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Boycotts and Coups, Shanti and Mana in Fiji

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.