Reflexivity, Tradition, and Power: The Work of R.R. Nayacakalou

Abstract

In this paper, I explore the moral challenges of reflexivity in the contexts of social hierarchy and the politics of tradition. I analyze the work of indigenous Fijian anthropologist R.R. Nayacakalou, a keen social observer who endured professional challenges because of his nonchiefly social status. A student of Raymond Firth's at the University of London, Nayacakalou was the first indigenous Fijian to earn his Ph.D. in anthropology. He was managing the Native Land Trust Board in Fiji when he died tragically young in 1972. His reputation has suffered since his death, as his untimely passing has been interpreted by some indigenous Fijians as punishment for his supposed alienation of indigenous lands. Nayacakalou's life and work illustrate the ways in which anthropological reflexivity can inspire moral critique from its subjects when a critical stance toward tradition is mistaken as an attack on indigenous sovereignty.

Keywords:

• Reflexivity
• representation
• tradition
• chiefs
• Fiji

Acknowledgments

Special thanks to friends and colleagues of Rusiate Nayacakalou who shared their memories and advice, including Cyril Belshaw, Ron Crocombe, Dame Joan Metge, Gene Ogan, Albert J. Schütz, and R. Gerard Ward. Extra special thanks to his eldest son, Apakuki Nayacakalou, for meeting to share his thoughts and reflections. I also appreciate the guidance, suggestions, and assistance this article has received from Andrew Arno, Ilana Gershon, Mike Goldsmith, Matthew Engelke, Paul Geraghty, Richard Handler, Jennifer Pelkey, Eric Worby, and two anonymous reviewers. Any errors are my own.

Notes

1. His full name was Rusiate Raibosa Nayacakalou; I refer to him as R.R. Nayacakalou because that is the name under which he published his most important works. In Fijian orthography, ‘c’ designates a voiced apicodental fricative (Schütz 1985:553), like the ‘th’ in English ‘brother’; thus ‘Nayacakalou’ is pronounced ‘Na-yatha-ka-lo,’ with secondary stress on ‘yatha’ and primary stress on ‘lo.’

2. Most of the biographical details in this paper come from Nayacakalou's obituary, which was published in the first issue of Pacific Perspective (Anonymous [Ron Crocombe] 1972).

3. For his field research, Nayacakalou received funding from the Colonial Social Science Research Council (Nayacakalou 1975:1). As a doctoral student in London, he received funding from multiple sources, including the Royal Anthropological Institute, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Government of Fiji and, finally, the Great Council of Chiefs (see Anonymous 1972:48; Nayacakalou 1975:1).

4. For JPS, he also wrote articles about Tongan and Samoan social organization and land tenure (Nayacakalou 1959, 1960).

5. On the topic of tradition and change, see also Nayacakalou 1978.

6. As R. Gerard Ward (personal communication) put it succinctly, ‘Unlike many who wrote, and write, on Fiji he [Nayacakalou] was not trapped into believing that the “official” version of custom and tradition was the full story.’

7. For Fiji, see the commissioned reports by Spate (1959) and Burns, Watson, and Peacock (1960); see also Belshaw (1964).

8. The discourse still circulates in certain contexts. Robbie Robertson and William Sutherland, sounding very much like Tippett more than four decades earlier, wrote: ‘the key issue is that Fijians are faced with a choice. Either… they cling to their cultures and traditions and continue to lag behind others economically, or they adjust and make compromises to better enable them to achieve greater economic success in the capitalist sense. They cannot have it both ways' (Robertson & Sutherland 2001:86).

9. Kelly and Kaplan (2001:109) fault Leadership in Fiji for treating Indofijians only in terms of their perceived ‘threat’ of ‘domination’ (cf. Nayacakalou 1975:168). It is true that Nayacakalou marginalized (or ignored) Indofijians in most of his writing, thus contributing to visions of Fiji's future as an essentially indigenous matter. Compare Nayacakalou (1978:71–72), wherein he describes ‘amicable enough’ relations between indigenous Fijians and Indofijians in Lomawai village, Nadrogā province.

10. Vanua has many meanings, most of them relating to people's connection to land. As a social designation, vanua are the commoners — the ‘people of the land’ — as opposed to the chiefs. But vanua also means a specific political territory, and, Nayacakalou notes, ‘It is really at the level of the vanua that chieftainship begins to emerge clearly as a definite institution’ (1975:37). Moreover, chiefs are considered to represent the vanua: ‘the chief or leader… is the focal point, the central organizing figure who stands for the whole of the people’ (Kaplan 1995:27). See also Ravuvu 1983; Tomlinson 2002a, 2002b; Williksen-Bakker 1990; Young 2001.

11. Ceremonially, the Tui Tavuki is recognized as the highest chief in Kadavu, although Kadavu is well known in Fiji for its independent polities.

12. For a recent critique of the idea of indigenous Fijian ‘political unity,’ see Durutalo 2000.

13. As an example of this last phenomenon, when I was traveling with Kadavu's superintendent Methodist minister on his quarterly-meeting tour of the island in September 1998, the orator who greeted us formally at the evening church service announced ‘Sa mai dabe jiko talegā na Vunisā Levu na tūraga bale na Tui Tavuki,’ meaning ‘Also sitting here is the Vunisā Levu, the high chief, the honorable Tui Tavuki’ (‘Vunisā Levu’ is an honorific part of the title of Tui Tavuki). The Tui Tavuki, however, was not actually present in that particular village, nor did the orator think he was. It is simply standard politeness to recognize the visiting party by welcoming their chief this way. Pitkin (1967:102) writes: ‘It is precisely insofar as the actions of the head of state are merely ceremonial that we consider him a symbol,’ and Fijian speeches of welcome are a vivid example of this kind of ceremonial symbolism.

14. One of the hallmarks of high chiefs' role is that they are free to violate rules that others are expected to follow customarily. As the missionary A. J. Webb put it memorably, summarizing the Prechristian Fijian past: ‘The chiefs behaved to one another with the spirit of Parisian gentlemen, and the higher the rank of a man was the better his manners — unless he were of very high rank, and then perhaps he would dispense with manners altogether, and be conspicuous for the want of them’ (Webb 1884:247–248; see also Quain 1948).

15. The demographic proportions have changed recently, since the coups d'état of 1987 and 2000 have prompted Indofijian exodus. Several decades before the first 1987 coup, Indofijians had achieved a demographic majority; by the 1986 census there were 348,704 Indofijians and 329,305 indigenous Fijians (Lal 1992:337). Ten years later, the numbers had flipped to 393,575 indigenous Fijians and 338,818 Indofijians (Rakaseta 1999:xi).

16. Such land is held corporately by officially recognized patrilineages.

17. On the British colonial policies that reified and codified ‘race,’ land tenure, and other major categories in Fijian social life, see especially France 1969; Gillion 1962, 1977; Howard 1991; Jayawardena 1971; Lal 1992; Kaplan 1998, 2003; Kelly 1998, 2003; Kelly & Kaplan 1994, 2001; Norton 1977; Rutz 1995.

18. Despite his academic workload, Nayacakalou was an accomplished entertainer — a talented musician who recorded and played with the well-known group Wai Siliva. Several friends of Nayacakalou's whom I conversed with recalled his musical skills, and his eldest son is a professional musician.

19. Firth was at the London School of Economics, where Nayacakalou studied for his degree from the University of London. In accepting the Nayacakalou Medal, Firth lauded Nayacakalou's ‘perceptive scholarly writing’ and stated that ‘he had many difficulties to overcome to win a position of public prominence and dignity in modern Fijian administration’ (Firth 2001:241).

20. Kava is a plant whose roots and stems are dried, crushed to powder, and infused into water to make a beverage (also called kava). Many villagers in Kadavu drink kava nightly in casual social settings, but kava ceremonies are also integral to many formal rituals. See Tomlinson 2004.

21. Ron Crocombe (personal communication) indicates that he has also heard these kinds of stories. For an entirely different version of Nayacakalou's passing, blaming la collectivité scientifique blanche, see Guiart 2003:89.

22. This man, the father of one of my friends in Tavuki village, had been ill, and had foresworn kava drinking and tobacco smoking. The people who gathered that night were trying to keep him company and presumably to cheer him up.

23. Nayacakalou's pursuit of the Ph.D. was apparently motivated by his desire to work for the best interests of the vanua. Dame Joan Metge (personal communication) recalls: ‘When [Ralph] Piddington and [Raymond] Firth first opened up the way for him to do a doctorate in London he hesitated partly from modesty about his ability but also because his main aim was to go home to serve his people.’

24. For example, see Kaplan 1995 on Navosavakadua and Apolosi Nawai.