly emerging gendered division of labour for dwelling rehabilitation that tightens their constraints on intra-household labour allocation. Female-headed households with damaged dwellings resort to female labour activities connected with informal risk sharing – augmenting production of handicrafts for kava rituals in exchange for male-labour help. Female-headed households without male-adult members resort to such activities more than those with them, because of their distinctly different decision-making processes.

Do Local Elites Capture Natural Disaster Reconstruction Funds?

Using original survey data with rich, direct measures of local elites in rural Fiji, this article examines potential elite capture in the allocation of natural disaster reconstruction funds. Allocations of housing construction materials – both receipt and amount received – across villages, clans, and households are strongly targeted on cyclone damage, and local elites do not receive larger benefits over time. As the supply of reconstruction funds is limited during early periods, more severely affected victims do not receive benefits early, while clan leaders and elite clans do receive benefits early within villages.

Groups, Networks and Hierarchy in Household Private Transfers: Evidence from Fiji

While economists have studied private transfers exchanged among households within a network extensively, those exchanged directly with groups to which the household belongs—such as ritual gifts, communal work and church donations—in developing countries have received very limited attention. Using original household survey data gathered in rural Fiji, this paper demonstrates that: the group-based transfers are much greater than the network-based transfers, probably because of significant household contributions to groups for the provision of local public goods; and group-based transfers influence network-based transfers through the social hierarchy. A comparison of various groups (e.g. kin and church groups) and social ranks (e.g. those determined by gender, disability, kin elite and religious elite) indicates that network-based transfers adjust to hierarchy bias in group-based transfers, depending on the physical and social connections of groups and networks.

Distribution, status and conservation of the bats of the Fiji Islands

AbstractThe poorly studied bat fauna of the Fiji Islands is of notable conservation importance because it includes one endemic species, several near endemics, and the best global populations of several threatened species. In addition, some of the species play a keystone role as pollinators and seed dispersers in valuable forest ecosystems. We visited 30 islands of the archipelago to survey bats and assess their conservation status and the potential threats to their continued existence. The VulnerableNotopteris macdonaldioccurs on the three main islands but may only have nurseries on one of them. The Critically Endangered, endemicMirimiri acrodontaappears to be restricted to a small montane area on a single island.Pteropus tonganusis consumed throughout rural Fiji but remains common and is not currently threatened by the harvest. The Near ThreatenedPteropus samoensisis locally common on the largest islands but threatened on some smaller islands. The EndangeredChaerephon bregullaeexists only on two islands and appears to concentrate in a single large colony to nurse young. The EndangeredEmballonura semicaudatahas declined dramatically in Fiji, as across most of its range, although a few substantial populations remain on some small islands. Factors threatening these species are variable but include small ranges, concentration in a reduced number of colonies, deforestation, over-harvesting, and introduced predators. We propose conservation measures and indicate a number of priority sites.

Everything and Its Opposite: Kava Drinking in Fiji

Kava is a supersaturating sign in indigenous Fijian public life. Called yaqona in Fijian, kava is both a shrub (Piper methysticum) and drink made from it. The plant is not especially impressive to look at: it has none of slender grace of a tall coconut palm, none of rude heft of yams or taro. It is a medium-sized shrub with knobby stems and stringy, dusty brown roots. What makes it impressive is semiotic range of its social embeddings. Put simply, kava means radically different things in different contexts. It is a means of competition and also of settling for peace, cause of social unity and also its dissolution. It is a cherished emblem of old traditions that invites dreamy speculation of affluent futures. Finally, it is a Christian symbol that is believed to summon demons.1 Kava's dynamic polysemy, I argue, emerges from its irresolvably problematic place in Fijian Christian life. More than ninety-nine percent of indigenous Fijians are Christians (Walsh 2006:201), and many describe Christianity as traditional-as something that was embraced by chiefs a century and a half ago. Despite continued visibility of many traditional practices, including kava drinking, many Fijians are convinced that tradition is disappearing or already gone. They struggle to reassert its relevance, and thus, as Nicholas Thomas has noted wryly, contemporary rural Fijian life...is much more traditional [now] than it could have been before (1997:182-183). Kava mediates tensions between ideologies of tradition and desires for progress, but in its mediation kava does not resolve tensions-it intensifies them. It does so partly because of its material properties, especially its soporific and inebriating qualities. Made into a beverage, kava's consumption dominates men's social lives in rural Fiji. In Tavuki village on Kadavu Island, locus of my research, men drink it for several hours every day, usually beginning in late afternoon. Women drink too, generally in mixed-sex groups, but they do not drink as much or as often as men do. Fijians appreciate kava's numbing, soporific properties which induce relaxed, harmonious socializing. They also appreciate its value as a commodity with a high (though fluctuating) market price, something they can cultivate and sell to develop their households and communities materially. For these tangible reasons, kava stands metaphorically at center of Fijian public life. But it also opens a conduit to world of non-Christian spirits, a world that shadows and haunts Fijian villages. In an essay on Christianity, subjectivity and transcendence, Webb Keane writes that the very materiality of objects is inseparable from their capacity to signify....But objects are also mute. Their possible interpretations are underdetermined. As they travel across space and time, they elude hermeneutic control. The latter is one reason objects may be seen as problematic for true doctrine (Keane 2006:311; see also Keane 2007). Kava exemplifies this mute and slippery journey through social life, offering both hope and despair to who cannot reconcile its conflicting material and semiotic aspects, to which I now turn. The more fieldwork I conducted, more I noticed kava's extensive semiotic range-a starburst of meanings and uses in which both plant and drink become a symbol for everything and its opposite. This is not a matter of articulating paradoxes in an attempt to resolve them through myth or ritual, per Levi-Strauss or Victor Turner, but rather a matter of contextual versatility. For example, Fijians often claim that kava makes feel calm and peaceful whereas alcohol makes people want to fight. Physiologically this is true, as kava relaxes people's muscles, makes them sleepy, and generally evokes an atmosphere of relaxation and easy sociability among drinkers (Lebot, Merlin, and Lindstrom 1992:3). Fijians exploit kava's numbing and soothing effects for a ritual called ibulubulu (burial) in which an offending person presents a large quantity of kava to person they have offended. …

Early Care, Education, and Family Life in Rural Fiji: Experiences and Reflections

As a member of a delegation of educators, physicians, and lay people to rural Fiji the author shares her experiences and reflections of early care, education, and family life on a small, remote island. She discusses her visits to the village and boarding school, and her interactions with teachers, children, and parents in the early childhood classroom and community. Her understanding of teacher education and preparation, the primary educational system, and curriculum goals and revisions of the country are highlighted.

PERPETUAL LAMENT: KAVA‐DRINKING, CHRISTIANITY AND SENSATIONS OF HISTORICAL DECLINE IN FIJI

Themes of historical decline are common cross‐culturally, but in certain contexts they may transcend nostalgia and become the motivation for political action. This article examines the ways in which themes of historical decline are made intelligible and palpable for indigenous Fijians in the Tavuki Bay area of Kadavu Island. After addressing the roles of colonial subjugation and Christianization in generating people's senses of powerful pasts and weakened presents, I describe one particular ritual site in rural Fiji, that of evening kava‐drinking sessions, arguing that such sessions are key sites in which people come to understand and feel that Fijian society has lost power. By drinking kava in communal sessions and describing excessive kava‐drinking as a sign of decline, people come to know the theme of decline intellectually and to feel it in their bodies. This theme, having come to seem a natural fact, can then help to inspire political action.

Binge eating and binge eating disorder in a small-scale, indigenous society: the view from Fiji.

Although the cross-cultural prevalence of anorexia and bulimia nervosa has been investigated in multiple studies, little is known about the prevalence and correlates of binge eating and binge eating disorder (BED) cross-culturally. No published studies to date have explored BED in small-scale, indigenous, or developing societies. The current study investigated the prevalence and correlates of binge eating in a community sample of Fijian women living in rural Fiji. Fifty ethnic Fijian women completed a self-report measure developed for this study on dieting and attitudes toward body shape and change, a Nadroga-language questionnaire on body image, and the Questionnaire on Eating and Weight Patterns-Revised (QEWP-R). Their height and weight were also measured. Patterns of dieting, high body mass index (BMI), and attitudes toward eating and body image were compared between women with and without a history of binge eating. Ten percent of respondents reported at least weekly episodes of binge eating during the past 6 months and 4% endorsed symptoms consistent with BED. Binge eating in this sample was associated significantly with a BMI value above 35, a history of dieting, and a high concern with body shape. Binge eating was not associated with several markers of acculturation in this sample, although it was associated with a key, nontraditionally Fijian (i.e., acculturated) attitude toward the body. Binge eating occurred in a social context with traditions concerning weight and diet widely disparate from Western populations. However, correlates of binge eating in this sample suggest that nontraditional Fijian attitudes toward weight and body shape play a contributory role.

Imagining Modernity in Rural Fiji

Understanding ethnic identity in Fiji and elsewhere in the Pacific requires looking at the ways that individuals draw on ideologies to make sense of the particular circumstances of their lives. While national identity in Fiji is often defined in opposition to the West through reference to a romanticized premodern tradition, individual Fijians are more concerned with defining their identity vis-a-vis other villagers. When people justify their position within the indigenous Fijian community, they question and redefine both tradition and modernity. Modernity is experienced individually as contradictions between competing ideologies and local experience through idiosyncratic life circumstances. Modern and traditional are not opposites but creatively redefined as having much in common. (Fiji, modernity, postcolonialism, ethnic identity, Pacific) Much literature has examined the ways tradition in the Pacific is invented or imagined to define present identity and achieve contemporary goals (e.g. Keesing 1989; Lawson 1996; Linnekin 1990). This article follows Englund and Leach (2000), Riles (2001), and Robbins (2001) in suggesting that the ways Pacific people imagine modernity is just as crucial as the ways they invent tradition for constructing their sense of self. Modernity, in the form of increased flows of capital, commodities, ideologies, and images, is a state of the world; but, following Ferguson (1999) and Riles (2001), modernity, like the concept of tradition, is also a local construct, imagined in a variety of ways to make sense of particular life circumstances. Ferguson (1999) and Riles (2001) both argue that Third World peoples use constructs of modernity to define identities for themselves within local culture. Ferguson (1999) says that his Zambia informants in the 1980s sounded as if they had read 1950s sociology texts on modernization theory when they stressed the need for strong nuclear families, independent individuals, and the need to work hard and try new things in order to bring about economic development. While social scientists and Third World governments have largely rejected modernization theory, it lives on in the minds of those who grew up under the policies it shaped. Ferguson (1999) suggests that Zambians slip in and out of modernity as a distinctive style in order to position themselves in Zambian society; for instance, espousing nuclear families and avoiding the demands of rural relatives. Riles (2001) similarly argues that urban Fijian workers in NGOs define their identity within the Fijian community through an international aesthetic of modernity that constructs problems and approaches in terms of international concepts like the need for networks and for grids generating goals and plans for action. Both scholars suggest that modernity is constructed in imagination to create local identities (cf. Englund 2002). The life stories of several rural Fijians show that constructs of modernity are just as crucial to imagining identity as constructs of tradition. Examining how people use constructs of modernity to imagine their identities is important for understanding debates about the effects of colonization and globalization on Pacific identities. Some anthropologists (e.g., Barber 1997) argue that Third World postcolonials are trapped in a dynamic of trying to restore local control and pride by embracing romanticized, essentialist, ethnic identities. In Fiji, for instance, prominent government figures have rejected democracy based on common roll elections as inappropriate to a Fijian culture based on ranked vanua (chieftainships tied to particular pieces of land). This was part of an effort to protect Fijian control of land and government when many feared that unchecked economic competition would quickly relegate indigenous Fijians to the bottom of a national and world order (Keesing 1989; Lawson 1996). These ideas were apparently illustrated by a 2000 coup in Fiji that brought with it renewed calls to return to a Fijian tradition of chiefly control and ties to the land. …

Crafting Sociocentric Selves in Religious Discourse in Rural Fiji

This article examines narratives about religious experience among rural Fijians in order to reexamine the claim that Fijians and other Pacific Islanders have "sociocentric selves." Individuals insisted in their narratives that they had actively chosen to commit to churches in order to become more sociocentric. They suggested that sodocentrism was only a satisfying orientation if freely chosen. This article suggests that in our contemporary global village, Fijians choose to adopt a sociocentric orientation to define a worthy place for themselves vis‐à‐vis urban relatives and Western visitors.

Constructing Identity through Ceremonial Language in Rural Fiji

This article re-examines the sevusevu, a ceremonial presentation of kava in Fiji, in light of recent literature on globalization. Scholars have traced the sevusevu to Fijian assumptions about the polity and about the cosmos and have argued that sevusevu reproduce assumptions about rank and are used to negotiate relative status. This essay argues that such concerns are now secondary to using sevusevu to define a meaningful place for rural Fijians in national and international contexts through asserting that their tradition is more valuable than money. (Fiji, political language, formal speech, kava, ethnicity, globalization) ********** There is perhaps nothing that captures the essence of Fijian culture better than the sevusevu, the ceremonial presentation of kava (Fijian: yaqona), a mildly narcotic root central to ritual and sociality in many Pacific societies. The sevusevu is a central component of all life-cycle rituals, social gatherings, healing ceremonies, and community meetings. Visitors and locals alike regard the sevusevu as an essential element of Fijian culture both because its occurrence is so frequent and because the sevusevu seems to encapsulate such central cultural themes as the preoccupation with relative rank, the high value placed on sociality and hospitality, and the pervasive and delicate elaboration of ceremonial (Katz 1993:326) into everyday contexts. One of the most popular tourist guides to Fiji illustrates the way that the sevusevu has become emblematic of Fijian culture with its detailed description of protocol in a sevusevu and a warning to tourists that correct mastery of this protocol is necessary to acceptance in a Fijian village. [T]he ceremonial preparation [of kava] is the most honored feature of the formal life of Fijians, Tongans, and Samoans. It is performed with the utmost gravity according to a sacramental ritual to mark births, marriages, deaths, official visits, the installation of a new chief, etc.... The guests present a bundle of waka (dried yaggona [1] root) to the hosts, along with a short speech explaining their visit, a custom known as sevusevu. The sevusevu is received by the hosts and acknowledged with a short speech of acceptance.... [After the ceremonial mixing of the kava, the] mata ni vanua [chief's spokesman] then says talo (serve). The cupbearer squats in front of the tanoa [bowl] with a mbilo (half coconut shell), which the mixer fills. The cupbearer then presents the first cup to the guest of honor, who claps once and drains it, and everyone claps three times. The second cup goes to the guests' mata ni vanua, who claps once and drinks. The man sitting next to the mixer says aa, and everyone answers (empty). The third cup is for the local chief, who claps once before drinking, and everyone claps three times after. The mata ni vanua of the first local claps once and drinks, and everyone says matha. The same occurs of the second local and his mata ni vanua. After these six men have finished their cups, the mixer announces, Sa matha saka tuna yaggona vaka turanga (the bowl is empty my chief [2], and the mata ni vanua says thombo (clap). The mixer then runs both hands around the rim of the tanoa and claps three times. This terminates the full ceremony, but then a second bowl is prepared and everyone drinks. During the drinking of the first bowl complete silence must be maintained. (Stanley 1996:528-29) While there are minor regional variations in sevusevu protocol within Fiji, the description captures the central features of the event. First, the sevusevu is highly formalized and the precise prescription of behavior sets the event apart from day-to-day life and gives it a sacred aura. It is the kind of speech Bloch (1975) calls formal. Bloch noted that public oratory among the Merina of Madagascar followed such a highly predictable formula that little new information was conveyed in speeches. …

Fijian villagers adapt to changes in local fisheries

This paper analyzes some of the problems encountered by a village-run fishing cooperative in rural Fiji. Concern about the limited success of this fishing cooperative led the villagers of Kaba Point, Fiji to ask for biological and socioeconomic studies to determine the roots of the cooperative’s problems. The villagers also required an assessment of their proposal to revitalize the cooperative through a development scheme that would enable them to increase their catch. The surveys, undertaken by researchers from the University of the South Pacific and the Fiji Fisheries Division, indicate that the area has been overfished, primarily through the widespread local and commercial use of gillnets and the reliance on fishing as a sole source of village income, and further expansion of the current resource exploitation patterns would be very damaging. In addition, although the cooperative provides an important sense of communalism in the village, only a few people regularly provide fish to the coop. The semi-subsistence lifestyle of rural Fiji is one factor limiting villagers participation in full-time fishing activities. The traditional social and management structures inherent in this village (especially, marine tenure, chiefly responsibility for the community, and a demonstrated history of communal projects) can form a strong basis for a modern community-based marine management program. However, if not carefully watched, resources can also be locally mismanaged because of the increasing demands of the modern market-driven economy.

The limits to accumulation: Changing land tenure in Fiji

Processes of class formation in rural Fiji have been suggested in a number of recent works. Land accumulation has been seen as a vital part of this and the effects observed have included landless‐ness and poverty. However, this article suggests that the limits to such land accumulation may have been reached in some areas. Because Fiji has retained a form of communal tenure over most of its land, indigenous Fijians have been able to resist continued loss of land through leasing. This is not because they are opposed to commercial agriculture or individual gain but more because their effective sovereignty over land has been lost to the state and returns to leasing are minimal.

Sharing our knowledge and experience—An essential

The purpose of this paper is to share a personal experience and observation during a visit to the Fiji School of Nursing in Suva and a bush maternity hospital run by the Sisters of Our Lady of Nazareth in rural Fiji. This is approached from a sharing perspective in the belief in the importance of helping relationships. Much has been written about the history of the midwife, who was the traditional birth attendant since time antiquity and it is both interesting and thought provoking to see the midwife as someone who was held in high esteem from ancient times traverse the winding road of subordination and advancement. Looking back over the past decade and towards the future reveals a blossoming conviction in the independence of midwifery as the midwife moves towards regaining her/his status as a specialist in normal childbirth. For the midwife to go about attaining this goal she/he will have to look at her/his pathway through historical developments to find the most appropriate and desirable way to act upon such a powerful move. It is therefore without doubt that we as midwives need to improve our knowledge base in order to enhance and promote the growth of midwifery and ensure its validation.

A FIJIAN PEASANTRY: GALALA AND VILLAGERS

Village societies in rural Fiji have often been studied in terms of a dichotomy between traditional village communalism and independent galala individualism. This was especially so in the 1960s, at a time when government efforts to promote individualist Fijian agriculture led to the creation of a number of resettlement schemes based on the peasant model. Social scientists hailed the galala movement as a fundamental and progressive process of change in Fijian society. However, recent evidence and the demise of regulations which institutionalised galala point to the present lack of distinction between galala and villagers. Indeed, there is considerable confusion within some villages over how galala should be defined and it seems to be much more a matter of spatial location of residence than any attitudinal or economic break with communalism.

Performing passions: aesthetics and politics in an occasionally egalitarian community

This article examines nondiscursive features of a range of performance genres in Bhatgaon, a rural Fiji Indian village. These genres are located within a local social aesthetics, one combining aesthetic, ethnopsychological, and social notions and underlying verbal and musical performances alike. Considering such events in terms of their formal features as defined and evaluated by local people makes possible an audience‐focused view of performance and its efficacy. [ethnography of speaking, ethnomusicology, aesthetics, ethnopsychology, overseas Indians]