Review

Reviewed Work(s): The Method of Hope: Anthropology, Philosophy, and Fijian Knowledge
by Hirokazu Miyazaki
Review by: Andrew Arno
Source: The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Vol. 12, No. 1 (Mar., 2006), pp.
253-254
Published by: Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3803957
Accessed: 15-11-2017 12:18 UTC

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
http://about.jstor.org/terms

Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland is collaborating with JSTOR
to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of the Royal Anthropological
Institute

This content downloaded from 130.225.27.249 on Wed, 15 Nov 2017 12:18:23 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 Book reviews 253

themselves just as much as their cultural When the people of Suva were initially
product. Perhaps this is too facile a removed to make way for government
comparison, but I was surprised that Mazzarella buildings and residences, therefore, the
did not take this opportunity for transaction could not be conceptualized as a
anthropological self-critique further. clear-cut sale or a taking by eminent domain
Mazzarella's work amounts to an agenda- because that would legally sever the people
setting programme for future research into the and chiefs of Suva from their land. Instead, the
practices of both cultural production and were awarded a perpetual annuity of ?200 in
consumption. Shovelling smoke gives us a clear recognition of their continuing interest in the
theoretical and ethnographic indication of land. The exact statement of that interest - if it
where the journey of the commodity image was ever articulated - seems not to be on
begins; something upon which future studies record in the government archives, however.
of cultural production/consumption and the The people of Suvavou began to petition the
global imagining of the Indian middle classes government, starting in 1898 and continuing to
would do well to draw. the present, for a clarification of the terms of
the transaction and for adequate
N i c H o las N i s b ett University of Sussex
compensation. Today, rent based on even a tiny
percentage of the land's commercial value
Miyazaki, Hirokazu. The method of hope: would be an astronomical sum that could not
anthropology, philosophy, and Fijian feasibly be paid, a circumstance that only adds
knowledge. 199 pp., maps, illus., bibliogr. to the ambiguity of the situation. But the
Stanford: Univ. Press, 2004. $28.50 (cloth) people of Suvavou are motivated, as they told
Miyazaki, by words that they attribute to a
What is hope? Can one hope to understand revered
it? Fijian statesman, the late Ratu Sir Lala
Must one hope in order to understand it? Is Sukuna: 'Money the government has reserved
hope, then, a method of knowing rather than for you is large. It is like water wrapped up in a
taro leaf. If something pricks it, the money will
an object of knowledge? In a brilliant synthesis
of philosophy and anthropology, Miyazaki pour out to you' (p. 30). Despite being denied
engages the reader with these questions in a
for over a hundred years, therefore, the people
path-breaking example of contemporary of Suvavou still hold out hope for
ethnography. compensation. They are persistently trying,
A community usually identities itself as keeping hope alive, to tap that reservoir.
indigenous in reaction to displacement and In classic anthropological fashion, Miyazaki
marginalization by foreign or settler usurpation, discovered his major research questions in the
but the people of Suvavou (New Suva) on the field, dialogically, in response to the interests
outskirts of Suva, Fiji's capital city, are and concerns of the community he studied.
continuing to assert their indigeneity against The social reality of Suvavou is defined and
the resistance of an indigenous government. motivated by hope, which, despite a hundred
Their original displacement took place in 1882 years of discouragement, seems unquenchable.
when colonial officials laid out the city of Suva Identity is another live issue for the people of
on the land, vanua, of the Suva people, who Suvavou. As an urban community with urban
were relocated to their current peri-urban jobs and life styles, the villagers feel cut off
village. The transaction was fraught with from traditional Fijian knowledge and customs.
ambiguity right from the start because the And yet their hopes for whom they will
Fijian vanua is an indissoluble entity comprising become, when their claims are recognized, are
land, people, and political organization. A grounded in the hope that their traditional
chaotic, culturally hybrid land market had past, currently shrouded in ambiguity, will be
begun to emerge in pre-colonial Fiji as foreign clarified. Hope is orientated to the future, but
planters negotiated deals with the chiefs, but does it have to be cut off by ambiguity from
the first colonial governor, Sir Arthur Gordon, the certainties of the past and from its own
was determined to restore and preserve what fulfilment? Responding to the questions posed
he understood to be the traditional integrity of so powerfully by the situation, Miyazaki directly
the vanua. He devised legal and bureaucratic addresses the nature, origins, and limitations of
means that - although at a cost to authenticity hope in human affairs. He identifies incongruity
and local diversity - were intended to ensure a in time and agency as key dimensions of hope,
continuing linkage of polity, people, and and looks at the production of hope in
land. ethnographic settings as diverse as business

/. Roy. Anthrop. Inst. (N.S.) 12, 219-269

? Royal Anthropological Institute 2006

This content downloaded from 130.225.27.249 on Wed, 15 Nov 2017 12:18:23 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
254 BOOK REVIEWS

would now easily be described as part of

deals, national politics, church meetings, letters
of petition, and traditional exchange rituals.America's
In wealthy 'white overclass' (p. i).
each case hope is a transitive, evanescent way
of knowing - or being in relation to - realityIt is about the ways in which agents as
and identity. It is discursively created by a individuals
series and members of an aggregate
of rhetorical displacements in temporal (i.e. women, Jews, blacks, etc.) follow a class
orientation, attribution of agency, and logical
trajectory that interacts with, or is influenced
directionality. by, 'larger social movements' of, for example,
Miyazaki advances the goals of the sixties era, including civil rights and
contemporary ethnography in several ways. feminist
A movements, Kennedy-era idealism, and
topic like hope penetrates deeply into the sex, drugs, and rock and roll (p. 170).
ethnographic reality being studied, and at theFollowing the class from its childhood to the
same time, as a shared phenomenon, it reduces
present, Ortner offers twelve chapters which
the distance between the reader's world and are divided into two sections. The book's
introduction presents the theories, concepts,
that being described. As reflexive anthropology,
Miyazaki's method draws not only the and motivations that form a prism through
ethnographer but also the reader actively into
which Ortner interprets her classmates' (and
the account. their families of origin's) 'upward mobility and
Andrew Arno University of Hawai'i at Manoa other patterns of social change as they fit into
the picture of the wider and quite momentous,
social transformations in the United States in
Ortner, Sherry B. New Jersey dreaming: the second half of the twentieth century' (p. 1).
capital, culture, and the Class of '58. xvi, 340 The first section, 'The making of the Class of
pp., map, tables, bibliogr. London, '58', covers six chapters (2-7). These chapters
Durham, N.C.: Duke Univ. Press, 2003. examine the 'making' of the class in terms of
?22.50 (cloth) family life, ethnicity and 'melting pot' issues,
racism and ethnic relations, and American
In many ways, Ortner's book is what schooling. They focus on individual memories,
anthropology is at its best: an exploration of school social categories, identity play and
everyday life (whether old or new) and an popularity, as well as the formal academic
tracking by which schooling prepares one for
analysis that uncovers life's layers of subjective
meanings and relations between them. Even college or some other pathways in life.
more exciting, and perhaps more challenging Given this backdrop, the second section of
for Ortner, is that New Jersey dreaming is a bookthe book is devoted to 'What the Class of '58
about an anthropologisfs own 'culture', one'smade'. Covering five chapters (8-12), Ortner
own 'nativity', so to speak. Indeed, this is a explores on-the-ground issues such as money,
book of richly contextualized stories of life sex, success, happiness, divorce, the lives of
before, during, and after high school that women and blacks, all in the context of
illustrate how people are constructed or made individual agency and the influence of grand
and, given that, what they eventually make ofUS history, particular social and identity
and in their worlds. It is about the push and movements, and the capitalism of yesterday
pull of school and family that centres on social
and today.
class and culture (including ambition, money, The additional allure and significance of the
happiness, success, heartbreak, marriage, etc.)book, and there is much of this beyond what I
as they interact with ethnicity, race, gender, can say here, is two-fold. First is Ortner's
and history in an evolving capitalist society. penchant for peeling back the polysemic layers
of meanings embedded in multifold class
New Jersey dreaming is about the senior class
(304 students) of Weequahic High School in relations. Dreams of moving up, money,
which Ortner graduated in 1958 in Newark, success, and even jewishness, are multilayered
New Jersey. Ortner says, and analysed in ways that speak to some of the
objective facts of the matter and to the
This book is an account of how the Class of June
subjective experiences, stereotypes, and
'58 got from its modest, largely working- and misunderstandings about class, ethnicity, race,
middle-class origins in the late 1950s to a and gender. From the outset, page 36 to be
situation in which there is virtually no exact, I began to see a kind of 'cultural
recognizable working class left, and in which correction' in terms of understanding that there
close to 60 percent of the members of the classwere indeed as many similarities as differences

7 Roy. Anthrop. Inst. (N.S.) 12, 219-269

? Royal Anthropological Institute 2006

This content downloaded from 130.225.27.249 on Wed, 15 Nov 2017 12:18:23 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms