Sacred Soil in Kadavu, Fiji

Abstract

In this paper, I consider historical and ethnographic evidence to explain how ‘sacred soil’ becomes an intelligible and palpable reality in Kadavu, Fiji. I begin by describing the fundamental Fijian cultural division between lotu (Methodism, or Christianity more broadly) and vanua (people and land), and argue that these entities are fruitfully considered as Bourdieuan fields whose competition is culturally generative. Examining historians' well‐known work on precolonial land alienation and colonial land tenure codification in Fiji, I note that Methodist missionaries helped add to indigenous Fijians' senses that their land was diminishing or even disappearing. In addition, I examine data from recent fieldwork in Kadavu, particularly discourse about soil's and land's importance and descriptions of a Methodist ritual called the masu sema (‘chain prayer’) in which soil's investiture with mana (efficaciousness) is particularly apparent. Having shown how ‘sacred soil’ becomes both an intelligible and palpable reality, I then argue that we should consider the creative force of friction between lotu and vanua in indigenous Fijian social life generally.