Chapter 1 Introduction: Self and Society in Western Fiji Chapter 2 Defining the Community Through Ceremony Chapter 3 Constructing Self and Community Through Religious Discourse Chapter 4 Re-Imagining Sociocentrism Chapter 5 Imagining Modernity in Rakiraki Chapter 6 Crafting a Community Chapter 7 Imagining Identity Among Rakiraki Children Chapter 8 Conclusion: Identity in a "Postcultural" World
Karen J. Brison is associate professor of Anthropology at Union College.
Brison has written a fine book that vividly captures the challenges
faced by indigenous people in Fiji as they work at self fashioning
in a changing world dominated by contradictory systems of values.
Showing us how individuals and communities navigate between the
pulls of communal and individualist models of selfhood, she gives
us a rich, person-centered view of what the global era looks like
to those living at its margins. Engagingly written, this is a book
that succeeds in bringing theory and ethnography together
seamlessly. It deserves to be widely read by people interested in
the conjunction of culture and selfhood in the global era.
*Joel Robbins, University of California-San Diego*
Karen Brison explores a dimension of social change until now
neglected by studies of the indigenous Fijians. This book is
enriched by interview data that vividly convey the strivings and
dilemmas experienced by her informants in contexts of change and
new opportunities. This volume is a compelling study of the
dialectics of mind, self and society in contexts of rapid and
perplexing social change. Her account of the mutability and
multiplicity of self-identities within Fijian communities and
beyond them raises questions for future research on the extent to
which these changes in imagining the self are influenced by
inter-ethnic relations, and on the impact that changing conceptions
of self might in turn have on directions of change in ethnic
relations.
*Journal of Pacific History, July 2009*
Karen Brison has written a lucid account of Fijian life that probes
many of the tensions and contradictions found in globalizing
societies today. Most importantly, the reader encounters these
predicaments through the voices of a diverse range of Fijians: men,
women, and children, who provide eloquent testimony about being
indigenous in a (post)modern world. This is one of those rare
volumes that advances anthropological debates while giving us a
book that also makes for an excellent introduction to contemporary
Oceania.
*Geoffrey White, University of Hawai'i*
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