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510 the Contemporary Pacific • Fall 1997 Different Strategies for Pursuing Render Their Cultural Image of What It Is Nation-Making Discourse

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510 the Contemporary Pacific • Fall 1997 Different Strategies for Pursuing Render Their Cultural Image of What It Is Nation-Making Discourse 510 the contemporary pacific • fall 1997 different strategies for pursuing render their cultural image of what it is nation-making discourse. Kaplan, for to be a person” (59). example, argues persuasively for the There is much in this volume for a role of rituals “that enshrine particular range of interests. It is destined to be a narratives as the real or true ones” standard reading in the literature on (116). She then explores for Fiji the Melanesia as a cultural and political manner in which particular narratives region. But it also merits a wider read- become routinized or institutional- ing among audiences concerned with ized, thus obtaining legitimacy and productions of national identities gen- authority. Foster finds narrative coher- erally, particularly in small nonwestern ence in print-mediated advertising, communities enmeshed in larger pursuing tropes of commodification nation-making projects. Michigan and consumption through the land- Press would do well to make the vol- scape of popular media. His interest in ume available in paperback so that it the role of advertising as a site of can reach the wide readership it national identity formation is reflected deserves. in the concerns of several contributors geoffrey m white who attempt to trace connections East-West Center between state institutions, exchange practices, and conceptions of the *** person. The substantial literature on the Tradition versus Democracy in the invention of tradition in the Pacific has South Pacific: Fiji, Tonga and Western noted repeatedly the relevance of Samoa, by Stephanie Lawson. Cam- national economic policies for local, bridge: Cambridge University Press, cultural identities. Insofar as states reg- 1996. isbn 0–521–49638–1, xii + 228 ulate the flow of people and goods pages, tables, maps, notes, bibliogra- across regional and national bound- phy, index. us$59.95, a$75.00. aries, they exert significant influences over the contexts and purposes of This review is written at the end of identity formation. Several authors 1996, a year in which democratic note that concepts of modern individu- assumptions and values came under alism are tied up with the establish- further scrutiny in the Pacific: there ment of market economies that give were pressures on the press (and some new meanings to objects and land and parliamentarians) in Tonga; the com- to the social relations they define. mittee reviewing Fiji’s postcoup consti- Citing Hirsch’s chapter on the Fuyuge, tution presented its findings; and, as is LiPuma characterizes the penetration now customary, Western Sâmoa’s par- of global capital into local exchange liamentary elections suggested differ- economies as a kind of war: “Should ences between Samoan traditions and local cultures surrender to the forces of western views about appropriate cam- capitalism and take advantage of state- paign practices. At a time when island fostered opportunities for economic leaders and peoples are reasserting the advancement, then they also must sur- vitality and relevance of their own cus- book reviews 511 toms and cultures, Stephanie Lawson grant a privileged status to ‘insider’ (of the Australian National Univer- accounts of these issues, [but] there sity’s Research School of Pacific and is no reason to believe that these Asian Studies) “takes a critical should be immune from external approach to contemporary assertions critiques, or that there is only one of tradition in the political sphere,” in ‘inside’ view” (5). particular “the manipulation of cul- Although by no means an apologist tural traditions for political purposes” for all things western, and still less for (viii). Her analysis, at times probing what might be called the customs and and effective, emphasizes that “the traditions of the colonial period, Law- people who suffer most from the son frankly maintains that many of the ‘romantic approach’ to tradition are western-derived “practices and institu- the ordinary people of the region” (4), tions which attempt to provide for a and she quotes from Epeli Hau‘ofa, to measure of self-government as well as assert that “it is the privileged who can for the protection of human and civil afford to tell the poor to preserve their rights are worth defending” (27). In traditions...in the final analysis it is fact, Pacific Island states do assert the the poor who have to live out the tra- value and relevance of democracy— ditional culture; the privileged can “all of the island states claim to be merely talk about it” (4–5). democratic”—but while “the word A study that asserts the relevance ‘democracy’ has received almost uni- for Pacific Island polities of western versal acclamation, neither its institu- democratic values, Lawson admits, tions nor the values that sustain it have “does entail some value judgements.” achieved the same level of esteem” She argues, however, that “the true (29). Is Fiji a democracy? “Adam may worth of study in the humanities or the have named the tiger because it looked social sciences is that it equips people like a tiger, but it is hardly adequate to to make value judgements, not to name something a democracy simply avoid them. This is neither a popular because it looks like one on the nor a ‘safe’ position, but it will be surface” (35). defended not simply from the perspec- Apart from some broader theoreti- tive of an ‘external’ supporter of dem- cal comment, Tradition versus Democ- ocratic values, but also from the racy in the South Pacific is essentially a perspective of those in Fiji, Tonga and set of case studies. Those unfamiliar Western Sâmoa who do not necessarily with Fiji, Tonga, and Western Sâmoa accept the eternal legitimacy of so- will find the accounts of their political called natural indigenous hierarchies and historical experience reasonably and who have provided the major succinct and useful. The review of Fiji’s internal impetus for movements pro- independence and postcoup constitu- moting democratization” (6). Law- tions, for instance, leads to some par- son’s defense of her own perspective ticularly sharp conclusions: “it remains questions the sacrosanct status of some highly unlikely that any significant of the existing published material on constitutional reform will take place” Pacific Islands politics: “some may (74); Fiji’s Indian community is likely 512 the contemporary pacific • fall 1997 to remain “a marginal political force in issues in societies far from the Pacific parliament,” its place in the scheme of as well. Is democracy, and its norms— things determined by the gravitational including respect for an irreducible set pull of “intra-Fijian struggles for polit- of individual human rights—univer- ical control” (74); “the 1990 constitu- sally desirable, everywhere to be pre- tion rested largely on claims which ferred to alternative cultural values? were self-servingly false (with respect Are democratic values an “intro- to threats to Fijian rights), while at the duced” idea with no resonance at all in same time disguising the real motiva- traditional societies; and, if so, does tion for the new constitution, namely, that therefore limit their wider applica- the attempted consolidation of chiefly tion and erode their legitimacy? On all authority” (75). these matters, and more, Lawson has The chapter on Western Sâmoa is, something to say, yet the book’s princi- inevitably, less dramatic. As for Tonga, pal achievement may lie with its intel- where a pro-democracy movement lectual courage and honesty. Lawson struggles against constitutional rigidity challenges “a new age of ‘white liberal and authoritarian traditions, Lawson guilt’ and ‘political correctness’ in demonstrates how what is in the west which it has become unfashionable, in an often antiquarian interest—knowl- some circles, for Westerners to offer edge of family history—can be crucial critiques of indigenous representations to the demarcation of boundaries of their traditions” (162). But if between those with political power external critics are “unwelcome inter- and those without. Thus Queen lopers,” while “internal critics who Salote’s ability to be “eventually able appeal to democratic norms...are to identify each and every one of her traitors to their own cultures and tra- subjects—no mean feat when dealing ditions” (165), by whom can the poli- with a population of around 40,000” cies and practices of Pacific Island (97)—was an important part of her politicians be criticized? power, since establishing “genealogical Into this genuinely frosty atmo- credentials” was critical in delineating sphere comes Lawson, answering those the social and political hierarchy: who would argue that “democracy as “commoners were, by definition, com- a form of government is both inappro- pletely irrelevant” (97). Although dem- priate and illegitimate in the South ocratic reformers raise intelligible Pacific because it is Western and questions of accountability, good gov- because it is not a part of ‘our ernment, and individual rights, politi- tradition’ ” (171). She turns again to cal change in Tonga requires not only the realities of postcoup power: “We constitutional revision—that would should ask, for example, which Fijian seem, great though the obstacles may ‘tradition’ supports the political order be, the easy part—but a profound now in place in Fiji” (171). reshaping of underlying cultural Some years ago I wondered whether perspectives. western academics would be prepared In a larger sense, this study may be to take a critical stance toward Pacific viewed as a contribution to debates on Island governments under indigenous book reviews 513 (as opposed to colonial) rule. “Now including local studies and broad sur- that the Pacific is comprised princi- veys. It would seem difficult to add pally of independent or self-governing much that was new empirically or con- political entities . the tasks of politi- ceptually. Yet this book does so, and cal analysis and criticism become does so admirably. somewhat more difficult. This is The approach and format of Land, especially so for the expatriate, for the Custom and Practice in the South non-indigenous observer, who quite Pacific is novel.
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