The last attempt did not produce a readable copy.
The last attempt did not produce a readable copy.
The thesis looks at Fijian notions of indigeneity and alterity from a value-focused perspective, claiming that exchange value, semantic value and the evaluation of proper Fijian-ness can all be analysed as interlinked phenomena, observable in the context of a binary classification that divides all indigenous Fijians into land people and sea people . This dichotomy has occupied a central place in the anthropology of Fiji for more than 100 years, during which the dual classification into land people and sea people has been applied in reference to commoners and chiefs, indigenes and strangers, Melanesians and Polynesians, land owners and landless aristocracy, hosts and guests, equality and hierarchy, even humanity and divinity. This thesis adopts the viewpoint of Naloto village in the chiefdom of Verata, a polity that in most present-day accounts stands for Fiji s senior chiefly lineage, but where everyone are also considered equally original . In Naloto, the valuation of the traditional categories of land and sea appears to be reversed. In cosmological terms, this can be seen in the widespread acceptance of an origin myth that makes everyone originals , part of an original migration from Africa. This change also coincides with a large-scale reversal in symbolic value. Where foreign origin once constituted a principle upon which chiefs and valuables were both grounded, the reverse now occurs: valuables such as the highly prized whale teeth ( Fijian money ) are considered objects of local Fijian origin, just as the origin stories of people are concerned with their originality . The change can also be observed within the historical process which made all indigenous Fijians de facto landowners during the colonial era, and the way in which the Fijian concept connoting host and land owner (taukei) came to symbolize the entire ethnic group of indigenous Fijians vis-à-vis their cultural others, the Indo-Fijian population of Fiji. In the final analysis, the valuation of symbols, exchange media and what is considered proper Fijian custom are seen as complementary ways of addressing the place of strangers in 21st-century indigenous Fiji.
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