Fiji

This article discusses the evolving role of mental health counseling in Fiji in the context of current social and cultural changes. Although counseling traditionally has been reserved for cultural elders and the clergy, the term counselor is being redefined, due to Western influences, to include persons who are formally educated and trained to provide mental health services. Contemporary issues such as changing gender roles, violence, and suicide are discussed as forces that are influencing the need for trained mental health counselors. This article discusses the current status of educating and credentialing counselors in Fiji and emphasizes counselor education that stresses methods suited to the cultural characteristics of persons in the region.

This article examines the teacher preparation experiences of preservice teachers in six international contexts: China, Fiji, Kiribati, Mexico, Samoa, and Tonga. More specifically, it looks at the value-added components in an international teacher education program, with an emphasis on effective teaching and employability. Theoretically the study is based on Strauss and Corbin's (1998a) substantive grounded theory and Patton's (1997) Theory of Action Framework. Verbal and non-verbal forms of feedback were identified as essential aspects of the international preservice training experience. Cultural diversity, teaching English as a second language, collaboration, and exposure to a different educational system were identified among several components as advantages to individuals who conduct their preservice teacher training in international settings. Abstrak Artikel ini mengkaji pengalaman pelatihan calon guru di enam konteks internasional: Cina, Fiji, Kiribati, Meksiko, Samoa...

Piper Methysticum or commonly known as Kava Kava, is a member of the pepper family and native to the islands of the South Pacific. The word Kava was chosen by an explorer named Captain Cook because in the native Hawaiian language it means intoxicating pepper.

We describe an anthropological and interdisciplinary field school, primary involving female undergraduates. Our field program was conducted in 2009 and 2010 on a remote island in Fijian archipelago, in the context of a patriarchal society where gender avoidance is practiced. We had two broad objectives for this program: to conduct research on the understanding of cultural and marine biological resources; and to evaluate the effectiveness of the field experience in promoting anthropological and scientific learning principles. We summarize qualitative and quantitative outcomes of the educational evaluation of the student learning experience. We also discuss educational aims and the unique gender-associated challenges of conducting this program in a patriarchal cultural setting.

The idea that certain iTaukei (formerly ‘Fijian’) clans are descended from the Jews, particularly through a Lost Tribe of Israel, is very strong among some contemporary clans and church groups in Fiji. The importance of the Lost Tribes was reinforced in the 1987 coups, when it formed part of the political rhetoric of the coup leader, Sitiveni Rabuka, who was also a lay preacher of the Methodist Church. In order to understand such claims, I review the historical record from 1835 to Cession in 1874 to evaluate when the idea of the Lost Tribes began to be used and, more broadly, the extent to which Christianity was the language for engagement and/or resistance between missionaries and Fijians. At the same time, I explore the developing missionary discourses and their relationship with newly emerging ideas about the science of origins. The evidence indicates that, as certain ideas became routinised around the time of Cession, Christianity and science together provided a grammar that enabled many Fijians to strongly identify with the Old Testament.

The 2018 Fiji elections were finally concluded with the official results announced on November 18. FijiFirst will form Government with 27 seats in the 51-seat parliament, and the Social Democratic Liberal Party (SODELPA) and the National Federation Party (NFP) will form the Opposition, with 21 and three seats respectively. Much of the reporting by state-inclined media organisations has been emphatic about FijiFirst's victory and the Opposition's loss. However, a comparison of the 2014 and 2018 election results reveals a more complex picture of the losses and gains made by the three main parties.

In multi-ethnic Fiji, where ethnic relations are often seen as fraught and potentially charged with conflict, and where religion closely follows lines of ethnicity, attempts by Christian churches to mediate interethnic relations and build multiethnic congregations can face difficult challenges. In this article, two contrasting Christian theologies are explored, both of which draw on theologies of water as a means of mediating interethnic engagements. In these examples, processes of forging interethnic relationships are seen as variously harmonious and dissonant, unifying and separating. Drawing connections between the layered imagery of water employed in these Christian contexts with wider Pacific imaginaries of water in baptism and in the ocean, I explore these shifting processes of forging interethnic relationships in the contested context of contemporary Fiji.

This article explores the influences that changed a woman born into a socially conservative evangelical section of American society who spent more than a decade as a member of a small European community in Fiji to a vehement anti-war socialist and feminist in World War I Australia. Jennie Scott Griffiths arrived in Australia from Fiji in 1912 with nine children and a wealth of journalistic experience that led to her appointment as editor of the Sydney-based Australian Woman's Weekly. In Australia, she was thrown into a maelstrom of ideas that articulated many of her previously held but unexpressed views. She was empowered by this ferment of feminist ideas among activist women in Australia to become a well-known fighter against war and conscription in World War I Australia and as a 'red-ragger' who gave impassioned support to those imprisoned for their beliefs. Her flamboyant, unsparing support for causes she embraced, led to the loss of her hard-won editor's job and to surveillance by the Government secret intelligence organisation.

In the Pacific, and in Melanesia in particular, violence against women is considered severe and pervasive.  Roughly two-thirds of the women in Fiji can expect violence in the domestic sphere at some time during their lives.  A number of cultural practices which are represented as supporting and maintaining gender inequity and therefore underwriting gender violence have attracted international attention and national governments have come under pressure to ban them. One such practice in Fiji is the bulubulu, a ritual of atonement. An anthropologist has since argued that the bulubulu has been adapted in such a way that it now supports the victim, and suggests that the performance of the ritual ‘is increasingly rare even in the villages’.  My own research suggests that these arguments are not accurate and that the reality in the villages is quite different. Further complicating the picture, the classic model of women’s refuges or crisis accommodation has faced immense obstacles and therefore has not been terribly effective to-date.  This paper can be found at the following link: http://press.anu.edu.au/node/2168/download

The 2017 Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) was negotiated at the UN over the objections of nuclear-armed and -allied states and established a global categorical ban on nuclear weapons framed in terms of humanitarianism, human rights and environmentalism. The TPNW also placed ‘positive obligations’ on states to assist victims of nuclear weapons use and testing and remediate contaminated environments. States and NGOs from the Pacific region advocated for a strong treaty text, particularly its positive obligations. They were influenced by the region’s history as a site of nuclear weapons testing in Marshall Islands, Kiribati and French Polynesia/Te Ao Maohi; the 1985 South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone’s precedent; and earlier diplomatic efforts and activism linking denuclearization with decolonization. In doing so, Pacific and other formerly colonized states flipped the ‘standard of civilization’ script embedded in humanitarian disarmament law and applied it to their former colonizers. The paper demonstrates the agency of small states—the ‘-Pacific’ part of ‘Asia-Pacific’—in multilateral policymaking on peace and security, often overlooked in international relations scholarship. It draws on my participant observation in the Nobel Peace Prize-winning advocacy of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) during the TPNW negotiations.

Establishing a national university has been widely viewed by smaller developing countries as a means of asserting national sovereignty and driving the country’s economic, social, and cultural development.  This has been particularly true in the South Pacific, despite the existence of the regional University of the South Pacific.  Building a national university with the limited financial resources of a small developing country presents numerous challenges.

This paper, using a critical ethnographic methodology, examines the lessons from the first ten years (2010-20) of Fiji National University from the perspective of an insider researcher.  Some challenges are common to new universities created by merging smaller, constituent colleges.  Others are more specific to developing countries, including the dependence on public funding and political patronage.  Some challenges are more distinctively Pasifika, with cultural values of familial loyalty and respect for elders sometimes in conflict with ‘imported’ management practices.  The spectre of neo-colonialism is ever present.

This thesis attempts to provide a conceptual framework for the analysis of the politicisation of ethnicity in Fiji and New Caledonia.  Commencing with a discussion of the relevance of various theoretical approaches to ethnic identification in understanding ethnic politicisation, the author selects the instrumentalist approach of Crawford and Lipschutz as possibly the most useful.  In critiquing this approach, the author contrasts assertive with defensive politicisation.  Defensive politicisation may be defined as politicisation that is driven by perceived marginalisation and hardship; whereas assertive politicisation is rooted in positive entitlements.  The author argues that assertive politicisation generally characterises the Fijians in Fiji, whereas defensive politicisation prevails among the Kanaks of New Caledonia; thus the case of New Caledonia seems to conform with Crawford and Lipschutz’s theory while the case of Fiji does not.  This central argument is presented through an examination of ethnic politicisation in historical and contemporary Fiji and New Caledonia, as well as the roles played by governing elites in both states.  This thesis concludes by cautioning on the relativity of generalised theoretical constructs which may fit one particular case but not another.

Identity Ignited: The Politicisation of Ethnicity in Fiji and New Caledonia.  Prepared for the degree of Master of Arts in International Affairs.  Ottawa: Carleton University, 2004.

The suggestion that the iTaukei (indigenous Fijians) are a lost tribe of Israel has gained currency among Methodists in the interior of Viti Levu, coexisting with a firm and widely held belief in the ancestors’ emergence from the mystical Nakauvadra hills. For the people of Nabobuco, the Hebrew Bible's depiction of the relationship between Jehovah and the Israelites also contains powerful analogies with contemporary Christian experiences of collective sin and redemption. This paper discusses local genealogies and the use of the Old Testament to posit Nabobuco and Israel's moral equivalence within the Kingdom of God.

In late 2017 the Fijian Government and its key officials called for the regulation of Fiji’s cyber space. By May 2018, Fiji’s Parliament had passed the Online Safety Act, which was publicised as a law designed to protect Fijians against harmful online behavior, such as cyber stalking, cyber bullying, revenge porn and internet trolling. The Act came into effect on 1 January this year, and in late December the Government announced the appointment of a Commissioner to administer it.

This report is an in-depth study of Indo-Fijian culture and lifestyle in the Fiji Islands. During my 6-month stay, I lived with my extended family as well as the family described in the report  to understand different traditions and expectations for Indo-Fijians.

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While most of my Fijian respondents were forthcoming in telling stories about malevolent ghosts and demons, very few were able or willing to answer my question of whether they believed in the existence of these creatures themselves. After a number of false analytical starts I came to the realisation that this was because they considered belief one of a number of particular, culturally specific practices that created the conditions for demons' and ghosts' existence. In this cultural logic, belief is not merely a mental process but rather a formative act in the process of making demons and ghosts, and their workings, real. In this paper I use these ethnographic insights for to discuss two main threads: first, I analyse how this might force us to analyse monsters as 'ethnographically real'. Second, I ask what can be gained theoretically from considering belief as a form of praxis. There are a number of activities you can be relatively certain will bring you into contact with Fijian teivoro, the western Fijian term derived from the English word demons, or other potentially malevolent spirit beings. Often it is a matter of just being in a particular place at the wrong time – uncultivated bush areas are, I was told, generally so " for a reason " ; that is they were left unattended for the spirits to roam. Other places beyond the cultural control of humans, such as isolated creeks and rivers, are also to be shied away from – one particular two-faced temptress was rumoured to be particularly prone to lure young, foreign men into their death at a specified stretch of the Nadi River that I naturally did my best to avoid. There are also famous stories about ghosts that are known to roam in places of particular historical significance – such as the Fijian Parliament House in Suva; where a ghost even was caught on camera and made a significant interruption in national politics in the 1990s, or Levuka town, Fiji's first capital – as well as locations for tragic events of the past – a prominent one of those is the site of what used to be Nagaga village in the Nausori Highlands, 17 kilometres east of Lautoka town, where locals will attest that you, at night-time, can still hear the voices of around 200 villagers that got buried in a landslide in 1932. But evil spirits can also turn up within the confines of villages, compounds and houses; and then largely, I was explained, because people engaged in black magic or witchcraft. Early on in my fieldwork I spent a couple of weeks in a prominent village just outside Nadi town. One morning I woke up to a great furore and witnessed a group of youths in a village being disciplined for what I initially thought was spending the night away from the village or not getting back in time for their communal tasks. Later on at night I was told a more elaborate story as I sat down around the kava bowl with my friends. According to them, the transgression the youths were disciplined for was partaking in witchcraft together with people from other villages. While most of my interlocutors initially made their best efforts to brush off the issue as an example of youthful insolence and what they called " stupid games " rather than something more sinister, my persistent inquiries were met with obvious unease, silence and, eventually, elaborate efforts to change the subject. In the end, one of the more senior men in the company put an end to the discussion by saying it was nothing we should talk about " because we're not the sort of village that believe in these things…that's why they got into so much trouble too…when they start doing, seeing and believing these things they will

This chapter is one of eight Pacific Island country case studies in the report 'Understanding gender inequality actions in the Pacific: Ethnographic Case-studies and Policy Options' conducted for the European Union.  The chapter explores gender-based violence in Fiji.

This report (104pp) presents the results of an investigation of both archaeological sites and traditional oral history of 10 islands in the Northern Lau Group of Fiji. The original fieldwork was undertaken by Garth Rogers in 1975 as part of a research programme undertaken by the Department of History, University of Adelaide (Australia) and the Department of Anthropology, University of Auckland (New Zealand) to study the ‘Culture History of the Lau Island’. The paper includes an introduction to the research programme and research strategy. Written sources are summarised and an introduction to recorded oral traditions is presented. The results of research and survey are presented in two sections: (1) a preliminary statement on the Culture History of Lau; and (2) island archaeological surveys. Island survey results include survey maps, site descriptions, and discussions of oral traditions, documentary records and surface collected artefacts (pottery, adzes, flakes). Appendices include: a table summarising the oral traditions of settlement from Vanua Balavu; an annotated site list of recorded place-names, tracts and natural features; a list of surface collected pottery and other finds, and a list of diagnostic sherds and accompanying illustrations. One-hundred-and-two sites were recorded on 10 islands. Site-types include inland and coastal defended settlements, undefended flatland sites, rock-shelters, caves and pits. Pottery was recovered from 56 sites and 19 other localities.

In 2003, the Assembly of Christian Churches of Fiji (ACCF) invited evangelist Reinhard Bonnke, who is reputed to have raised a man from the dead, to conduct a revival in Fiji. Three years later, an invitation was also extended to American televangelist, Benny Hinn. The Qarase government welcomed Bonnke's visit as an act of reconciliation for the nation, despite the fact that about 42% of the population of Fiji are not Christian, and many of those who are Christian disparage miracle workers. Hinn's visit was rationalised somewhat differently - as a draw for the tourists and in terms of the media coverage he was expected to have. This essay explores the rationalisations for the visits of these evangelists, the types of politico-religious alliances that have developed since the 2000 coup, and the politico-religious ethos that was to lead to the events of the 2006 coup.

This book provides insight into the long process of decolonisation within the Methodist Overseas Missions of Australasia, a colonial institution that operated in the British colony of Fiji. The mission was a site of work for Europeans, Fijians and Indo-Fijians, but each community operated separately, as the mission was divided along ethnic lines in 1901. This book outlines the colonial concepts of race and culture, as well as antagonism over land and labour, that were used to justify this separation. Recounting the stories told by the mission’s leadership, including missionaries and ministers, to its grassroots membership, this book draws on archival and ethnographic research to reveal the emergence of ethno-nationalisms in Fiji, the legacies of which are still being managed in the post-colonial state today.