Doing Ethnographic Research in the Fiji Islands: Research Method and Research Ethics Issues

Abstract

The aim of this article is to consider research method and research ethics issues in the unique location of the Fiji Islands. After arguing that Eurocentric, Anglo-American ethics clearance processes, embedded into Global North Universities, are culturally inappropriate, in the Fiji setting, I go on to imagine alternative ethics clearance questions that pick up on and reflect adequately Fiji’s social and economic context. I discuss and explore why traversing relationships, relationships that traverse time and space through giving, receiving, obligation, reimbursement, and forgiveness, often emerge in the Fiji context, and how they can be a local, social equilibrium that benefits both parties. My own research on Fiji soccer history is used to provide illustrations and anecdotes throughout the article.

Introduction

The Nadi Club is a Fiji Indian–controlled, membership-based social club located in the center of Nadi City. Anyone and everyone wanting to network, socialize, or be seen in Nadi will gravitate here (much like the Lautoka Club in Lautoka or the Nausori Club in Nausori). It has strong links with Nadi Soccer Association and its club president Navaneeda K. Gounder was a capable Nadi player back in the 1980s and was still involved with Nadi Soccer management in 2013 to 2015. The ex-Nadi, Lautoka and Fiji star central midfielder, Henry Dyer, had unfortunately incurred the Nadi Club’s wrath by drinking liquor bought from outside on club premises and was banned. He tried every trick in the book and begged Gounder to assist him in achieving his desired goal of readmittance. It was a sad case that two old Nadi teammates had fallen out and reached an impasse over a somewhat petty matter and that club members and guests could not socialize with Dyer at the club. He was cast as a folk devil (Ellis, 1987, p. 199) within a moral panic (Cohen, 1980) as he had served jail time in Fiji during 1987, the year of the first two military coups, and had been linked to jewelry shop robberies in Nadi and Lautoka.

Indigenous Fijian men were seen by some Fiji Indians, since the coups, as potentially violent and criminally minded as the gangs had threatened Fiji Indian homes and businesses after both the 1987 and 2000 coups (Trnka, 2005, 2008). This article has a broadly Marxist (Althusser, 1965/2005; Mao, 1971; Mills, 1959; Taylor et al., 1973) and cultural criminological perspective (DeKeseredy Walter, 2011, pp. 51–55; Ferrell et al., 2008; Lilly et al., 2007; O’Brien, 2005; Presdee, 2000), rooted in the Fijian cultural context, which is characterized by a strong association between wealth and race/ethnicity and where, within workplaces, hierarchical and unjust pay scales create vastly different levels of social status and spending power. The mixed-race Dyer (of Indigenous Fijian and White British descent) is forever cast as Other and scapegoated in his home city where he once graced the soccer fields with skill, courage, and fortitude for both the Nadi Soccer Association district team in the national league and the now defunct Airport Soccer Club. His mixed-race heritage, where he has some White British ancestry, makes him hard to categorize and breeds silent resentment in a postcolonial setting where the White Europeans and then the part Europeans remain unarguably at the top of social hierarchies. His White heritage is arguably seen as a threat as it generates confusion, among Fiji Indians, about where he stands within Fiji’s social hierarchies and his quiet self-confidence can be wrongly interpreted as arrogance. Nonetheless, Dyer is now headman at Nakavu Village, which shows clearly the separation of the village system, and its ideologies and hierarchies, from the mainstream “town” system (James, Tuidraki, Tuidraki, et al., 2022). The village system judges you by how it perceives you within the village context, and only Indigenous people may live in Indigenous villages.

In this article, I look at qualitative research method and research ethics issues in a Global South context of rigid social hierarchies, gross income inequalities, and ethnic group identifications that are all-consuming and all-defining, and which seem to trap the community from moving on and healing past tensions, almost contrary to the will of any one or more individuals. In protest against Eurocentric (Kovach, 2015, p. 46), Anglo-American ethical clearance processes, embedded in Global North Universities, I present, in the section “Alterative Ethics Application Questions,” new ethics approval questions that I believe are more relevant and culturally sensitive for the Fiji setting.

Two main issues must be introduced at this point before going further. The history and sociology of the country centers on two key dynamics—the relationship between the Indigenous Fijians and Fiji Indians (also called Indo-Fijians); and the relationship between Western Fiji, with its tourist industry centered on Nadi and the sugarcane belt, and the business and governmental center of Suva in the southeast (Norton, 1977, p. 4). Another key ingredient is understanding the basic essentials of the Indigenous Fijian village, with its headman and assistant headman, and its relation to the broader village system, whereby each district has a Paramount Chief, to whom the various village headmen are accountable. Only Indigenous people can live in the village and it aims to keep intact traditional village hierarchies and structures, whereas, at least for villages close to the towns, it is, or at least feels to be, besieged by the profit orientation of town-space and (tourist) resort-space (James, Tuidraki, Tuidraki, et al., 2022b).

“All that is solid melts into air while all that is holy is profaned” (Marx & Engels, 1972/1848, p.87) In the Manifesto of the Communist Party, Marx and Engels (1848/1972) describe well the threat to customary authority and ancient lifestyles of the rule of the industrial bourgeoisie under capitalism, as whole continents are rebuilt in their image. We see this in the tourist city of Nadi, in Western Fiji, and in the resorts around Sigatoka, how commodification of the sun, sand, and surf, as well as an essentialized version of Fijianness (minus any Indian presence) are continually sold/resold to tourists. In fact, the resorts, with their tourists from Australia, New Zealand, and East Asia, operate at a level of capitalist economy many times higher than the surrounding countryside.

The role of the Fiji Indians, who were brought by the British to work on the sugarcane plantations and who arrived between 1879 and 1916 (Ali, 1980, p. 14; Gillion, 1977, p. 1; Gravelle, 1979/2000, p. 150; Lal, 1993, p. 189; Luker, 2005, pp. 360, 367; Singh, n.d., p. 23), is very important because they dominate the Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) sector, as well as play major roles within academia, the trade unions, the media, and the school system (James & Nadan, 2021, p. 24). The original 60,000 girmitiya (indentured laborers) were joined, early on in the twentieth century, by some Gujarati and Punjabi free settlers, with the Gujarati being installed as the unofficial small shopkeeper class (Ali, 1980, p. 26; Gillion, 1977, pp. 114–117). In the post-War period, emigration to the West has been a key lure for the Fiji Indians (James & Nadan, 2021), especially since the first two military coups of 1987, and their percentage has declined from 51% in 1966 to 37.5% in 2007 (Field, 2009). Hence, similar to research in Singapore and Malaysia, the nation’s overriding layer of government systems and common culture and history must be understood, as must the Indigenous Fijian and Fiji Indian cultures.

Above all, and this might surprise some readers, it is important for the researcher to sincerely believe, and to communicate that belief, and not only with regard to their research project, that life and events in Fiji are important and worthy of telling. While London and New York believe that they are at the center of the universe (Tuhiwai Smith, 1999/2021, pp. 60, 63), Fiji agrees with them—the mentality that “we are a remote outpost” is quite clear and has various ramifications. Fiji citizens put in major efforts to create their own meaning internally within the country as there is the perception that the outside world does not care about Fiji issues. (This internal meaning-creation does not just refer to the village system, but to every aspect of social life.). An example is the deep reverence and love displayed for Fiji soccer history, its great teams and past champions, and the knowledge and passion displayed by many a middle-aged Indian taxi-driver in the sugarcane belts of Western Fiji (Viti Levu) and Vanua Levu, in particular. This knowledge and passion extends to the Fiji Indian diaspora resident in Western nations (James & Nadan, 2021) who often return to Fiji for holidays and maintain an active interest in Fiji soccer.

This article is structured as follows: the section “Application of Althusserian Historical Materialism Theory” introduces Althusserian historical materialism theory; the section “Research Method in and for the Fiji Islands” discusses research method in and for the Fiji Islands; the section “Alterative Ethics Application Questions” presents and explores alternative ethics approval questions; while the section “Conclusion” concludes the article.

Application of Althusserian Historical Materialism Theory

In For Marx, Louis Althusser (1965/2005) explains that the key to reading Karl Marx’s early works, before the epistemological break, is to look at the work the young Marx had to do to free himself from the ideologies of the time and place of his upbringing, that of German Idealism, as he grew up in Germany. He had to search for real events, real history. Marx found it in the politics of France, whereas Engels found it in the economics of England. Real history then included class struggle, developed capitalism following its own laws, the extraction of surplus value, and an organized working class. Marx had to take back the real history that had been “stolen” from him due to ideological mystification. In addition, even Germany, then historically backward, had a real history, which hard work and study had to reveal after the layers of ideological mystification had been removed. Marx had to return to the pre-Hegelian times and rebuild.

In line with Althusserian Marxism and historical materialism, should we see the village as an outdated form, which gives too much power to the superstructure and which hinders economic development? Fiji’s village superstructure matches and constrains the level of Fiji’s lack of development, so that, for Althusserian Marxism (Althusser, 1965/2005, pp. 70–86), the direction of “progress” can be seen in the people’s daily fears, that is, the destruction of the village system, mass proletarianization, and the treatment of all Fiji citizens the same (and the Fiji first government made moves in this direction when it declared that every Fiji citizen could be called a Fijian). Where do we look to find real objects, real history, shorn from ideology? In part, we must return to look at individual practices. For example, some tourist books say not to bring alcohol into the village, but, when I visited Henry Dyer in Nakavu Village, on weekday afternoons, he expected me to bring four or six Fiji Gold longneck bottles, wrapped up in newspaper, from the Indian-owned shop on the Queen’s Road. ¹ This story shows the difference between politically correct views and what a researcher might experience in reality on-the-ground. The key point was not to be showy in one’s drinking, but to keep it quiet, discreet, camouflaged, and careful. I always saw the beer as a tribute or a tax payable for Dyer’s help in the research project and simply for being on Indigenous land, and I never objected to it. After these four or six bottles were consumed, sometimes with the help of Dyer’s eldest son, we would usually go into Nadi city center.

When we left the village together, Dyer would often ask the Indian women staffing the shop to mind his traditional Fijian sulu for him until he got back. ² This banter was repeated many times, but the women always refused to keep his sulu. This shows both sides patrolling, but in Dyer’s case also parodying, the boundary between village and town. The hegemony of each realm contests that of the other. Both parties accepted that the sulu did not “belong” in town-space nightlife, but Dyer’s joking manner reflected a challenge to Fiji Indian hegemony by exposing the women’s reluctance to embrace his sulu by storing it safely somewhere inside the shop. The gender aspects should be read as subordinated to the racial/ethnic/class elements here. The joking banter and Dyer’s never getting angry, but accepting the women’s decision gracefully, shows that a reading of this situation that sees Dyer in misogynistic light would not be entirely fair, given the structural inequalities in Fiji based on race and class. Fiji Indian men may have their own different reading, seeing it as a bullying of “their” women.

Unemployment is a concept that has no place in village system logic. A villager without a full-time job in the money economy would typically say that he is a subsistence farmer rather than unemployed. The village logic attacks the cultural “town” superstructure that functions alongside the economic base of the towns as Fiji Indians, Chinese, and Europeans are perceived to be too money-minded and too interested in capital accumulation. The superstructure of the towns is organized around SME-life, and a high value is placed on success in education and in business (Prasad, 2005, pp. 110–111; Sugden, 2017, p. 119). This is the key ingredient in the Fiji Indian masculinity stakes. By contrast, masculinity for villagers is based around ability to perform traditional cultural obligations and strengthen connections between villages. Interestingly, village logic does not obviously attack the ideologies of the tourist resorts as they are staffed largely by Indigenous Fijians, at least below managerial levels and outside finance/HRM/marketing. The resort myths are largely upheld, or kept intact. The entire village is ideological, from the viewpoint of the towns, where the non-Indigenous people live and work. To extreme prodevelopment people, the Indigenous Fijians cannot “progress” unless they recognize and accept their own unemployed status as real, rather than ideological, but this is a very harsh and unsympathetic position. My conclusion is that the Indigenous people prefer to accept the current level of capitalist development as optimal, if further development would threaten the village system. They accept grants, donations, and aid, but not capitalist development beyond a certain point. Should the village system end, the newly proletarianized individuals and community would be rootless and disenfranchised, with many potential adverse consequences.

Michelle Dyer (2018) (no relation to Henry Dyer) looks at Indigenous women’s groups in the Solomon Islands and their protest campaigns against logging companies. Influenced by foreign aid and conservation NGOs, who bring cosmopolitanism in from the outside, they create a gendered cosmopolitan space in their discourse and practices. However, the women are still haunted by the cultural requirement to be a “good woman,” so as to retain property rights within the matrilineal system. When women’s groups opposed logging companies, using culturally specific concepts of the “good woman,” this was supported by their local community. By contrast, a woman using the theoretically genderless legal system to oppose the logging companies was subjected to marginalization locally—her actions had been a “step too far,” into uncharted and fear-inducing cosmopolitan territory. It seems that her “crimes” were to hire lawyers on her own and to act independently of her family group and male kin. This article shows the necessity for well-meaning Western governments and NGOs to be very wary of introducing Western hegemony by imposing discourses that make little sense or are too ambitious for the local setting. Any cosmopolitan initiatives that are not “grounded” in local cultural traditions and values may face a low chance of success and secure more ardent opposition than “on-the-ground” support. This message is also highly relevant for the culturally similar Fiji setting explored here. Relating to people on-the-ground, through long-term commitments to research participants and their families, will be the best way to conduct culturally appropriate research respected by the villagers.

Research Method in and for the Fiji Islands

Fiji is wrapped up in a region and a world (Connell, 2000, pp. 41–42, 54; Hirst & Thompson, 1996; Young, 2013, p. xli) of gross inequalities. This is the most important point to mention at this stage before we go on to look at research method and then research ethics. Fiji has a GDP per capita one tenth that of regional powerhouse Australia. As you travel southwest on the Queen’s Highway, you pass through the outerlying Nadi suburb of Martintar, with its burgeoning tourist industry and new nightclubs. The road curves to the left and you travel through and under broad leafy trees. On the left, and then on both sides, are some of the Indigenous Fijian villages of the Nadi area, all linked up and under the ceremonial leadership of the Paramount Chief of Nadi. A McDonald’s appears on the right and the road next to it leads down to the beach. McDonald’s in Fiji is relatively expensive, in purchasing-power terms, compared with local fast food, and caters more for the middle class and business community. However, as occurs elsewhere, the marketing strategy is to place advertisements, with huge and realistic food pictures, on bus stops at either side of the restaurant, both signs being the same distance away. One of the signs is opposite the service road leading to Nakavu Village. Children and adults alike see the sign on a daily basis as they exit the village and take the bus to school, work, or town. However, the sad thing is that these children are unlikely ever to be able to afford a meal there, or at least not when they are children. The temptation and disappointment must haunt the children, on a daily basis, as the uncaring corporation continues on relentlessly with its “global marketing strategy.” The children are tormented by what they can’t have. Yet they learn to ignore the signs and relegate them to the dark corners of the id. Very few residents of the Global North countries, except perhaps for immigrants from the Global South, will be able to read this story without a feeling of shock as it repudiates many of our assumptions about the goodness of the world. It is not part of our world or part of our conception of the world, as when Australian national soccer team players complained about frogs on the pitch and spectators in the trees during the Fiji-versus-Australia match held in Nadi in November 1988. Opening your eyes to this type of ingrained unfairness is what may well happen if you move to Fiji and/or visit for ethnographic research.

At other times, you may be sitting in a restaurant on a main road, such as BBQ Chicken in Lautoka (Fiji’s second-largest city, located on the northwest coast about 30 km northeast of Nadi), when a Fiji national rugby match starts up on the giant TV screens. You turn your head to look out through the large windows at the main thoroughfare, Vitogo Parade. You may see 10 or 20 young-to-middle-aged Indigenous men, and a truck or two, standing outside and gazing intently at the rugby match on the TV. It is a regular occurrence. Restaurant patrons and staff pay the men outside no attention. They mean no harm. They are just devotees who can’t afford a meal inside or a TV set. Fiji changes you (Chang, 2008, pp. 34, 38–39, 51–54), as you open your mind to the unfairness of the region. How does and should a researcher, armed, equipped, and burdened by the above scenarios, process such depressing knowledge? I will address this question later on. What can be said now is that research training, including reading research methods textbooks, will not have prepared the researcher well, or at all, for the daily realities of the Global South. An ethics approval will be close to useless or meaningless, and so I devise and present here (in the section “Alterative Ethics Application Questions”) a set of culturally relevant ethics approval questions for aspiring Fiji Islands ethnographers. But one final story is needed now.

I was with Dyer in a taxi heading west on the Queen’s Highway toward Nadi when Dyer pointed to a group of Fiji Indian men, in office attire and aged probably from 20s to 40s, occupying the stools and tables outside of Bounty pub/restaurant in Martintar. Indian masculinity emphasizes scholarly achievements and success in the business world (Prasad, 2005, pp. 110–111; Sugden, 2017, p. 119), so arguably this was a gendered performance of Fiji Indian masculinity on display to those driving past. Bounty is known as a place for the (White) European crowd, and its prices are expensive. Dyer remarked that these men should not show off their money and consumption in public in such a manner. This opened my eyes to a different worldview. In a Global North city today, few people would find such behavior offensive. In fact, whole economies and cultures are built around outdoor dining. But, in a country of extreme income-inequalities, I could see his point. First, we should be aware about how our public consumption can and may be seen by others and affect others in the Global South, and keep consumption a bit more hidden and inconspicuous. The story also reveals why a variety of domestic social equilibriums exist in Fiji, beyond the control of any one person: For example, the Fiji Indians control the SME sector, whereas the Indigenous people control the police and military (regarding the military, see Teaiwa, 2005); Fiji Indians control soccer (James & Nadan, 2021; Sugden, 2017, p. 121), whereas Indigenous Fijians control rugby; and Fiji Indians control mosque and temple, whereas Indigenous Fijians, by and large, control the churches. Each community is reasonably happy with its own sphere of endeavor and it puts a limit on envy and resentment. Those from outside, trained in a liberal-democratic culture, may protest against allegedly unfair hiring practices (and they would not be wrong), but the value socially of the maintenance of the equilibriums may be seen as worth the cost to individuals wanting to access certain spheres.

What happens in a country marked and marred by inequality and poverty? Daily cultural practices, in part, emerge and cater for the social inequality in the country in quite striking and practical ways to produce various social equilibriums that maintain a modicum of fairness and allow for face-saving. An obvious and easily understood example is how taxi-drivers returning from the countryside to their town-center base turn the meter off and accept passengers (up to a maximum of four) for a ride into town for a gold coin. This benevolent practice might save the passenger 15 Fiji dollars or more. Similarly, a cab could be shared from the Razak Road/Tavakubu Road intersection, in the Lautoka suburbs, to the city-center on weekday mornings for 70 cents per passenger (2014–2015 prices).

We have seen how exclusion and alienation work. But we also see communion and cooperation of a type rarely encountered today in Global North cities characterized by wealth and, as Marx and Engels (1848/1972, p. 86) perceptively wrote, “callous ‘cash payment’” or, as it is frequently quoted, the “cash nexus” of exchange-relations. Imagine a working-class or underclass pub in Fiji outside of paydays. How does it work to accommodate the lack of money and income? In the beginning, say around 6:00 p.m., people will start out with their own group of friends, based on age group, formed from school, college, workplace, rugby club, or village connections. As the assemblage (Bøhling, 2015) gets more jovial, and the younger people’s money runs out, they may gravitate toward the older people and start up banter. Often, someone will know others in another grouping. As is a Fiji custom, the younger ones might pour some of their longneck beer bottle contents into their short glasses and hand them over to an older guy to drink. This is a Fiji custom, mirrored on the kava ritual (James, Tuidraki, Ali Tanzil, et al., 2022, pp. 07–08; Presterudstuen, 2020, p. 103), and is hard to resist. To accept the drink means friendship and solidarity. (Note that draught beer is expensive or unobtainable in these pubs.) They then hope or expect that the older guys, who sometimes have better paying, regular jobs, will buy them beers when their money runs out. This practice not only creates moral debts, not always paid or payable due to the income differentials, and inability to meet the same pubgoers again, but people can learn and benefit from conversing with people of diverse age brackets. Such scenarios rarely happen in Global North cities where people either have their own sufficient money or they stay home. These relations may become regular and solidify and they then turn into what I term “traversing relationships,” and I will address these shortly. A possible definition of a traversing relationship might be as follows: A traversing relationship is a relationship that traverses time and space through giving, receiving, mutual obligation, reimbursement, and forgiveness. Hence, someone on a stable and reasonable income might have a regular taxi-driver and they negotiate each fare in advance, rather than the driver turning on the meter, and this is often in both parties’ best interests (or it wouldn’t continue). A person being regularly bought beer or given money should try to pay it back in some way, thus acknowledging the moral debt. However, the best of these relations will be characterized by warmness and easy rapport, rather than a transactional spirit.

A Fiji-based researcher might find that, in the Fiji climate of inequality and unfairness, major attempts should be made to attack the symptoms and remedy its causes, at the individual and institutional levels, including the questioning of institutional policies, such as abysmal wages or discriminatory hiring practices, which foster this situation (DeKeseredy Walter, 2011, pp. 90–91). A researcher may find going through her university’s Eurocentric, hyperrational, culturally insensitive ethics clearance process to have been no help at all, but more of a hindrance, due to its refusal to address crucial issues, in the Global South context, while majoring on minors.

To feed the hungry and help the poor (DeKeseredy Walter, 2011, pp. 83–97; Gaudry, 2015, pp. 243, 248, 256–258, 260; Kovach, 2015, p. 59), in conjunction with local and foreign friends and colleagues, becomes a vital part of a relevant ethics, and a researcher can’t escape this injunction, retreating to an imaginary, safe sphere where the “field” is not part of real social and economic relations (although this will, in part, depend upon one’s topic area). If one is researching business people or university people, the issues mentioned here may appear to be one-stage removed and less pressing, but the needs still exist out there in the broader society, and one can’t always justify the Western, arm’s-length approach. Remember that, if you come from Australia, or somewhere similar, you are 10 times richer than the average person you meet in Fiji, but only in material terms. It is wrong ethically to expect them to always pay their own way or for you not to speak up to challenge policies, such as abysmal hourly wages for gardeners or cleaners ( DeKeseredy Walter, 2011, pp. 90–91; Fraser & Jarldorn, 2015, p. 173; Strega, 2005, p. 208, 2015, p. 147), if you work at a local university and can attend senate meetings, where these things get debated (as I did once). Buy your research participants lunch, and then worry about the coffee afterward (!) or that can be bought to go alongside the lunch.

And this leads on naturally to what I term traversing relationships, for want of a better term, where one person usually has more of one resource than the other person (often money), whereas the second person has more of a different resource or resources than the first (say, local cultural knowledge, local cultural connections, physical strength, and/or traditional customary authority). The second person might also offer or want to serve as “tour guide” or “security guard” at local pubs (or offer ongoing help with a research project) as a way of repaying moral obligations or squaring the ledger. Both parties must benefit, and expect to benefit, from a traversing relationship, in net terms, or it is justly condemned as feudal and oppressive. This type of friendship can be part of local, social equilibriums that emerge organically to lessen the most visible and harmful effects of wealth and income-inequalities.

The main thing in a traversing relationship is to make sure that all partake in and are happy with what they give and receive, and that moral debts are acknowledged and paid. It is a culture of continual and serious moral obligations, woven into village life, and the logic pervades more broadly outside of the village, to a certain extent. The one single condition most highly esteemed by Anglo-American ethics committees—that the participant can walk away at any time—may be offensive to an Indigenous Fijian. To walk away from cultural obligations is an immoral act, and to doubt someone in that respect, without proper evidence based on the past, is also wrong. Connections are forever and no one does walking away. Because the village is forever, and hierarchy and obligation are forever, then relationships are forever. Dyer, in personal interview with the author, said something similar when he referred to the Indigenous Fijians as “always intact,” and I interpret this as referring to the holistic and integrated nature of the village system and the internal consistency and endurance of village logic and hierarchies. The word “intact” was said twice, once in the context of a discussion of Indigenous persons marrying non-Indigenous persons and once in the context of two rival rugby teams fighting in a nightclub.

When the day is over the damage is done. This is to show that Fijians (Indigenous Fijians) are always intact. If there is a big game, such as Farebrother’s Rugby Challenge from two vanuas (from different provinces, say Nadi and Naitasiri) (a vanua means that there is only one paramount chief in that area) the emotion gets intensified and they could kill each other in the nightclub after the game. However, after this has happened, because of the links of our ancestors (the first Fijians), we both declare that we were wrong and that the violence should not have happened. We accept our oneness and unity. This is what the Fiji military force is all about. All in all, the Fijians are very particular and sensitive and aware.

Many Westerners find the idea of moral obligation to be dangerous and offensive. But, it exists within, or in close proximity to, overall, time-honored, village-bound systems of give and take. Compassion, caring, mutual respect, and a sense of boundaries must characterize every friendship, although actual applications of boundary-enforcing in practice may be flexible.

When compared with non-village life, village authority remains a strong and significant force, influencing and watching over the bodies of Indigenous people in and out of village-space. Those who want to avoid village rules and the village gaze live on the streets as street kids (Vakaoti, 2018), or rent in the townships if they can afford it. The village gaze is powerful and nearly everywhere present, as is, in Fiji, the military gaze and the police gaze. These factors work to prevent or limit the dangers of abuse occurring from traversing relationships. Arguably, the Fiji Indian young people are more vulnerable to abuse as they need to rent rooms in towns and do not have the existential protection of village authorities.

In the Fiji context, these traversing relationships may not adhere fully to the Anglo-American logic of the nine-to-five world and the public life/private life split, which may leave Westerners feeling exposed, drained-out, weary, and confused. But Fiji Indians deal with it and respond to the concept in various ways as they have to do if they want to achieve anything worthwhile, which requires Indigenous support or labor-power. Most soccer clubs are based on the concept of the selfless and dedicated Fiji Indian club founder-and-president sponsoring and providing for the needs of certain players so that they can have a proper career, including both Indigenous players and working-class and underclass Fiji Indians. Two stories might assist here. In 1981, when Airport Soccer Club president, Bobby Tikaram, spotted the talented Dyer as a young man playing touch rugby on the airport grounds, he invited him to play for the now defunct Airport Soccer Club in the Nadi club competition. He also bought a pair of boots for Dyer. This was not just a one-off gift, but was seen by both parties as the beginning of a long-term relationship of mutual obligation—Dyer would do his best for the club and show loyalty, whereas Tikaram would sometimes help out with fatherly advice and financial support.

A somewhat more humorous, and admittedly anecdotal, story follows. Tikaram lived on the airport grounds in those days (early 1980s). One night, a group of Airport SC players dropped around to his house and shouted out to him. Tikaram, perhaps being woken from sleep, went out on to his balcony and asked them what they wanted. The players: “Bobby, we need some more money for a bottle of the hard stuff [liquor].” Bobby Tikaram: “How much does it cost?” Players: “Only $24.” Bobby: “How much have you got”? Players: “We already have $4.”

This is the typical type of banter needed in Fiji to smooth over envy and resentment about wealth inequalities. Tikaram had to accept the violation of his personal space and time to keep relations cordial with his players. Indeed, the typical Fiji Indian response has been benevolent paternalism, but few were as skilled at it as was Bobby Tikaram, who, to this day, is involved in two social/support clubs, one for his ex-Airport and one for his ex-Nadi Soccer Association stars. The Indigenous players in this story show a calculated and feigned ignorance of Fiji Indian customs, by knowingly violating personal space and time, and they hide behind drunkenness. But it is unlikely that any malice was involved, they just wanted to push Tikaram as far as they could go to secure an enjoyable late-night drinking experience. The relationship between this story and Indigenous village culture, however, is complex. The behavior of these players might come under the description applied by Wendy Lee (1991, p. 92, citing The Economist, 1977, 263, p. 76) in another context—“sophisticated opportunism.”

None of this is meant to say or imply that an individual or community should not have the right to walk away from research participation if they perceive that the research is culturally, physically, morally, or spiritually harmful or culturally disrespectful. They have the right to continually assess whether the benefits of the project exceed the costs and walk away if the project is found by individuals or the community to be deficient (Gaudry, 2015, pp. 246–247).

Alterative Ethics Application Questions

General Discussion

Before considering my ethics clearance questions, we should look at questions posed to potential researchers by other scholars with an intense interest in research in close collaboration with Indigenous people. Kovach (2015, p. 52) poses the following questions to Indigenous researchers: “Is the research goal manipulative or helpful for my community? Is the methodology respectful to culture and community? Do the methods meet cultural protocols? What are the research’s collectivist/ethical considerations? Who is driving the research and what is the purpose?” To non-Indigenous researchers, Kovach (2015, p. 52, emphasis original) puts forward the following question: “Am I creating space or taking space?” Gaudry (2015, p. 248) makes four statements in relation to what he terms “insurgency research” and I turn them into questions as follows: Is the research grounded in and does it respect and validate Indigenous worldviews? Is the research output intended for use by Indigenous communities? Are the researchers responsible to Indigenous communities for the decisions that they make and are communities the final judges of the validity and effectiveness of research projects? Is the research action-oriented (i.e., social action–oriented) and does it imply direct action in Indigenous communities? Meanwhile, Potts and Brown (2015, p. 18, my addition in the round brackets), as non-Indigenous researchers, ask as follows: Given that most of us recognize oppression when it occurs “out there” or when we are being oppressed, can we recognize it when we are implicated in maintaining systems of inequality (that may still be imbued with a colonial spirit or legacy or atmosphere)?

My Alternative Ethics Clearance Questions

These early questions look at the individual’s cultural sensitivity, cross-cultural knowledge, moral compass, and sense of moral obligation. Does the aspiring researcher believe in seeking out connections with local informers and extending that to their extended families and friends? (Gaudry, 2015, p. 256; Kovach, 2015, p. 54) The notion of village as integrated, fully functioning community, where each individual has a preordained role or position, based on tradition and hierarchy, goes against Western ideas of organizational boundaries, the separation between public life and private life, the individual’s right to self-determination, and the reification of job titles and job descriptions. You are a villager 24/7, even when in town-space. Does the researcher believe in learning about and respecting local Indigenous cultural traditions? This one is self-explanatory. In what may be jarring to some readers, we then turn to an immensely practical problem: Does the researcher believe that it is unethical to eat their own lunch when the research participant cannot afford theirs? Some researchers may be totally oblivious to income-inequalities and poverty, whereas others may tune them out from consciousness as they focus “only on their research questions” in the name of so-called objectivity and neutrality. Does the researcher believe in mutually beneficial relations with continual mutual obligations? This refers to traversing relationships that may emerge organically as a social, local equilibrium to reduce the symptoms of income-inequalities and allow for face-saving. The idea introduces the researcher to the daily realities of social life.

Next, we turn to another practical question about micro-practices in village-space. Does the researcher believe that it is important to follow local village protocol, such as giving and receiving the kava bowl in the prescribed order, sitting according to village hierarchies, sitting on the floor and not raising one’s leg while seated, and not wearing a hat in the village?

The next two questions relate to broader philosophical and moral perspectives where Anglo-American and Indigenous Fijian beliefs and priorities may differ. The first question puts under the microscope Western notions of individual property rights and a self-centered mentality: Does the researcher believe that if they have money or one particular resource, skill, or attribute then they should share it freely? Does the researcher have the belief or faith that the support they receive from study participants, friends, and supporters, in the long term, will be directly proportional to what they have given them (and this goes way beyond money)? This second question highlights the belief in long-term traversing relationships, within a society where everyone’s behavior is always carefully noted, and where moral debts are taken seriously.

Does the researcher believe in maintaining harmony and unity and eliminating trash-talk? (Gaudry, 2015, p. 255) The Western, capitalist, competitive mentality is unacceptable in village-space. The next question relies on similar logic: Does the researcher believe that it is offensive and wrong to evaluate people’s worth by wealth, possessions, or money? The next question is as follows: Does the researcher agree not to corrupt the young or mistreat the older adults whether in village-space or town-space? The unscrupulous will often try to take advantage of Global South people’s material lack and deprivation and aim to lure them into morally wrong actions.

The second part focuses on obligations to the land and to the people. Some might view these as too vague and subjective or even as too radically left wing. But they reflect the nature of Indigenous Fijian society and their strongly held belief that they are the moral owners and custodians of the land, rather than any more recent arrivals. Some Western liberal-democrats may be offended here as they perceive that these ideas are discriminatory and conflict with Equal Opportunities concepts. They may well conflict, but the researcher must at least come to terms with the ubiquity of these ideas. Does the researcher believe that it is right to give part of their money earned while in Fiji back to the Indigenous people as custodians of the land? Does the researcher believe that they are in Fiji with the implied permission of the Indigenous Fijians (rather than the government, a University, or anyone else)? Does the researcher believe that the Indigenous Fijians have full moral and legal authority and moral claim to all the land and waters of Fiji as culturally defined (and the Rotumans with respect to Rotuma)? Someone with a deep reluctance to agree with these three questions should possibly consider whether Fiji is the right place for them to do research as their attitude may create problems and resentment on-the-ground due to the depth of local feeling associated with these beliefs.

Problems With Anglo-American Codes of Ethics and Ethics Clearance Form

They assume that everyone does or should operate on an arm’s-length basis detached from community and mutual obligations. They assume that there is and should be full separation between public and private life and that one’s private life is fully one’s own business. They presume that everyone has a business-world, nine-to-five mentality. They assume that money for participants’ lunch, dinner, or transport is freely available to them and sufficient for them to get to and from interviews and fieldwork sites. They presume that all important decisions are and should be made by individuals (e.g., researcher, participant), not communities drawing upon protocol. They assume that anonymity is desired and/or useful and that consent sheets are equally culturally meaningful across cultures. They presume that my private time is my own and that I owe none of it to anybody. To sum up, they assume that we can’t learn from other cultures regarding our ethics approval processes. The Anglo-American way is the only way.

Conclusion

This article attempts an ambitious task, part-storytelling, part-logical reasoning and part injunctions to act or refrain from acting. I outlined the income-inequality evident in the Fiji Islands, and how this awareness may change a researcher in a direction where the researcher becomes more socially aware and more collectivist in orientation. Then, in the section “Alterative Ethics Application Questions,” I presented new alternative ethics questions for Fiji ethnographers, which could be used in ethics clearance application forms, either by themselves or in conjunction with more mainstream questions. I also used the section “Alterative Ethics Application Questions” to outline how and why I perceive the Anglo-American standard approach to research ethics may be culturally inappropriate or just a fish out of water and irrelevant. The idea of a traversing relationship, with its mutual obligations on both sides, is another important contribution of my article, which I hope will stimulate debates within the research community.