Hegemony and counter hegemony in Fiji

Abstract

The article analyses Fiji politics by utilising the analytical framework established by neo-Gramscian scholars, who emphasise the role of social forces and constitutive moments in the making of history. Elite hegemony in Fiji was founded on the hegemony of indigenous chiefs, local and transnational capital and indigenous nationalism. These three pillars of elite hegemony are central arguments of critical and cultural neo-Gramscian theories on power, social forces and neoliberal economic discourses and this neo-Gramscian approach provides both ontological and epistemological frameworks for the study of both hegemony and counter-hegemony in Fiji and reflect convergence, divergence, mobilisation, resistance, and control, and inform counter history and social reframing, where ethnic social forces collide with inter-ethnic alliances, creating new political counter-hegemonic paradigms that usher in new historical and social trajectories.