Fiji: Social Change and Ethnic Identity

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SIT Study Abroad will no longer offer this program beginning
fall 2010.

"I am amazed by the opportunities I had for true, raw cultural immersion provided by SIT/World Learning, the support I received by the field staff, and the room for personal growth.  No experience can or will ever compare to my time in the South Pacific, a place I knew very little about and now appreciate more than I could have ever imagined."

Stephanie Roberts, Dickinson College

Explore the challenges facing contemporary Fiji, a multicultural island nation and society in transition.

The program is based in the city of Suva on Viti Levu, Fiji’s largest island, and also includes educational excursions to the islands of Vanua Levu, Taveuni, Ovalau, and the highlands and coastal areas of Viti Levu.

For 3,500 years, Fiji has been a crossroads for Polynesian, Melanesian, and Micronesian peoples. In the last 150 years, British colonialists, Indian indentured laborers, and, most recently, migrants from other Asian countries have altered the composition of modern Fiji. Today, ethnic Indians make up 44 percent of Fiji’s population.

Students consider how changes in ethnic and religious balance, as well as mounting transnational forces, are shaping contemporary Fiji. Topics for consideration include:

• History including settlement of the Pacific and Fiji; prehistory and oral traditions; European perceptions of the Pacific; British colonialism and Indian migration; politicization of ethnic communities; World War II and Fijian independence
• Multicultural anthropology including indigenous Fijian and immigrant Indian culture and religion; ethnic politics and social relations; influence of religion on national identity
• Politics and economics including decolonization; Fiji’s Westminster-influenced parliament and the Great Council of Chiefs; the culture of political crises and political coups; communal land issues and industrial sugar plantations; tourism and the imagined tropics
• Social issues, development, and change including Fiji at the crossroads; urbanization; gender roles; squatter development youth culture; sport and national identity; Christian, Muslim, and Hindu faith-based community action

The program also includes intensive language instruction in Fijian and homestays in urban and rural Fijian communities.

Browse this program's Independent Study Projects/Undergraduate Research