Document Type

Article

Publication Date

9-1998

Keywords

Fijian dualism, Social organization, Ethnology, A.M. Hocart

Disciplines

Anthropology | International and Area Studies | Social and Cultural Anthropology

Abstract

In the Part-European settlement of Kasavu, Fiji, land is divided in each generation into parallel plots of ever-decreasing width but identical form. Kinship as division, I argue, is knowledge which is not representative of social relations and which therefore does not effectuate 'change'. This is contrasted to an additive logic of of kinship relations among urban Part-Europeans, a logic in which information is potentially infinite and thus always incomplete, and in which knowledge attaches to persons and changes through techniques of collective discovery.

Comments

This article predates the author's affiliation with Cornell Law School.

Publication Citation

Published in: The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Society, vol. 4, no. 3 (September 1998).

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