Suchergebnisse

The reasons behind Fiji's military coup of 19 May 2000 are complex, and
cannot be fully understood on a purely rational or empirical level. An
interdisciplinary approach that embraces culture and history, informed
by fiction, poetry, and drama, as well as personal experience, offers
insights into Fijian-Indian relations. In this paper I explore the nature
and usefulness of the interdisciplinary process in helping to make sense
of a specific event in Fiji's history; I also seek to better understand
the guiding principles that might inform future interdisciplinary research
and writing. This does not mean that the approach here is necessarily
applicable to understanding other similar events or topics. My primary
goal is not to lay down principles set in stone but rather to stimulate
discussion and debate on interdisciplinary approaches to Pacific studies.

The Pacific region presents a huge diversity of cultural forms, which have fuelled some of the most challenging ethnographic work undertaken in the discipline. But this challenge has come at a cost. Culture, often reconfigured as 'custom', has often served to trap the people of the Pacific in the past of cultural reproduction, where everything is what it has always been, or worse—outdated, outmoded and destined for modernization. Pacific Futures asks how our understanding of social life in the Pacific would be different if we approached it from the perspective of the futures which Pacific people dream of, predict or struggle to achieve, not the reproduction of cultural tradition. From Christianity to gambling, marriage to cargo cult, military coups to reflections on childhood fishing trips, the contributors to this volume show how Pacific people are actively shaping their lives with the future in mind