Abstract:
This article will discuss the idea of the Third World in Fiji by
analysing the internal tensions of the term and the plurality of trajectories
emerging from the transnational spaces in which Fijian society must reconstitute
itself after decolonisation and the coups of 1987 and 2000. The ethnic issues in
Fiji have led to the employment of a number of strategies by both the indigenous
and the Indian communities. Some consist of networking within transnational
spaces and negotiation with external political and cultural flows, while others
are more inward in their everyday strategies. This situation offers a nonreductive
way to think about decolonisation, cultural transformation and notions
of autonomy and Third World solidarity. The article assumes that cultural forms
will always be made, unmade and remade. Communities can and must reconfigure
themselves, drawing selectively on remembered pasts. The relevant
question is whether, and how, they convince and coerce insiders and outsiders,
often in power-charged, unequal situations; for example, the issues of indigenous
versus migrant rights to land and franchise in Fiji. Thus, what is lost and
rediscovered in new situations becomes part of the realm of normal political or
cultural activity.
