The Method of Hope: Anthropology, Philosophy, and Fijian Knowledge, by Hirokazu Miyazaki, is an ambitious and interesting attempt to recast questions about the construction of communal identity among the Fijian residents of the relocated community of Suvavou by examining rhetorical strategies for renewing “hope.” Residents of Suvavou once occupied the central land in what is now Fiji’s capital, Suva, but were relocated to a less desirable area in the late 19th century when a high chief from a neighboring area sold their land to an Australian company. Since that time, Suvavou residents have presented numerous unsuccessful claims for compensation. Miyazaki questions how Suvavou people maintain hope in the face of consistent disappointment. He draws on Ernst Bloch, Richard Rorty, Walter Benjamin, and Marilyn Strathern to suggest that anthropologists and Fijians alike develop an “aesthetic” of knowledge that involves drawing on a particular set of forms in a variety of contexts to establish hope of future fulfillment.

In the course of presenting a rich and varied ethnography of Suvavou, Miyazaki examines such diverse materials as land claims, ritual presentations of ceremonial valuables, church services, and public speeches by the Fijian prime minister to argue that all involve a similar aesthetic or structure, defining Suvavou identity in such a way as to maintain hope. Miyazaki first presents the history of the Suvavou residents’ thwarted efforts to claim compensation for their land, asserting that what is at stake here is not just money but also a powerful desire to affirm that the residents are efficacious actors in modern Fiji. For Fijians, the truth (dina) should bring efficacy (mana) and vice versa. Thus, persistent failure to get the government to accept the truth of their claims has led Suvavou residents to question the very core of their identity as effective agents in modern Fiji. Miyazaki proceeds to examine rival constructions of community, arguing that British colonizers imposed the distinctly European view that parts should form a coherent whole, in contrast to the typical Melanesian view that the whole must divide into constituent parts. Specifically, the government claims that the three clans of the village constitute a whole and that all three should share rent money for their land, whereas some of the constituent clans believe that the clans are of independent origin so the lion’s share of the rent money belongs to just one clan.

Miyazaki then gets into the core of his argument, showing that the villagers have developed a style of presenting claims through posing a series of questions. He traces this strategy to a pervasive aesthetic that dominates such diverse genres as traditional presentations of wealth and Seventh Day Adventist and Methodist church services. All of these speech events have a reciprocal structure in which the two sides “serve” each other, and, at the same time, the human community “serves” God and ancestral spirits; God and spirits then reciprocate by “serving” the human community through bestowing mana, or efficacy. In all of these genres, speakers first put their own agency “in abeyance” by denigrating themselves and their presentations and then by attributing ultimate efficacy to some outside agent, usually God. By drawing on this aesthetic of reciprocal exchange, Suvavou residents hope to place the government in the desired reciprocal role and thus to elicit bestowal of the hoped-for “service” or efficacy on the community in return.

Miyazaki’s attempt to interpret familiar material about constructing identity in a postcolonial environment through a new lens is illuminating and thought provoking, if a bit forced at points. I did not think that it was unusual that Suvavou residents had retained “hope” for restitution of their land given the potentially large amount of money at stake and the success of other similarly old land claims in Fiji and other areas. Likewise, the various debates about the structure of the village seemed to have less to do with differences in Melanesian and European aesthetics than with strategic attempts by various groups to carve out for themselves a larger piece of the rent pie. I sometimes found that the attempts to link Suvavou debates to anthropological ones got in the way of a larger understanding how marginalized people in postcolonial environments work within existing constraints to form an effective identity. Overall, however, the rich ethnography and new perspective make this a valuable addition to the literature on Fiji.
[maps, photographs, note on Fijian orthography, references, index.]