Ethnohistory 2005 52(1):13-27; DOI:10.1215/00141801-52-1-13
Duke University Press
Boycotts and Coups, Shanti and Mana in Fiji
John D. Kelly
University of Chicago
Abstract.
A Weberian approach to globalization can go beyond analyses of local
cultural accommodation and resistance to global forces and can illuminate more
complex dialogics of local and global ends and means. Max Weber once objected
to the portrayal of Christian martyrdom as service to Christian society rather
than to Christian moral imperatives. Indo-Fijian shanti (peace), in a
society dominated by ethnic Fijian mana, is more than paralleled Hindu and
Fijian sacred power. The dialogic criticism that devotional Hinduism once
leveled against caste hierarchy in India is redeployed in Fiji as a moral,
sacred egalitarianism more virtuous than ethnic Fijian and colonial
hierarchies, rendered thereby parochial and deluded in Ram and Krishna's
universe. Thus Indo-Fijians localize gods and also a form of critique of
hierarchy, engaging politics already heavily inflected by localized
Christianity.

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Copyright 2005 by American Society for Ethnohistory