Drinking to Mana and Ethnicity: Trajectories of Yaqona Practice and Symbolism in Eastern Fiji

• Published in: Oceania Vol. 75; no. 4; pp. 325 - 341
• Main Author: Abramson, Allen
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Sydney University of Sydney 01-09-2005; Blackwell Publishing Limited, a company of John Wiley & Sons, Inc; Blackwell Publishing Ltd
• Subjects: Anthropology; Authenticity; Brothers; Ceremonies; Chiefdoms; Clans; Cultural authenticity; Cultural change; Cultural identity; Culture; Drinking; Drinks; Ethnic groups; Ethnicity; Fiji; Fijian people; Grain; Healers; Historical account; Historical analysis; History; Kava; Land; Minority & ethnic groups; National characteristics; Oceanic languages; Religious rituals; Rites & ceremonies; Rites and ceremonies; Ritual; Rituals; Secularism; Social aspects; Social change; Symbolism; Transformation; Variants; Fiji
• ISSN: 0029-8077; 1834-4461
• DOI: 10.1002/j.1834-4461.2005.tb02894.x

This paper sets out a transformational history of yaqona use in Fiji from first contact with Europeans to present times. Trying to transcend the familiar history/structure dichotomy, two relatively separate trajectories of Fijian practice are identified, both incorporating enduring cultural premises, both logically and historically transformative. In the older of these trajectories, yaqona drinking is transformed ritually to promote or block the circulation of mana in embodied Fijian 'lands'. In the younger pathway, by contrast, secular variants of yaqona ceremonial are invented to ethnic effect as one particular transformation of a modern structure that, against the grain of ritual practice, tends to detach ethnic Fijians from ancestral powers. It is suggested that, whilst, in appropriate spaces, contemporary ethnic objectifications of yaqona are formulated in opposition to other ethnic presences as expressions of 'authentic' Fijian-ness, the underlying ritual transformations of yaqona produce a range of Fijian states that exceed this authenticity and challenge the otherwise hegemonic claims of ethnicity.