All things go in pairs, or the sharks will bite: the antithetical nature of Fijian chiefship.

Toren, Christina

In his postface to Homo Hierarchicus, Dumont argues for a theory of hierarchy as `the encompassing of the contrary' whereby

At the superior level there is unity; at the inferior level there is distinction ... complementariness or contradiction is contained in a unity of superior order. But as soon as we intermingle the two levels, we have a logical scandal, because there is identity and contradiction at the same time. (1980:242, orig. 1966).

He contrasts his `hierarchical schema' with the `Hegelian schema' where `transcendance is produced synthetically, instead of pre-existing.' (ibid:243). Ideas implicate values, and for Dumont

To adopt a value is to introduce hierarchy, and a certain consensus of values, a certain hierarchy of ideas, things and people, is indispensable to social life (ibid:20).

So he implies that human thought is hierarchical in its nature and thus makes hierarchy itself an ultimate value in which other values are nested. His thesis has been influential, particularly in so far as it has given rise to the view that the anthropologist's aim should be to analyse the hierarchy of values that informs the behaviour of people with whom he or she is working.[1]

But what if analysis reveals a profound resistance to the very possibility of an encompassing value? A resistance that itself informs those relations between people we characterise as kinship, political economy, religion, and one that consists precisely in positing contradictory values as equally important? At this point, far from being `indispensable to social life' and given in the nature of mind, Dumont's `'hierarchical schema' becomes vacuous and the `Hegelian schema' triumphs.

This essay addresses Dumont's argument with Hegel via an examination of ethnographic material concerning the historical and contemporary nature of Fijian chiefship. In so doing, it deals with hierarchy as a value and with Dumont's theory that values are hierarchically ordered. It does not address his analysis of his Indian data, rather it argues that in so far as his theory of hierarchy is based on historically specific data and in so far as his `hierarchy of values' is naive with respect to the model of mind it implies, there are sound reasons to reject its universal application. The essay argues that ethnic Fijians' ideas of the relation between hierarchy and equality are Hegelian rather than Dumontian; that for them, `transcendance can only be produced synthetically' precisely because complementariness and contradiction cannot, ultimately, be contained.

Fijian ideas of hierarchy are constituted through the transformation in ritual of balanced, reciprocal exchange into tribute. Chiefly ritual appears to contain, and thus to render non-threatening, equally powerful notions of equality, such that Fijian villagers come to conceive of hierarchy as given (Toren 1990). However, chiefly ritual does not encompass the whole of life. So, for example, an analysis of representations of compassion and desire as experienced over time by people at different stages of life show that these two most salient forms of love inform and are informed by hierarchical and equal relations within and across sex, such that each kind of love becomes the grounds of the possibility of the other (Toren, in press a). Compassion and desire are rendered cosmogonic in various stories of the old Gods and inform hierarchical and equal relations within and across groups; moreover, Methodism (the religion of the vast majority of ethnic Fijians), which contains its own inherent tension between hierarchy and equality, is taking on a distinctively Fijian form (Toren, forthcoming).

Equality and hierarchy are the warp and woof of the fabric of Fijian village life.[2] There is an attempt to make hierarchy contain relations of equality and a simultaneous recognition that this hierarchy itself depends for its very continuity on the dynamic of relations of equality which cannot in their nature ultimately be contained by chiefly ritual, but only by raw power -- that is to say, by superior physical force.[3] This essay is an historical analysis of this thesis. It concerns political rivalry between Fijian chiefs as this is apparent in the records of the Lands Commission for the vanua of Sawaieke, on the island of Gau.[4] The analysis also addresses A.M. Hocart's theory of the development of Fijian hierarchy.

DUALISM AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF EQUALITY INTO HIERARCHY

In his preface to Kings and Councillors, Rodney Needham points out that Hocart's first premise is that ritual `is a practical activity intended to secure life' (1970:lxiii). His general purpose is to argue that government evolves out of ritual organisation such that equality, or a balanced organisation of functions, gives way to centralisation and `a vertical hierachy':

If there is to be government, that is, coordination of actions, there must

be some

to command and a majority to obey... as the regulation of conduct becomes

the main interest rather than the control of nature, we see the leader

become the

regulator; groups once equal acknowledge the supremacy of one; a vertical

arrangement takes the place of a horizontal one... (1970:37)

For Hocart this process characterised the development of Fijian chiefship. Later on in the same work, as in others, he discusses what he calls `the dual organisation' whereby there are two kings or two chiefs -- one whose functions are almost purely ritual, and one whose functions are defense and war. He shows how the power of arms allowed the war chief to usurp the position of the ritual chief who had formerly taken precedence over him and how, in Fiji, the Tui (King or Ritual Chief) is displaced by the Sau (War Chief) (1970:163-165, 1952:33-52, 1929:232-238).

The emphasis on Fijian dualism, on the necessity, in all activities, for there to be `two sides' pervades Hocart's work; in The Northern States of Fiji he quotes a Lauan informant as saying `In Fiji all things go in pairs, or the sharks will bite' (1952:57) and later he bemoans the excesses of dualism as

prophetic of decay, for dichotomy was becoming so common as to be cheap... and was no longer reserved for ritual [occasions] ... [But] A new and more solemn interest seems to have already encroached upon the old dualism weaked by excess. That new enthusiasm was the service of the chief ... [which] upset the old balance of paired groups ... The two sides that used to face each other, equal except in precedence, have begun to break up into units which all face the chief, like planets round the sun. (1952:58)

Hocart's work on Fiji is remarkable for its ethnographic richness and its theoretical insights, but `a vertical hierarchy' is not, I argue, inevitable. Certainly the great war chiefs, like Cakobau, were doing their best to bring a fixed hierarchy into being, but they could suppress the inherent challenge of equal relations between persons and between groups only by force of arms. With pacification under British colonial rule, the ethos of competitive equality that is as important to Fijians as hierarchy reasserted itself, as it was bound to do, for in Fiji kinship implies both kinds of relations and each is predicated on the other. A fixed hierarchy would have required a fundamental shift in kinship and exchange relations, for marriage is predicated on relations of equality between cross-cousins across exogamous clans (mataqali), not only within, but also across, sex; outside marriage, cross-cousins across sex are one another's equals (see Toren 1990:50-52).

Hierarchy and equality in Fiji are expressed in terms of disposition in space. So in accordance with one's status one may sit above (i cake) or below (i ra) others when yaqona (kava) is drunk; this above/below axis is constituted out of a transformation in ritual of another spatial construct -- veiqaravi lit. `facing each other' which describes the disposition of houses within the space of the village (see Toren 1990: 74-89, 100-118). With cross-cousins one may be on the same level (tau vata, literally `fall together'); similarly, friends are veitau, i.e. equals and in village life, if I refer to someone as my friend (noqu i tau), he or she is virtually always my cross-cousin.[5]

All relationships can be conceptualised and referred to as kin relations; at its widest extension one's kin include all other ethnic Fijians. With the exception of the equal relation between cross-cousins, all kinship relations are hierarchical and require varying degrees of respect and avoidance. The antithesis between hierarchy and competitive equality here references that between non-marriageable kin (where the paradigmatic reference is to the hierarchical household and clan) and marriageable kin (who as cross-cousins are equals across households and clans).

The tension between hierarchy and equality given respectively by relations between kin within the household and kin relations between cross-cousins as affines across households can be historically related to the nature of chiefship. High chiefs are associated on the one hand with relations within the house-hold and on the other with affinity. By virtue of drinking the installation yaqona a high chief becomes the leader of the community, whose image in yaqona ritual is that of `the household' writ large. At the same time, in both myth and history, the first high chief is represented as a foreigner from over the sea who married a daughter of the indigenous land chief and was later installed by him as paramount. But the high chief and his descendants rule thereafter only by consent of the landspeople; so the power that lies with the land chief as head of the clan who `makes the chief' is crucial. He can, and often does, refuse or delay the installation of a putative paramount.[6]

In yaqona-drinking the paramount is seen to take precedence over and to be above others just as, within the household, a man is seen to take precedence over and to be above his wife. The perceived subordination of wife to husband itself depends on the ritual transformation of the equality of cross-cousins into the hierarchy of marriage and is effected not only in the marriage ceremonies themselves, but on a daily basis in the conduct of every meal (Toren 1990:52-64). The exchange relations between spouses are complementary and balanced; but at meals the wife sits below her husband, serves him, and eats only when he has finished. The ritual transformation of balanced reciprocity across households into tribute to chiefs that takes place on a daily basis in yaqona-drinking has the appearance of being fully effective only in the ceremony of the installation yaqona, in which the chief dies as a man to be reborn as a God `with all the ancestors at his back' (Toren 1990: 100-118). However, in Gau, while there was, and is, a named paramount, Takalaigau, it seems that a putative paramount is often named and never installed and that this was also the case in the past. When I asked people why this was so I received one of two answers: one gave particular reasons to account for particular instances and usually referred to the unfitness of a particular person to take office; the other was contained in the explanation that `there is too much veiqati' (lit. rivalry).

CHIEFSHIP AND RIVALRY IN THE HISTORY OF SAWAIEKE

Veiqati, as used by the villagers of Sawaieke, always carried strong connotations of envy and jealousy. It was used especially in connection with political rivalries between chiefs -- that is to say, between the chiefs of various yavusa (group of closely connected clans) and within yavusa between the chiefs of rival mataqali (clans).[7]

This jealous rivalry can be understood as a special instance of the ethic of competition that pervades villagers' daily life. Veiqati (especially between siblings) is frowned upon as `not according to kinship' (sega ni vakaveiwekani), but friendly competition and brinkmanship is entirely proper between cross-cousins as kin who are affines or potentional affines (usually within, but sometimes across, generations) where it routinely takes the form of joking and teasing (veiwali, veisamei). This joking and teasing has an aggressive, even confrontational, tone between people who are related as veitabani (from countries whose founding ancestors were cross-cousins) or as veitauvu (from countries who are descendants of the same ancestor god).[8]

Long-running instances of political veiqati are evident in the `General History of the Country of Sawaieke' (Na i tukutuku raraba ni vanua ko Sawaieke) recorded by the officials of the Lands Commission in 1916.[9] The dispute addressed in this essay concerned who had a right to the paramount chiefship, where these persons' ancestors came from, and whether or not they were installed. The record of this dispute at once confirms and throws into question the notion of `the stranger chief'; it shows the twofold nature of the vasu relation between a person and his or her mother's clan, whose focus is the relation between Mother's Brother and Sister's Child; it shows how ready certain people may be to challenge even an installed paramount; and above all it makes plain that in both myth and history Fijian hierarchy has always been in tension with competitive equality.

Below I give some extracts from this history whose time-span begins 150 years or so before the Lands Commission and ends at the period that Fiji was ceded to Britain (i.e. between, say, the mid-1700s and 1874).[10] In those days the village was co-terminous with the yavusa; the villages attended on each other in ritual and inter-married, but they also challenged and fought each other for precedence. Today, as in 1916, Sawaieke village is made up of several yavusa. The 1916 account of the origins of the chiefly yavusa Nadawa was given by the leader of Naboginbola, one of its component clans;[11] it is in many respects a classic tale of the stranger chief from over the sea who shows himself to be mana (lit. `effective') and thus gains the daughter of the land chief and later the paramount chiefship which is voluntarily surrendered to him by the older man.

Our honorific title is Nadawa. The name of our original ancestor (vu) is Mualevu who came from Nakobuna in Gau. One time Narai -- the leader of the Sawaieke people -- wanted to go to a place on the mainland and went to the Nakobuna people that they might sail him there. So they sailed him there and dropped anchor. Then Mualevu went to Dravuni in Tai, stayed there a little while and came back ... then all those who were with Narai returned to Gau. Afterwards [Mualevu] returned to Dravuni and was married there, his wife was the child of KoyamaiDravuni [a chiefly title] and a child was born to them, a boy, and his name was Bui [sic]. Then Biu grew up until he was big and he was always making the children in Dravuni cry and the fathers of children were angry about this and they pronounced the name of the land of Biu's father. After that they brought him here to Gau and he went to stay in his village, Nakobuna, in his clan Waivolita.

One time the Waivolita clan came here ... but when they arrived ... and the thing was done that they came to do, they were returning to Nakobuna when they met on the path with Narai, the leader of the Sawaieke people, together with his attendants. [The Sawaieke people] had finished eating [but] there still remained a head of saqa and Narai called to [Biu and his company] that they should eat the head of that saqa. But they were were afraid to eat it. Then Biu spoke to them: eat the head of the saqa, I take on the responsibility of making a kill with a club so as to beat down [this challenge]. So they ate it. When they had finished eating they asked that they might return to Nakobuna where [Biu] continued always to think about his speech to Narai.

Sometimes Biu went as a warrior and killed a few people and brought them to Narai. After that Narai called Bui [sic] to go there to him so the two of them might live together and then Biu was doing a great deal of work for Narai. After that [Narai] gave his daughter Adi Tora as wife to Biu and also his High Chief's Comb (na nona i Seru ni Sau) and a piece of land for his village, the name of which was Nadawa, and so Biu lived there and had children and they were four boys ...[12]

So when these children of Nadawa grew to be many they left Nadawa and went to make a village at Navasa. They went together with their father, Biu. After that they each got married and had children ...

And when this band of brothers was living in Navasa and had become many they asked the chiefs of Burei for a piece of land that they might build a village ... They made a yavu [foundation] for themselves and ... they each built the yavu of their houses and they each settled there. This band of four brothers then divided into three; their divisions were: 1. Naboginibola 2. Naocomatana 3. Tabaisa ... The chiefly status of Takalaigau [paramount chief of the eight villages of Sawaieke country] `jumps around' (veiladeyaki) just to these three clans. Takalaigau owes allegiance to (vakarorogo lit. listens to) the High Chief (Vunivalu) at Bau... (See Fig.1)

Fijian chiefship, Hocart argued, was concerned to bring about and to maintain prosperity and the story shows Biu to be an effective warrior and provider. He accepts the challenge to eat the head of the saqa (a fish whose eating is the prerogative of chiefs) and shows himself a capable warrior and able to further the prosperity of his people, for Narai gives him land to found a new village, Nadawa. However Biu's living together with Narai and the `great deal of work' he does for him seem to suggest bride service -- observations which do not fit with an assumption of the stranger-chief's inherent superiority (Sahlins 1985:78). Moreover the marriage makes the foreigner son-in-law to the reigning chief, to whom he thus owes the utmost respect and obedience, and cross-cousin -- and equal -- to his wife's brothers. His children will be sister's children to his wife's brothers and vasu to her clan; this vasu relation is twofold in that it demands respect and obedience from the Sister's Child (and more saliently from the Sister's Son) to the Mother's Brother and at the same time allows the Sister's Child as vasu `to take without asking' from the mother's people (cf. Levi-Strauss 1984:172).

However, Biu -- whose name means `rejected' -- is not really a stranger.[13] Indeed he has every right to be in Sawaieke vanua where his father came from and where he thus has patrilineal rights in land. Further Biu belongs to a clan that can be classified as `sea' and in this respect stands in an exchange relation of balanced reciprocity to the clan of Narai, `leader of the Sawaieke people', who is `land'.[14] The founding ancestor of landspeople clans was given in 1916 by NaRai (once the title of the paramount and today the title of the chief of landspeople clans) as Rokotaloko from Vuya, Bua, Vanua Levu.

Indeed, the records of the Lands Commission investigation show that all the ancestors of all the people of Sawaieke country came from elsewhere.[15] But there is no suggestion in the records that an ancestor of the NaRai who created the first paramount to hold the title Takalaigau had wrested the chiefship from an earlier incumbent who was the chief of another, possibly, indigenous people. Oral traditions, however, suggest that this was So.[16] The NaRai who figures in the story of Biu is also referred to as Na Sau, a title which Hocart says was that of the war chief who was second in precedence to the ritual chief or Tui. The chief of Biu's clan and yavusa, whom he apparently revolted against, was Tui Voda who may, at that time, have been the `ritual chief' alongside NaRai as `war chief'.[17] Today, in Sawaieke, the title Tui is accorded to the heads of three of the village's component yavusa, all of whom owe allegiance to (vakarorogo vua, lit. `listen to') Takalaigau, who is also referred to as Na Sau (cf. Hocart 1952: 34-37).

In 1916 Takalaigau, the paramount chief of Sawaieke country (vanua i.e. eight villages of which Sawaieke is the chiefly village), was Ratu Tomasi Tokalauvere of the chiefly Tabaisa clan (See Fig.2). In his evidence to the Lands Commission, he at first referred only to his Sawaieke ancestry and he was challenged by a man in a rival chiefly clan as follows:(18)

During the time that the late Buli [Fijian official of the colonial

administration)

was living we had already gathered together [i.e. several little villages

had come

together to form a single chiefly village of several component yavusa] and

it was

explained to the high chief and told to him that his line [nona kawa] came

from

Lasakau in Bau -- that's how it is. We said therefore that our paths were two

[divided]; he comes from Bau, we do not, but it appears from the high chief's

account that we are just one.

Ratu Tomasi countered this by saying that he was indeed related to the Sawaieke people through his father's father's father's mother who had married into a Bauan family and that his father's father, Ratu Damudamu, was of the Matanivanua in Bau. Then another of Ratu Tomasi's rivals, the chief who had told the story of Biu with its account of the origins of the chiefly Nadawa clan, asserted that Tabaisa -- Ratu Tomasi's clan -- could not be recognised as a chiefly, Nadawa clan. The Tabaisa clan is of different origins (e ra kawa tani)' he said. The dispute continued and Ratu Tomasi told how his ancestor Ratu Damudamu had come to Gau and been taken in by his grandfather Veidre (FFMF) who, it is implied, was then NaRai, chief of the landspeople, and able to install the paramount.(19) Ratu Tomasi asserted that his grandfather had installed Ratu Damudamu as Takalaigau and that because of this there was a quarrel; Ratu Damudamu and his supporters had fled to a neighbouring village and from there called to his kin in Bau for support:

Then Ratu Damudamu proclaimed war and called on Bau [to help him], then

the warships went from Bau. Then [the chiefs of two rival clans in the

chiefly

yavusa and the land chief] went there to intercept [the warships) at the

opening

in the reef and there they performed the atonement with a reed [in order to

prevent war], so that they might drink [yaqona] together to bring about

peace.

Then Ratu Damudamu was confirmed as Takalaigau ...

The chiefs (malo, cloths) of the [chiefly] Nadawa people are [the

leaders of

the component clans] Tabaisa, Lomanibuca, Naboginibola and Valebalavu.

Ratu Tomasi had already described how, when presentations of feast food (magiti) were made to the chiefly yavusa, Tabaisa clan along with Valebalavu and Naboginibola were `accorded their share from the village green' (e votai mai rara). Since this was infallible evidence that Tabaisa was recognised as a clan in the chiefly yavusa, his apparent rival, the Naboginibola chief, had to admit that Ratu Tomasi's account of the composition of the yavusa and the ritual duties of its component clans was correct.(20) However, Ratu Tomasi's other evidence was again disputed, again by a member of a rival chiefly clan:(21)

My mataqali is Naboginibola. Lomanibuca, Navakaotisau and Vanuayalewa are

our yavu (house foundations) in Nabogini-bola and were made significant

through the murders of Biu. The meaning of Navakaotisau is that the reign of

Raitena was over. Vanuayalewa is because of Biu's challenge to those above

him.

Lomanibuca is because their village stood in the centre of the vanua. Those

in

Tabaisa have only the one yavu, Tabaisa. Buliruarua [a.k.a. Vukicivoda, the

grandson of the founding ancestor Biu] was Takalaigau when Damudamu

arrived here. Tabaisa dropped anchor at an opening in the reef. Damudamu was

not installed as Takalaigau.

This account was verified by the then leader of landspeople clans, that is to say, by the man who as holder of the title NaRai was able to install a paramount chief:(22)

Ratu Damudamu was not installed. He just came here and lived with the chiefs

... Those chiefs looked down on him and they quarrelled. Then he spoke with

our elders, who moved him to [a neighbouring village]. Then war was declared

and the Sawaieke people had no energy for it. We gave in. We returned here,

then

Damudamu died in Sawaieke. Ratu Tomasi is already installed as Takalaigau.

When [the previous Takalaigau] was about to die, he declared Ratu Tomasi his

successor, and so he was installed.

At the end of this dispute it is clear that Ratu Tomasi's claims that his yavu (house foundation) and clan were legitimately part of the chiefly yavusa and that he was himself a properly installed paramount chief were accepted as correct by the officers of the Lands Commission.

The points to be noticed here are, firstly, that Tabaisa, (the name of the house and clan of which Ratu Tomasi is head) is said to have `dropped anchor at an opening in the reef'; this suggests a cynical and very successful opportunism on the part of Ratu Tomasi's ancestor Ratu Damudamu.(23)

Secondly, an attempt is made to use Ratu Tomasi's foreign origins against him; indeed it appears from the early part of the Lands Commission record that those who gave evidence to it may have thought that to make good their claims to land they had to have a founding ancestor who was born in Gau.(24) Certainly Ratu Tomasi seems to have thought that this was what was required.

Thirdly, it appears from information not quoted here that previous to Ratu Tomasi there had been some five holders of the title Takalaigau, the first being Seruqaraivalu, the son of Biu whose story was told above and who received `his High Chief's Comb' from the then paramount NaRai; when the genealogies are matched to the places where specific incidents took place, it would seem that Ratu Damudamu from the island of Bau was a contemporary of the second Takalaigau, Buliruarua, the son of Seruqaraivalu.(25) If we allow any given Takalaigau a generous ascendancy of some 20 years, then the title came into being some 100 to 150 years before the Lands Commission investigation. This makes sense, for it accords with the dates when Bau was asserting its power in Lomaiviti (central Fiji, where Gau lies) and the title Takalaigau is originally that of Bau's representative in Gau.(26) In the Lands Commission records Takalaigau is said `to listen to' (owe allegiance to) the paramount chief in Bau.

Fourthly, and given Ratu Tomasi's emphasis on his Bauan ancestor's descent through a woman who was daughter to a lands-people chief in Sawaieke country, it seems very possible that Ratu Damudamu made his claim on his grandfather as a vasu (sister's child, even if at several removes); the privilege of the vasu is to `take without asking' from the mother's people and if `grandfather Veidre' indeed held the title NaRai, as Ratu Tomasi's account suggests he did, then what he had to give was the paramount chiefship -- for only Narai can install a paramount in office, however he cannot be compelled to do so, except perhaps by the threat of superior force of arms. Indeed this may be what happened; it is suggestive that the Takalaigau who was in office when Ratu Damudamu arrived is referred to as Buliruarua or Bulivakarua - meaning `Twice Installed' -- who is elsewhere identified as being Biu's son's son, Vukicivoda; perhaps his reign was interrupted by Ratu Damudamu who died while Vukicivoda was still alive, so allowing him to be installed a second time.

But what allowed Ratu Damudamu to be adopted into the chiefly Nadawa clan so that all his descendants became legitimate members of it? The record does not tell us, but it does suggest that he lived with `the chiefs in Navasa' before he went to live with his grandfather, the chief of landspeople clans. He may have married into the Nadawa clan, but it is more likely that he was related to the Nadawa people via the female line since Bau where his own mother came from and the mainland village of Dravuni where Biu's mother came from are near to one another. But, whatever the case, he certainly had close kin in Sawaieke.

Finally, the records reveal that members of another chiefly clan appeared to have no compunction about using the Lands Commission's investigations to undermine -- and perhaps even to try to oust -- an installed paramount chief. Certainly the 1916 dispute contains no challenges from persons outside the chiefly yavusa, but then they would have nothing to gain because the position of paramount can go only to a member of a chiefly clan. Further, the then land chief, while he is not against Ratu Tomasi as paramount, is prepared to contradict and to correct him.

When one analyses these records it becomes apparent that Fijian chiefship had retained its dual nature, that in their rise to power the war chiefs (Na Sau) had not yet managed to render hierarchy absolute, for, as I show below, it was still predicated on its antithesis -- equality between persons who relate to one another as cross-cousins across households, and within and across clans and other larger collectivities.

ANTITHETICAL DUALITY AND ITS TRANSFORMATION

That hierarchy in Fiji is not an encompassing value is apparent in the words of Hocart's Lauan informant: `In Fiji all things go in pairs, or the sharks will bite'. Here `sharks' can refer to fishes, to the ancestor gods as manifest in that form, or to chiefs as dangerous and warlike persons. The saying emphasises the duality of `all things', but what is most important here is, I suggest, the antithesis that is captured by this duality. In other words, `things' have to be related to one another in a reciprocal form that allows hierarchy and equality to be at one and the same time implicated in that relationship. This is because in Fiji the fundamental organising concept is that of `the household' which by definition depends on the existence of other households for its continuing existence. People relate to one another as kin, but while kin relations within the household are axiomatically hierarchical -- husband above wife, older sibling above junior sibling -- kinship across households references the equal relationship between cross-cousins. Further, all exchange relations are competitive and ultimately those of balanced reciprocity even while the rituals of chiefship render them as tributary and apparently unequal.(27)

In the story of Biu, his marriage to NaRai's daughter is a stage in his progress towards the paramount chiefship; it does not render him superior to his father-in-law to whom he owes obedience and respect, but it does provide him at once with a household of his own and a wife who is subordinate to him. In the exchanges on betrothal and marriage and at the birth of the first child, `the side of the man' must give more than `the side of the woman'; this points not to the inherent superiority of wife-takers but to the fact that the woman and her future children are part of what is given by `the side of the woman', for what I was told of these exchanges is that if the man's side does not give more, they will be `ashamed' (see Toren 1990: 52-56, 85-89, cf. Sahlins 1976: 24-46).

However, within the marriage relationship itself, the effective alienation of the woman from her natal household and clan renders her subordinate to her husband, for she eats food that is provided by the fertile power of his ancestors whose land he gardens and whose power sends her the fish she catches; indeed her own fertility is implicitly sacrificed to the same source; thus, as Fijians say, `every man is a chief in his own house' and a wife attends on her husband and receives his largesse. Nevertheless, in terms of the division of labour, of production and exchange, husband and wife are in a reciprocal and equal relation of demand -- he must produce root crops and she must fish, he must build the house and she must weave mats to furnish it, and so on; this reciprocal and balanced relation of interdependence is undoubtedly important for the nature of the transformations that are evident in the marriage relationship. Before marriage a woman is the equal of her male cross-cousin and, by definition, all marriages are between cross-cousins. After marriage she is axiomatically subordinate to her husband, a transform which is rendered apparently complete by the young husband's almost routine violence towards his wife. However, over time, this relationship is transformed yet again so that it becomes implicitly a relation between equals, even while it is said to be hierarchical (Toren, in press a).(28)

In marrying out a woman is, as it were, unfairly deprived of her birthright, and this is implicit in the way her rights in her natal clan devolve upon her children who, as vasu, may `take without asking' from the men of their mother's clan. If one leaves the woman herself out of the reckoning, one can argue that what the vasu takes is his-or hers by virtue, not of what the mother has given up, but of the massive prestation of goods to the mother's kin that secures recognition of the vasu in the ceremony of kau mata ni gone (lit. `carrying the face of the child') (see Sahlins (1976:29-32). But this is to ignore the twofold nature of the relation between mother's brother and sister's child which combines the license that is usually proper only to people or groups who relate to one another as cross-cousins, with the extreme respect, avoidance and obedience that is properly shown by a real or classificatory son-in-law to his father-in-law. The prestation of goods compensates the woman's clan for the loss of her child who carries the blood of their ancestors too, and so secures recognition of the child in his or her own person; but the vasu's subsequent `snatching', the `taking without asking' surely signifies a recognition of the enforced loss through her marriage of the mother's natal rights and her inalienable claim to them -- an observation that is borne out by the fact that no other, similarly massive, prestation across groups entails any similar entitlement just to take what one wants in return (cf. Levi-strauss 1984:176). `Taking without asking' is, however, an implicit possibility between cross-cousins, between persons who relate to one another as veitabani or veitauvu (two countries -- vanua -- whose ancestors were cross-cousins or who have their founding ancestor in common), and does in fact occur.(29) And this is so even though no previous prestation has `secured' such a right on behalf of particular persons and is indeed entirely unnecessary -- precisely because they should be treated as `equal owners' in the house or village of their opposite numbers; the sister's child is affiliated to its father's clan and identified with him and it is only by virtue of a similar identification between mother and child that the child at once retains its junior status as child and becomes an `owner' in the mother's natal household on the same footing as her brothers.(30)

One finds a similar set of transformations between people who relate to one another as `land' and `sea', where exchange relations are again at once reciprocal and balanced and where again, from one point of view they are regarded as one another's equals, while from another `sea' appears to be superior to `land'. The classification is not co-terminous with that which distinguishes chiefly from commoner yavusa; thus, while chiefly yavusa are always `sea', certain commoner yavusa are also `sea'. In central Fiji the relationship also obtains across countries, e.g. in relation to the people of Batiki, all the people of Sawaieke vanua are `land'. When sea and land people are eating together, sea-people cannot eat fish and land-people cannot eat pork, freshwater shrimp etc.; each makes available to the other the product of their labour.

`All things go in pairs, or the sharks will bite.' And given that all things go in pairs, a totality consists of a pair of pairs, which explains why, in Fiji, everything really goes in fours.(31) Thus, even while people relate to one another as `land' and `sea', they simultaneously relate to one another as `chief' and `commoner'. A member of the chiefly clan is by definition `sea' while a member of the clan that installs the chief is by definition `land'. A putative paramount chief cannot properly claim precedence and ritual superiority over the land chief who is to install him. This is evident in the story of Biu who is challenged by the land chief to show he is mana, `effective'; when Biu accepts NaRai's challenge he locks the land chief into a competitive exchange of mana which culminates with the land chief's apparently final defeat since the supreme act of mana that is open to him is that of installing a paramount -- an act which renders him ritually inferior to the other man.(31) Thus, as the present NaRai told me:

The making of the chief is my task alone ... that is a godly gift that is

made to

me ... it is in the blood ... that is the power that is mine ... but if the

yaqona

is given to him [Takalaigau -- the putative paramount] everything in the

manner

of the land is encompassed therein. It does not matter that the yaqona is

given to

him, I am still chief; but after I have given him the yaqona I shall address

him as

saka [`sir'], I shall act with great respect towards him. That is after I

have given

the yaqona, after I have made him drink ... After that I shall attend on him,

everything he tells me I shall shoulder as a burden, nor shall I try to make

myself

great by refusing to follow him. Everything he wants done in this country

will be

told to me ... I shall then order it to be done.'

At first reading this statement suggests that NaRai becomes unambiguously inferior to the installed Takalaigau; but even while Narai says that the paramount chiefship encompasses everything, he also says that the installation `does not matter' for he is `still chief'. He is prepared to show great respect and to attend on the installed paramount, but at the same time implies that he could, if he wished, refuse to `follow' him and in so doing make himself `great'. Further it is apparent that an installed paramount cannot himself order things to be done, for it is NaRai's prerogative to give orders. As Hocart pointed out, the function of an installed paramount is just to be, so that he may receive and redistribute the people's feasts and thus promote prosperity. Moreover, in exalting the other man to a paramount position, NaRai simultaneously exalts himself: the paramount now `has at his back all the ancestors of Gau' but as the one who gives orders, NaRai too commands a greater and more effective power than he had before. That NaRai retains his effective power and even augments it is apparent in the Lands Commission records where the man holding the title in 1916 is called as an authority and gives evidence that is accepted and only partly in favour of the paramount chief, Ratu Tomasi. He is not cowed by his counterpart's precedence in ritual.

Of course the question remains as to why a chief who is able to do so does not install a putative paramount. I had previously thought that this was because the paramount would thus attain an unambiguously superior position with respect to the installing chief. However I now think that this reluctance arises in circumstances where the rivalries between particular persons in the chiefly clan itself are as important as the relationship between the land chief and the putative paramount. In other words, the land chief's relationship with other members of the chiefly clan and with the chiefs of other clans governs his decision to install or not to install a particular person.

Here it is interesting to look at the story of Biu as `stranger chief' alongside the story of Damudamu as `stranger chief' and the attitudes and effective powers of the persons who gave evidence to the Lands Commission. That Biu was indeed paramount and his son the first Takalaigau is accepted, but Ratu Tomasi's claim that his ancestor Ratu Damudamu was installed as paramount remains in question with conflicting evidence being adduced by everyone concerned. If Ratu Damudamu was installed it seems he must have gained the chiefship by virtue of being able to call on his Bauan kin to aid him in war; he is not said to have performed any acts that were mana, `effective'. Those opposing Ratu Tomasi represent Ratu Damudamu as an illegitimate claimant precisely because he came from elsewhere and tried to usurp the title by force; they ignore the fact that he could be classified as vasu to the land chief, NaRai, and that he was clearly related to the chiefs of Nadawa. Thus the opponents of Ratu Tomasi are implying that he, as Damudamu's descendant, cannot himself be regarded as a legitimate Takalaigau even though he is already installed. Ratu Tomasi has great difficulty in countering these implications and has to rely on his counterpart, the land chief, to support him; this the land chief does -- but only up to a point.

One asks oneself what Ratu Tomasi lacks to make good his claim and the answer is clear -- he lacks warriors, he commands no physical force, no terrifying reputation. The colonial administration had long done away with both warriors and the priests whose godhead, in the dual person of the land chief and the installed paramount, demanded cannibal feasts. Ratu Tomasi had his ancestors to call on, as does any installed chief, whose power automatically punishes any dereliction from duty on the part of those who owe allegiance to him, but these ancestors were now under the sway of the Christian god and `no one attended on them anymore'.(33) Further Ratu Tomasi could not now call on his Bauan kin to support him in war against any rival claimant. He was an installed chief and as such he would have received all those ritual attentions that were still possible, be seen to take precedence over others and to sit above them in yaqona-drinking, to receive feasts whose distribution was presided over by his counterpart the land chief, and to be accorded all the formal appearances of respect. Ratu Tomasi reigned, but he could not rule; only command of physical force would allow him to rule, because the dual nature of Fijian chiefship inevitably works against the institution of `a vertical hierarchy'.

The main point here is that, when the records of the Lands Commission for Gau are analysed in light of relations within and across groups, it is apparent that in 1916 hierarchy could not be said to be an encompassing value; it is not Dumontian in its nature because it always simultaneously implies competitive equality as an equally important and antithetical value. Here my view differs from that put forward by Sahlins in his various works, and more particularly in Sahlins (1985) and (1991). In the latter essay, where he develops his notion of Fijian history as `heroic' he writes:

`Of course everybody's actions signify, are meaningful. But what

distinguishes

social-historical individuals is that their acts transcend self-reference

-- by

far

and in a twofold way. Their acts engage social totalities, in the first place

by

virtue of the structures of hierarchy in which as chiefs they encompass

others.

This is logical as well as sociological; the chief represents the logical

class of

which the people are members (Dumont 1970).' (Sahlins 1991:63)

Up to a point I agree with this, the great chiefs of the large confederations did manage to encompass others, but this was not by virtue of the `structures of hierarchy' for Fijian hierarchy was never simply that, it never became `a vertical hierarchy' for it was always, even in Bau, in tension with the antithetical value of equality. It was force of arms and terror that allowed the various Sau (war chiefs) to usurp the Tui (ritual chiefs) in the first place and it was terror and force of arms that allowed them to maintain and consolidate their position. Certainly, had their rise to power not been interrupted by European imperialism, they might have managed over time to achieve an instituted vertical hierarchy that, at least within their own countries, not only effectively contained notions of equality across persons, and clans, but even rendered Fijian social organisation as `caste-like'. That they had not nearly achieved this is evident not only in my own material, but in Hocart's remarks, quoted above, on what he regarded as a degenerate efflorescence of dualism, whereby ritual practices of competitive equality were extended into other activities.

This efflorescence of practices of competitive equality may, I suggest, be attributed to the chiefs' loss of their warrior forces. Freed from the terror that was inspired by cannibalism and endemic warfare, people in general -- including those who, as members of chiefly clans, were classified as chiefs and those who were chiefs of the various clans and vanua -- were able once again to assert the dual nature of their values, to show that balanced reciprocity and competitive equality are as salient, and as important, as tribute and hierarchy.

But if hierarchy is not and cannot be an encompassing value for Fijians, neither can equality achieve the ascendancy, for equal relations too always implicate their opposite value. Marriage is predicated on the equal relation between cross-cousins, but marriage brings the household into being and with it the hierarchy of husband and wife, the authority of the first-born, and the seniority of siblings. The logic of Fijian social relations, of the relation between land and sea, husband and wife, brother and sister, cross-cousins, mother's brother and sister's children, commoner and chief, is always a twofold logic where hierarchy and equality are in tension with one another and dependent on one another for their very continuity. The rituals of chiefship are explicitly understood to promote prosperity, but they do so by virtue of projecting onto the collectivity -- the vanua (country) -- an image of the hierarchical household; this image implies the necessity for its own transformation because marriage is not possible within but only across households; in other words one has always to posit the existence of at least two households `facing each other'. So Fijian chiefship has to be dual, has to be made up of land and sea, of the executive powers of the land chief and the ritual precedence of the paramount; only thus can it project an image of the hierarchical household as existing alongside other households in the relation of balanced reciprocity and equality that makes marriage possible. In other words, the logic of Fijian chiefship is such that it can promote prosperity only if it is dual.(34)

If balanced reciprocity and equality are denied, then powerful war chiefs can `bite' -- as they evidently did during the late 18th and 19th centuries. They ceased merely to preside over the redistribution of feasts and began to extract them, they exploited the rights of the vasu, they promoted not general prosperity but sought to augment the power of their own house and clan, but even so they could not eradicate equality and balanced reciprocity, for these are enshrined in the very same ritual practices that constitute hierarchy: veiqaravi, which denotes `attendance on chiefs' means literally `facing each other' or `attendance on each other'. Hocart's informant was undoubtedly right; `in Fiji all things go in pairs, or the sharks will bite'.

CONCLUSION

Dumont's representation of the argument between himself and Hegel asserts that he is concerned with `structure' while Hegel is concerned with `dialectic'. However, Dumont does not address the implicit suggestion that while Hegel could be said to be concerned with the analysis of the nature of the categories of mind as a function of `historical shifts, Dumont is only implicitly concerned with mind as a function of `ideology'. Hegel's Phenomenology contains an implicit notion of progress in respect of the `historical development' of categories of mind, and this is surely disputable; nevertheless he was just as surely right to emphasise history and to insist that mind constitutes its categories and is constituted by them. In this perspective, transcendance is given by Hegel's notion of mind as the totality that is materially manifest in its products, even while this very notion cannot be posited in the absence of an antithesis between mind and matter.(35)

Hegel's ideas remain useful precisely in so far as he attempted to come to grips with the subject/object relation between persons and their historically constituted notions about the world they inhabit; by contrast Dumont avoids this challenge by implicitly locating categories that are the product of mind in some abstract space between persons. In so doing, he makes `ideology' the source of the categories, but `an ideology' only comes into existence as the artefact of sociological analysis and as such it cannot be assumed to allow transparent access to the workings of mind.

My point here is that that mind can be located only in the embodied cognitive processes of particular persons whose cognitive constitution of meaning is mediated by their relations with one another; thus meaning is never received `readymade' (for cognitive processes are inherently dynamic) but neither can meaning be made in isolation. Rather the categorical products of mind have always to be constituted anew by particular persons and this process is always informed by the meanings already made by those particular others with whom any given person interacts. So meaning is inevitably historically constituted and inevitably transformed. This suggests that Dumont's `ideology' as a system of hierarchically ranked values has little explanatory value, for it implies that meaning is received; indeed he takes ideology to be immanent in language and language itself to be transparent, to declare its own meaning and thus implicitly to be a-historical: `It is obvious that there is a basic ideology, a kind of germinal ideology tied to common language and hence to the linguistic group or the global society' (1980:343).(36)

But when we focus on the person in relation to other persons, it becomes clear that any given person is the locus of the relations in which he or she engages with others, and that in the course of this engagement the nature of any given relationship is itself cognitively constituted by each of the persons involved.

Any Fijian person is the locus of relations which are mutually constituted as either hierarchical or equal; however, given their different histories as particular persons, each one has somewhat different ideas about the nature of those hierarchical or equal relationships, and any given person's engagement in such relationships begins at birth. For the Fijian child the very process of learning kinship' constitutes relations with non-marriageable kin as hierarchical and with marriageable kin as equal. Further, this process does not implicate an axiomatic distinction between power and status, for material power is inherent in the process in and through which any given child learns that this person's status is manifest in command over him or her and that person's status in a mutual, competitive equality. Neither is there any point at which one can say that, for any given Fijian person, hierarchy acquires a greater value than equality -- for, on an everyday basis, one may even say from moment to moment, the person is engaged in constituting the one and the other as equally crucial to the nature of existence. Further, given that it is through inter-subjectivity that the notion of the self as subject is constituted, it becomes apparent that both hierarchy and equality will be implicated in Fijian notions of the self and personhood. It is precisely this antithesis that makes it possible for a person to be yalo qaqa (of determined mind, courageous) and so respond to a challenge that comes from one who is far superior in status and power; thus Biu, in the story with which I began, is able as a young man to rise to the challenge from the then paramount NaRai and, over time, to prove himself worthy of the paramount chiefship, even though his initial structural position would seem to disqualify him from doing so.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This paper is based on one presented to the International Conference on Leadership in the Pacific in honour of Sir Raymond Firth, December 1991. It was rewritten for publication in 1992/93 during my tenure, as Research Fellow in the Politics of Tradition in the Pacific, funded by Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia and by the Australian Research Council.

NOTES

(1.) See Barnes, de Coppet & Parkin eds. (1985) for a debate on this issue. Dumont's thesis has also informed analyses of political hierarchy outside India - see e.g. Sahlins (1985 & 1991) on Fiji and Valeri (1985) on Hawaii; other scholars of Austronesia have argued against it (see e.g. Mosko & Jolly, forthcoming) but, so far as I know, none have taken the pro-Hegelian stance that I argue in this paper.

(2.) So, for example, the ritualized drinking of yaqona (kava) and of alcohol refer to the antithesis between hierarchical and equal relations, between tribute and balanced reciprocity (Toren, in press b). Here the contrast suggests that these equal relations are not Fijian' - a sleight of hand that is evident too in the contrast drawn between 'the gift' and 'the commodity' (Toren, 1989) - and which is possible because neither alcohol drinking nor commodity exchange can take on the form of chiefly ritual.

(3.) Cf. Jolly (forthcoming) who, in her comparison of hierarchy in Vanuatu and Fiji, remarks that `Hierarchy is a pervasive feature of both symbolic systems and of socio-political relations, but there is no overarching principle which establishes the hierarchical ordering of all elements in any social `whole'.' My own position is rather different, for I am arguing here that, at least for Fijians, hierarchy and equality are always and inevitably posited together and counterposed such that the existence of each is dependent on that of its opposite, and neither hierarchy nor equality can become an encompassing value.

(4.) Fieldwork from June 1981 to March 1983 was financed by an award from the Social Science Research Council and from May - September 1990 by a Brief Award from Brunel University. In 1981-83 the population of Sawaieke vanua (country) was about 1400 and of the village, 260; by 1990 the population of the vanua had risen to 1700-1800 and the population of the village to about 290. About half Fiji's population (approximately 750,000 people) are of Indian descent; there is no Indian community on Gau.

(5.) Veitau is also used to denote friendly competition as in veitau cici, a foot race; cf. veiqati which denotes a more jealous rivalry.

(6.) In the country (vanua) of Sawaieke, chiefs are usually no richer and no poorer than commoners and this is so even if we use `chiefs' in its narrowest sense to refer only to those men who are chiefs of yavusa (na malo lit. `the cloths') -- a yavusa being a group of clans connected by affinal and ritual-cum-political ties; in pre-colonial days the yavusa was co-terminous with the village.

(7.) In previous works I have translated yavusa as 'clan' and mataqali as `lineage'; here the latter term is translated as 'clan' while yavusa, derived from yavu (house foundation), denotes a group of related `houses'. In part I agree with Shelley Sayes' thesis that yavusa are not so much `descent groups' as `a group of mataqali who have remained together in the same locality ... kinship through intermarriage often might have been their only ties' (Sayes 1983:87). However, in Fiji marriage is the foundation for the constitution of kinship, just as kinship (i.e. the relation between brother and sister) creates the possibility of marriage (i.e. between the respective children of the brother and sister, or their children's children, who are affines). In other words, affinal ties are explicitly encompassed by kinship.

(8.) I was told many times in Sawaieke that a person with whom one is veitauvu was `just the same as an owner of the village' and that his or her every want would not only be attended to at once, but even anticipated; however, when people spoke of visiting places where they were tauvu, they always emphasised how important they were to be recognised as such because of the aggressive, if welcoming, attention this recognition entails.

(9.) Enquiries into land holdings began in the late 19th century but those that were ultimately recognised were established by the Lands Commissions of 1912 onwards. I am grateful to the present Takalaigau, Ratu Marika Uluinadawa, who gave me access to his personal copy of the records for Gau, which are also held in the I Taba ni Veitarogi Vanua in Suva.

(10.) To avoid the confusion produced by too many unfamiliar names, I have at times paraphrased the text.

(11.) This was Ratu Marika Lewanavanua, then the Buli for Gau. This office was created by the British administration; in any given area, the Buli was usually selected from the chiefly clan.

(12.) The name of Biu's first son, Seruqaraivalu, means Comb Warrior' or, more literally `Comb facing war' and the name of Seruqaraivalu's son, Vukicivoda, means Revolted against Voda'; these names are significant because Seruqaraivalu as one whose father gained status through his warlike prowess was the first holder of the title Takalaigau; the name of his son refers to Biu's revolt against the chief of his own yavusa, Tui Voda. Till today, children may be named after an important event in the lives of their parents or grandparents.

(13.) In the I tukutuku raraba ni vanua ko Sawaieke Biu's name is also sometimes given as Bui, but I take this to be a typing error since Bui means `grandmother' and Biu meaning `rejected' is consistent with the story of his dismissal by his mother's people.

(14.) As Na Sau, the paramount, NaRai would initially be `sea', as would Biu who `went to stay in his village Nakobuna, in his clan Waivolita'. The Nakobuna chief `listened to' (vakarorogo vua i.e. owed allegiance to) Tui Voda - then and today the chief of fisher-people clans - whose founding ancestor is recorded as having come from Kaba, Tailevu. The story shows that the Nakobuna people were navigators to the Sau - war chief - NaRai (also known as Na Raitena); Nakobuna village still existed in 1916, though not today. NaRai's giving of the chiefship to Biu transforms him into `land' and makes Biu take on the association with `sea' that belongs to the paramount.

(15.) A similar point is made by Deryck Scarr (1976) for Bau and by Shelley Sayes (1983: xxviii, 36, 57ff, 65, 74, 87) in her history of the Cakaudrove chiefship; see also Nicholas Thomas (1986).

(16.) Rokotaloko, the founding ancestor of the Na Raitena people, is sometimes referred to as the owner of Na Ivinivini, a large mound which stands on the outskirts of Sawaieke village - the foundation of a bure kalou, god house, `in the time of the devils'(e na gauna vakatevoro). For an analysis of the story of Radikedike, a.k.a. Rokotaloko, see Toren (in press c). Rokotaloko is variously said to have come from Vuya or from Dama, in Bua, Vanua Levu; Radikedike is said to have come from Dama.

(17.) The story makes it appear that NaRai as Sau may have taken precedence over Tui Voda, but this may be an artifact of the account's being given by a chief whose ideas of the ritual duties of the two yavusa are those of 1916, rather than of an earlier era.

(18.) This was Orisi Qaraiwalu, of Naocomatana; the paramount Ratu Tomasi asserts that Naocomatana is a subdivision of Naboginibola clan, rather than a clan in its own right. The speaker, Orisi Qaraiwalu was at the time turaga ni koro -- `village chief', a position created by the colonial administration. The post is not a high-status one and today is often held by a relatively young man in his 30s or 40s, who is elected by his fellow villagers.

(19.) At one point, Ratu Tomasi says that Veidre (whom he had first stated to be his vu or founding ancestor was himself installed as Takalaigau, but since other evidence suggests that Veidre was a land chief (not a member of the chiefly clan) this seems unlikely to have been the case.

(20.) The Naboginibola chief also leaves another chiefly clan, Valebalavu, out of his account. This suggests he saw Valebalavu as a threat and that another clan, Naocomatana, which his account implicitly exalts, were his allies.

(21.) His name was Akariva Beraateri.

(22.) His name was Vilikesa Kalou.

(23.) Chiefs may be metaphorically identified with na vesi or na waqa vakaturaga -- both terms for the chiefly canoe.

(24.) This is clearly the case for the Naboginibola chief who tells the story of Biu; in fact, Biu's father, Mualevu turns out to be the only vu who is said to have come from Gau; but if we accept the story of Biu, then Mualevu's own origins have to be those accorded to the Waivolita people in Nakobuna - i.e. his vu is from Kaba in Tailevu.

(25.) In calculating the genealogies, I have allowed for a use of the term `grandfather' to refer to anyone who is senior in the line of FF or FM.

(26.) See Capell (1973: 213). By the early 1800s Bau had achieved ascendancy throughout much of Central and Eastern Fiji (Scarr, 1976).

(27.) Cf Thomas (forthcoming) who argues that `[e]ncompassment is ... not a structural condition - a one to one identification between king and society -- but an effect of efficacy that is open to being undermined or challenged.'

(28.) Thus, while all children take `mother' to be below `father' within the household, those who are at an age where they have begun to have an enlightened understanding of status distinctions, simultaneously take husbands and wives to be one another's peers within that collectivity at large (Toren 1990:202-205). Yet older children, those who have constituted the `mature' concept of hierarchy as arising out of an interaction between gender, rank and seniority, represent women as an undifferentiated group as having a lower status than married men; however, while for boys women may generally be said to be `lower' even than young (i.e. unmarried) men, for girls married women have a status that is higher or equal to that of young men.

(29.) Persons who relate to one another as cross-cousins, or as veitabani or veitauvu are not explicitly said to be able to `take without asking' from their opposite numbers, but I was told of many instances of such behaviour, especially between cross-cousins. When the telling was a complaint and I asked why my informant had made no protest, he or she would routinely say that it would not be right to protest `because we are cross-cousins' (or veitabani or veitauvu) (cf Hocart 1952: 41-46).

(30.) The Sister's child is cross-cousin to Mother's Brother's children, and while today marriage is possible between immediate cross-cousins it used not to be so; thus with respect to Mother's Brother's children, the Sister's children were neither in an incest category nor in a marriage category, neither within the same household nor fully outside it; they mediated between marriageable and non-marriageable kin and so their rights as vasu reference the relation between Brother and Sister in the ascending generation and that between cross-cousins in ego's generation.

(31.) Thus Sahlins (1976:28) notes that: Four is the Lauan numerical concept of a totality'; cf. Hocart (1952:29).

(32.) Given that Narai was `leader of the Sawaieke people' at the time of the story of Biu, he would himself have been `sea', as were the Nakobuna people who were his navigators; other clans, such as Navure, would have been classified as `land' in relation to the Sawaieke clan as `sea'. But the sea/land distinction is inherently transformable, so when Biu comes on the scene as the `stranger from over the sea' he is `sea' and the indigenous chief NaRai becomes `land' by virtue of the outcome of their subsequent encounter.

(33.) Attendance on a god or a chief is explicitly said to empower them; note that everyone has ancestors to call on and that witchcraft consists in the solitary offering of libations of yaqona to one's own or someone else's ancestors, in order at once to empower them and to direct this power to one's own selfish ends.

(34.) The apparent success of parliamentary democracy in Fiji and the inevitability of the coups of 1987 can be explained by virtue of this same logic. Democracy worked well enough when it was seen to be under the aegis of Fijian chiefs, but the egalitarian ethic could not be allowed to become an encompassing form -- as it would be if chiefs can no longer be seen to take precedence in government.

(35.) Given that cognitive processes are inevitably micro-historical and dynamic and that each one of us manifests the biology of cognition as historically located subjects, this antithesis between mind and matter can be collapsed (see Toren 1993).

(36.) This passage from Dumont is a slippery one; implicitly it refers to Saussure's distinction between langue and parole with langage as the product of their interaction. I follow Volosinov (1986 [19291) in rejecting the formalism of Saussurean theory and its anti-phenomenological and anti-materialist stance.

REFERENCES

BARNES, R.H., Daniel de Coppet & R.J. Parkin eds) 1985. Contexts and Levels. Anthropological essays on hierarchy, JASO Occasional Papers No. 4, Oxford 1985.

CAPELL, A. 1973 [19411 A New Fijian Dictionary. Suva: Government Printer.

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