A Study of Value in Fiji
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“We Are the Originals” A STUDY OF VALUE IN FIJI MATTI ERÄSAARI Research Series in Anthropology University of Helsinki Academic Dissertation Research Series in Anthropology University of Helsinki, Finland Distributed by Unigrafia P.O. Box 4 (Vuorikatu 3 A) 00014 University of Helsinki Finland Fax +358-9-7010 2370 http://www.unigrafia.fi ISSN 1458-3186 ISBN 978-952-10-9164-3 (paperback) ISBN 978-952-10-9165-0 (PDF) Unigrafia 2013 To Adi Salote Naitavuni Waqa 1957–2010 CONTENTS List of Illustrations xi Acknowledgements xii 1. INTRODUCTION 1 Why value? 1 Fiji: a legacy of binaries 3 Dichotomy historicised 7 Naloto, Verata, Fiji 12 Plan 13 2. NALOTO VILLAGE 15 Introduction 15 The people from Naloto 18 The lay of the land 31 The affluence 39 The non-affluence 44 “Spoiling” 47 The sleeping village 52 Naloto village: developing the general argument 56 3. THE LAND–SEA DICHOTOMY 59 Introduction: the originals 59 People of the sea: the dichotomy in historical perspective 65 People of the land 71 The question of land and the indigenisation of strangers 82 Reversal completed: foreigners and guests in the 21st century 85 4. ORIGIN 91 Introduction 91 The value of origin 99 “Sides”: symmetrical opposition 112 In conclusion 118 5. THE VALUE OF WHALE TEETH 125 Introduction 125 Tabua as a foreign valuable 128 Tabua as a local valuable 133 Tabua in use: paying equal respects 137 “The sau of the gift” 149 In conclusion 159 6. CEREMONIAL EXCHANGES 164 Introduction 164 Ceremonial wealth 166 Vakamau (weddings) 172 Somate (funerals) 176 Dividing and divisibility 179 Conclusion 184 7. MONEY 187 Introduction 187 Money in everyday use 188 Money in vakavanua exchange 192 Fundraisers and church collections 194 Accountability 203 “Eating money” 207 The two sides of money 212 8. CONCLUSIONS 220 REFERENCES 226 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS MAPS 1: Fiji 12 2: Verata villages 16 3: Naloto lands 32 4: Naloto residence patterns by clan 34 5: Naloto village divisions 35 TABLES 1: Naloto within the structure of Fijian Administration 9 2: Naloto kin group organisation 27 3: land-owning groups in Naloto 31 4: rank according to specialisation 103 FIGURES 1: Tanoa (kava bowl) 81 2: Fiji Islands Revenue & Customs Authority 127 3: Presentation of tabua 146 4: Kau mata ni gone/bulubulu gifts 173 5: A formal pooling event 181 6: Print cloth brought in during a wedding ceremony 183 7: Counting and accounting at the women’s committee fundraiser 198 8: Tabua furniture 210 9: Fijian 20 cent coin depicting Queen Elizabeth and a tabua 212 All photographs by Milla Ersaari ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I take this opportunity to thank all the institutions and people without whose help this work would not have been possible. My research has been generously supported by the Kone Foundation, whose four-year research grant funded the main part of this study, from 2007 to 2010. I am also grateful to the Oskar Öflund Foundation for a travel grant to Fiji in 2007, as well as the the University of Helsinki, who provided me with a three- month grant for completing the manuscript. I am sincerely grateful to my supervisor, Professor Emeritus Jukka Siikala, who not only guided me in sorting out the relevant from the superfluous, first with regard to my original research proposals and later again with the data collected in Fiji, but who also went beyond the call of duty by checking up on me during my fieldwork in Fiji and providing me with encouragement and practical advice. His advice typically arrives in the form of concise pronouncements, the value of which one learns to appreciate over the course of subsequent writing and fieldwork: it is good to think with. He has, furthermore, significantly contributed to the completion of this thesis by in turns giving me leeway when that was required and badgering me when that was more appropriate. I am also deeply indebted to everyone at the Department (now discipline) of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Helsinki between 2006 and 2013, particularly Professor Karen Armstrong who has given me good advice on a number of issues, Minna Ruckenstein and Timo Kallinen who have shared my (theoretical) interest in money and value, Thomas Strong who introduced me to key themes in Melanesian ethnography, Arto Sarla whose level-headed assistance has averted many a catastrophe in the making, Heidi Hrknen who read and commented on the final manuscript, and other friends and colleagues who have provided the intellectual exchanges without which thesis writing would be a joyless affair. Most of the material presented in this study has been discussed and assessed in the anthropology department seminars, where I have received heaps of encouragement, good advice and constructive criticism: my thanks to everyone who participated in those sessions. I would also like thank my two pre-examiners, Matt Tomlinson and Chris Gregory, for their insightful comments and suggestions, most of which have been incorporated in the final manuscript. At the time of writing this, I am almost certain that this will be the last time I am going to receive such detailed commentary from two such eminent commentators. The blame for not incorporating more of their insights in the thesis rests on my shoulders alone, as does the blame for misinterpreting what was pointed out to me. I add my further thanks to Chris Gregory for the valuable advice he has provided me with along the way, and for some very enjoyable conversations. I have presented material from this study at a number of conferences and workshops, and I would like to thank everyone present in the events for their input, especially the organisers and participants of “Anthropology of money” (May 2009, University of Tampere), “Connecting ideas of value” (May 2010, University of Helsinki), “Anthropology of Value in Oceania” (July 2010, University of St Andrews) and “Feast and Famine: Exploring Relationships with Food in the Pacific” (September 2012, University College London). Over the course of writing the thesis I have accumulated debts to various others as well. Elise Huffer from the Institute of Pacific Studies, University of the South Pacific, provided invaluable practical assistance prior to and during the early stages of my fieldwork. The archivists at the National Archives of Fiji helped me in the search for something that even I was often unable to articulate in precise terms. Eija-Maija Kotilainen and Pilvi Vainonen at the Museum of Cultures in Helsinki put me on the right track years ago by giving me with an opportunity to do a bit of detective work on “a yellowish animal tooth from Fiji”. My parents Leena and Risto Ersaari provided me with the one resource I was particularly short of during the writing stage: time. And last but not least, my wife Milla Ersaari spent six months with me in Fiji and shared her insights in things I would have missed otherwise. She has also taken all the photographs used in this study, and helped me out with the maps. But most of all, I want to thank her for the support, understanding and all-round magnanimity that she has provided along the way. Finally, I am eternally indebted to the chiefs and people of Naloto, Verata, Tailevu. I want to express my deepest gratitude to everyone in and from the village for their help, kindness and good will. My particular thanks go to my teacher, masta Mitieli Vakatawabai, who guided me and shared with me his knowledge of local traditions; Tamai Ilaitia who helped me with transcribing and deciphering ritual recordings and, most of all, to everyone at the Mataivatulami house, who looked after me, patiently answered my endless questions and made me welcome in their lives. Finally, I have no way of thanking my Naloto mother, Adi Salote Naitavuni Waqa (1957–2010) who not only thoroughtly explained everything I wanted to know but who also made me see the things I did not think I needed to see. This work is dedicated to her in recognition of a debt that can never be extinguished. INTRODUCTION WHY VALUE? This book is a study of value in Fiji. To be more precise, this is a study of the on-going re-evaluation of a binary opposition that forms the core of traditional Fijian social organisation: that of “land” and “sea”, categories denoting people of land and sea-based hereditary specialist designations, on the one hand, and of foreign and indigenous backgrounds, on the other. Consequently, this is also a study of symbols, mythology, economy, ritual, and political authority in Naloto village in the chiefdom of Verata on the east coast of Viti Levu in Fiji. Over the course of this book I will present a case of cultural change “smuggled in”, as Marshall Sahlins likes to put it, to indigenous Fiji inside categories of particular significance. But being categories associated with the cosmological foundation of Fijian social organisation – denoting core values of traditional indigenous Fiji, that is – this change or value shift can be observed as it emanates through what we usually regard as separate domains of value: “economics”, “semantics”, “morality”, and beyond. Rather than being a study of the concept of value, however, this is first and foremost a study of Fiji. I utilise the broad sweep of denotations contained in the concept because it organically combines a number of seemingly disparate topics under the rubric of value. While doing so, however, it also adds a general theoretical interest to the discussion: why do some contexts display the coinciding usage of various ideas connoted by “value” – the “sociological”, the “economic” and the “linguistic”, to follow David Graeber’s (2001: 1–2) classification – whilst in other settings they remain disparate and incommensurate? From such a point of view, value is both a knowledge-producing comparative tool – much like Marilyn Strathern’s use of the overlapping senses of “relative” (approximately: connection, kin and contingency; see Strathern 1995, 2005) – but also an ideal focal point for data that consists of materials and practices of ceremonial exchange, mythological accounts for the origins of people and of valuables as well as local understandings of money.