ABSTRACT
The Fijian term for tradition and ritual as generic terms is ‘acting in the manner of the land’ (cakacaka vakavanua); it refers to a way of living and behaving that is culturally appropriate. By contrast, our normative understanding makes tradition inhere not in action but in objectified structures; it explicitly distinguishes immutable ‘tradition’ from processual ‘history’. Recent works by Hobsbawm and Ranger (1983), Sahlins (1985) and Borofsky (1987) have brought this crude dichotomy into question. The Fijian data suggest another perspective on it: that culture-specific notions of tradition govern responses to historical change. This finding has specific implications for anthropological understanding of tradition as a historical object. I return to these matters after the analysis below.
