Suchergebnisse

'Confronting Fiji Futures' edited by Haroon Akram-Lodhi is reviewed.

The author takes a critical look at the new constitution of Fiji, promulgated in July 1990, and the system of government. She points out that this constitution is directed against Fiji Indians, promotes Fijian 'tradition' and, especially, the authority of a chiefly establisment long dominated by chiefs from Fiji's eastern regions. She believes that much of the uncertainty surrounding Fijian politics centres on the military, especially on Major General Rabuka's carreer plan. (DÜI-Sen)

Fiji, post-independence, has seen several governments, two military coups and, amidst sweeping social, economic and political changes, the presence of divisive identity politics in its journey towards a united, collective Fiji community. This republished edition of Confronting Fiji Futures takes in these landmark events and eventualities, and aims at a forward-looking assessment of the realities facing Fiji in the present and the future. It focuses on the period of the coups up to and including the 1999 general elections, when an explicitly multiethnic party won government in a surprise landslide result. This book is the result of a collaborative research project based at the Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, in the Netherlands — an institution with a long tradition of collaborative teaching, research and advisory services in the South Pacific region. It aims to present a range of relevant issues from a number of vantage points. It has brought together a strong diversity of authors led by A. Haroon Akram-Lodhi, including John Cameron, Ganesh Chand, Martin Doornbos, Yash Ghai, Holger Korth, Sunil Kumar, Biman Prasad, Jacqueline Leckie, Satendra Prasad, Steve Ratuva, Robbie Robertson, Ardeshir Sepehri and William Sutherland.

Robert Norton's Race and Politics in Fiji, first published in 1977, drew upon the author's fieldwork in Fiji to develop the first serious and sustained study of politics in Fiji. An exercise in political anthropology, it was republished by UQP in 1990, but the essential argument remained much the same: the author sought to understand how political accommodation was achieved in Fiji despite deep ethnic and social cleavages. Why was Fiji able to escape the ethnic violence and turbulence that characterised other ethnically divided societies, such as Guyana? The answer lay in avoiding open comp

Through Dr Lal's refreshingly clear and powerful prose and sharply observed stories, we enter the inner world of Indo-Fijian feeling and aspiration. One universal that emerges with particular clarity in the Indo-Fijian experience is the ceaseless struggle to find community in a changing world, balancing the beauty of ritual and tradition against the transcendent value of education and modern rationality. The volume poses the question of how people draw upon historical memory and immediate circumstances to create a social world, and how that world can be shared with others in multicultural society. The answer seems to lie somewhere between history and poetry, as in Dr Lal's 'factions.' Andrew Arno
University of Hawaii
at Manoa, Honolulu

After giving an overview of Fijian geography, recent history and latest econmic development, this study deals with a detailed description of the country's financial system and its institutional arrangement. In particular the reader is informed about the Reserve Bank of Fiji, its domestic and international monetary policy anad the country's supply of demand for money. Finally, the author gives some remarks about strategies for the conduct of monetary policy in Fiji. (DÜI-Sbt)