From Sugar Cane to ‘Swords’: Hope and the Extensibility of the Gift in Fiji

Abstract

Hope has recently emerged as an important subject of inquiry in anthropology and social theory. This article examines the hope entailed in efforts to extend aspects of gift‐giving to various other social and theoretical projects. I identify and contrast two different kinds of hope found in these efforts, which I will call ‘hope in an end’ and ‘hope in the means’. The discussion focuses on two extensions of indigenous Fijian gift‐giving: John D. Kelly and Martha Kaplan's recent analysis of Indo‐Fijian sugar cane farmers’‘gift’ of cane to an indigenous Fijian high chief in 1944; and the Fiji government Ministry of Tourism's efforts in the mid‐1990s to train indigenous Fijian souvenir traders in a properly ‘Fijian’ manner of engagement with tourists. With this contrast, I argue that ‘hope in an end’ occludes ‘hope in the means’.

Gifting, Dam(n)ing and the Ambiguation of Development in Malaysian Borneo

“…Taking these seriously as frames of action and meaning demands an open-ended commitment to allowing emergent ethnographic phenomena to 'dictate the terms of their own analysis' (Henare et al 2007: 4) rather than turning them into objects of a politicizing gaze. Such a move, I suggest, can help push the anthropology of development 'beyond critique' by holding open a space for ambiguity, hope (Miyazaki 2004), faith (Bornstein 2005), desire (High 2014) and possibility 13 -not only as thematic issues but also as potential analytic devices. At the same time, it may inspire anthropologists of development to reach past questions of governmentality, citizenship and political theory towards more concerted dialogues with other anthropological subfields and theories -a shift already occurring in the growing literature on .…”

“…In these moments, the non-extensibility of the trope of the gift becomes painfully evident (cf. Miyazaki 2005), as does the very real power of the present government. Faced with these and similar frustrations, some Bidayuhs have turned to other frames of meaning and morality, chief among them Christianity -arguably the most important addition to Bidayuh life in the last half-century.…”

“…If my acquaintances have incorporated themselves into the gifting framework of state-led development, they have also been 'extending' (Miyazaki 2005) their own myths and notions of gifting to their relations with the government. Many Bidayuhs see the Malaysian state as having stepped into the shoes of the 'British' [English] -a term that encompasses both the Brooke Raj and the Crown -thereby acquiring its responsibilities to its subjects.…”

Violence, non‐violence, and blood donation in India

“…The micro‐event of the blood donation camp is both expressive and constitutive of the soldier's role more generally – his bloodshed ensures the continuity of the nation. Blood donation, in these contexts, embodies the ‘extensibility’ (Miyazaki 2005) of blood sacrifice for the nation. Different orders of blood‐shedding – the soldier's blood sacrifice and the citizen's blood donation – are, in a sense, convertible into one another.…”

The chronopolitics of exile: Hope, heterotemporality and NGO economics along the Thai–Burma border

“…The ''temporality of no hope'' (Miyazaki, 2005) along the Thai-Burma border is widespread. This lack of hope is in part mediated by the affective relations between NGO practitioners and Burmese whose relations are increasingly unpredictable.…”