CONTINUITY AND CONSTRAINT - RECONSTRUCTING THE CONCEPT OF TRADITION FROM A PACIFIC PERSPECTIVE

In the postmodern world, tradition and identity are supplanting modern ist political ideologies in the discourse about conflict. Historians a nd anthropologists who write about tradition necessarily enter the pol itical arena within which the content and meaning of tradition are con tested. In the 1980s, social scientists became sensitive to this issue . During that decade the most important contributions to the study of tradition focused on the issue of invention, the fashioning of represe ntations of the past to meet the needs of the present. The invention-o f-tradition literature made a useful contribution by linking tradition to such issues as the reproduction of social forms, the interaction o f culture and history to produce change, and the role of human agency in both of these processes. Ultimately, however, the emphasis on the m alleability of tradition negates what is ostensively affirmed in this literature-that a people's traditions are a product of their historica lly situated action. Too little attention is paid to the ways in which interpretations of the past are constrained (and explained) by a dete rminate past and to the threads of continuity that link the present to that past. In part, the continuity that characterizes tradition is a consequence of the fact that traditions are enacted or embodied. These issues are explored, in part, through a discussion of the Fiji coups and their aftermath.