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Viti , the Soil from Eden: On Historical Praxis as a Mode of Connecting in Kadavu
Author(s) -
Dickhardt Michael
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
oceania
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.356
H-Index - 25
eISSN - 1834-4461
pISSN - 0029-8077
DOI - 10.1002/j.1834-4461.2005.tb02895.x
Subject(s) - praxis , interpretation (philosophy) , christianity , identity (music) , sociology , epistemology , ethnic group , character (mathematics) , history , aesthetics , anthropology , philosophy , linguistics , archaeology , geometry , mathematics
Looking at Fijian Methodism and its role in discourses on identity in Fiji leads to the question of the relationship between Christianity and the vanua , the complex notion of land so crucial for ethnic Fijians' traditionalistic identity constructions. How is it possible to retain important dimensions of the vanua within a Christian worldview? An attempt to understand this relationship using the example of a Fijian meke makes clear that specific ways of constructing the past are crucial here. A concept of history as a symbolic form renders these ways of constructing the past understandable as historical — and it is exactly this historical character which opens the possibility of establishing a relationship to the Christian God while retaining essential dimensions of the vanua , a possibility which can provide one experiential background for the plausibility of an ethnic interpretation of Christianity.