Leiden University Student Repository

Lin, Chuan-Yin (2021)

ETHNIC CONFLICTS AND CULTURAL EXCLUSION IN THE FIJI MUSEUM

Master thesis | Asian Studies (60 EC) (MA)

This thesis examines ethnic conflicts in contemporary Fiji through historicizing this social phenomenon. Considering Fiji’s colonial past and its post-colonial time, it also investigates the idea of race and its relationships between colonialism and nationalism, arguing that the racial categories used in Fiji’s ethnic conflicts were first created under several colonial practices and were strengthened during the nation-building process of Fiji. Apart from that, based on firsthand interviews with locals, this thesis proposes that the racial rhetoric mainly around indigenous Fijians and Indo-Fijians reflects the iTaukei-vulagi contradictions in their everyday life. This thesis also takes this ethnic tension further and connects it with a concrete case study field—the Fiji Museum—to see how this ethnic tension in Fiji has become an ideology of exclusion through nation-building processes that have permeated every aspect of Fijian society.

Fiji

Fiji Museum

Race

Ethnicity

Cultural exclusion

Colonialism

Nation-building

Author

Lin, Chuan-Yin

Faculty

Faculty of Humanities

Specialisation

History, Arts and Culture of Asia

Supervisors

Pearce, C.J.

ECTS Credits

7.8

Language

en