Individualism and community

community: The Fijian dilemma

The Fijian Colonial Experience.

A study of the neo-traditional order under British colonial rule prior to World War 11. By Timothy J. Macnaught. Pacific Research Mongraph No. 7, Australian National Univer sity, Canberra, 1982. $lO.OO {paperback) ISBN 0 909150 49 4. Customs of Respect: the traditional basis of Fijian communal politics. By John Nation. Development Studies Centre, Monograph No. 14, Australian National Univer sity, Canberra, 1978. $B.OO {paperback) ISBN 0 7081 0494 0.

Timothy Macnaught’s recently published book, The Fijian Colonial Experience, makes a useful and timely companion volume to John Nation’s book, Customs of Respect, published in 1978. Together these two books greatly expand the pub lished knowledge available about 20th-century Fijian so ciety and history.

The bulk of Macnaught’s book covers the lives and experi ences of Fijians throughout the archipelago from the turn of the century to the beginning of the World War 11. However, in the final chapter (Epilogue:

rendezvous with the modern world) Macnaught cogently points out the links between the past history and the present-day dilemmas Fiji, and especially the Fijians, face. Nation studies a number of political incidents amongst Fijian communities in the 19705, culminating in the double elections of 1977, and through these illuminates the cultural and historical forces which influence Fijian political behaviour. Although the scope is not Fiji-wide the book concentrates on the eastern half of Viti Levu Nation has the confidence from this basis to make a number of generalis ations about the influence of traditional values on rural and national-level politics.

Both authors offer a strikingly similar perspective on Fijian experience: one that is sympathetic to the chiefly sys tem and the strengths of com munity amongst Fijians, and critical of the blind faith of certain analysts of Fijian so ciety in the virtues of economic individualism and capitalist oriented modernisation. Read ing between the lines of the authors’ acknowledgments and other statements it appears that each man, after extended

periods of residence in Fiji, came to his conclusions inde pendently and was then greatly encouraged and reassured to find that another specialist working in a different period had developed a very similar judgement. By the late 1970 s the Western world was becom ing increasingly ambivalent about modernisation pro grammes in Third World countries which unthinkingly imposed capitalist modes of development, but, it still takes a good deal of courage to dispute the accepted wisdom of Spate, Burns, Belshaw and Watters, who had trenchantly criticised the Fijian administration in the late 1950 s and 19605, and to question in the Fijian context the supposed virtues of Western notions off liberalism and Westminster democracy.

Macnaught confronts these issues more directly and per suasively than Nation. With reference to other Pacific societies, he argues strongly that the full rights of British citizenship, which white planters from 1875 to the 1920 s insisted the indigenes should enjoy, would have left the Fijians free to sell their lands and become a pool of free floating labour, while a system of individualised land tenure was the surest way of turning native land into alien land (cf.

New Zealand and Hawaii).

By the 1920 s Macnaught acknowledges the role that the increasingly threatening pres ence of the Indians played in welding an alliance between British administrators and col onists and the Fijians. In this period the Indians became more insistent in their demands for political representation, which prompted the colonial rulers to stress the predominant rights of the Fijians and the govern ment’s primary concern for Fijian welfare.

Macnaught suggests that racial division became such an entrenched part of national life that Fiji’s divided people have had little opportunity to under stand the economic and politi cal forces that have controlled and exploited them all. But this is not central to Macnaught’s analysis of the history of village life and politics, which have been undermined by a colonial

government’s vacillating commitment to notions of individualism, and the undeniable attractions of town life. w , . , Macnaught neither romanticizes village life nor denies the urban drift that has occurred throughout the 20th century. But he demonstrates the corporate energy and effectiveness of Fijians working in groups in either rural or urban environments, and argues persuasively that solutions to F.j. s problems are not likely to be found in simplistic prescrip- . e ■ ■ a- -a itions oi economic individualism r that ignore the strengths of r ... & & Fman custom.

In Customs of Respect Nation concentrates on political activities in Fijian communities in eastern Viti Levu during the 1970 s to reveal the constraints that affect Fijians contemplating political careers, and suggests several reasons why democracy works so uneasily and inefficiently at most levels of Fijian society.

His analysis of the 1977 elections and the role of the Fijian Nationalist Party and its leader, Butadroka, is particulary interesting. Like Macnaught, Nation concludes that Fijians living in towns, while different from their village counterparts, are not rampant individualists, and that group identity and activity are

still important forces in their lives.

Unfortunately Nation pays insufficient attention to the significance of the numerically dominant Indian ce Qn Fjjian communa , Htics> which weakens , he force of hjs thesj an(j a|th h he men . tjons fema|e chiefs candi . dates for e|ections he never ana| Qr disti ishes the jtjon and ro|es of women jn Fijian communities His a , isations about po i itical b ß ehav . jour a| , assume ma|e actors r>. .. .. ... . .

Despite the criticisms both , , , books are welcome additions to .•, T , the Fijian repertoire and I hope ..3 • , . i that their cheap paperback pro- Auction, which presumably ex- P^ ns the annoying lack of i n( * ex in eac h book, will make em more readily accessible to Fijian audiences than most aca em*c publications.

With these two books, and wor^s °f Nayacakalou and Scarr, the history of Fijians s .* nce annexation is well estab lished, while the experience of Indians in Fiji has been expertly served by Gillion, AH, Mayer and Moynagh.

Surely this wealth of material now available on both com munities will now lead to the prompt appearance of an inte grated general history of Fiji, which analyses the interconnections and influences of each society on the other?

Caroline Ralston.