ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that colonial and post-colonial policies have discursively created the modern marketplace and village Fiji as two diametrically opposite domains of difference. Urban, commercial space and exogenous, Western culture are conflated concepts in the discourse, where modernity is constructed in direct contrast to traditional Fiji. Postcolonial theorists have, despite their pre-supposition with identities, cultural transformations and nationalism, often focused their attention on texts rather than social practice. Maintaining that masculinity is a social performance, attained through a complex process of socialisation which comprises historical, geographical, social, economic, political and ethno-cultural factors, it consequently set up discussion with a brief analysis of the emergence of the capitalist economy in Fiji and its impact on discourses about gender and masculinity. Matt Tomlinson has elaborated on the, based on what he called a 'metacultural complaint' he frequently heard during his fieldwork on the island of Kadavu.
