Judging by Ropate Qalo’s counter-attack (FT April 25) to my piece (FT April 18) disputing his take on “outsiders”, Taukei institutions, and Karl Popper (FT March 28) — a dispute I couched in terms of Popper’s “open society” — it seems I touched a raw nerve and am challenged to respond.
First, the idea Islanders “negotiate the truth”, which so vexes him, was not mine in the first place. I took it from the late Professor Epeli Hau’ofa.
Hau’ofa proffered me the phrase at a conference on thinking following a presentation I’d made devoid of circumlocution and therefore far more direct than is usual in most island conversations about native institutions. My words hurt.
Later I ran with Hau’ofa’s words and far from rubbishing Fijians as non-rational, argued that using different assumptions and methods this was also how scientists operated. Thus contrary to Qalo’s assertion, I’ve never regarded Fijians as non-rational, leave-alone non-thinkers, but I do believe critical thinking, remains scarce because of a pervasive culture of silence — or as I originally called it a “restricted code” (1983), which hampers development.
Next, if as Qalo declares (FT April 25) I made my position on insider/outsider commentaries clear in Texts & violence, lies & silence (2003), and if he understood it, then I don’t see what his beef is.
What I said recently about closed, tribal, societies (FT April 18) is what holds them together is kinship. On the other hand, social cohesion in non-tribal, democratic, societies derives from reasoned exchanges between strangers.
In the one, hearts govern heads. In the other reason govern hearts and strangers meet as equals.
A German sociologist, Max Weber (1864-1920), developed this idea to explain how an individualistic, Protestant work ethic, supplanted communal, dogmatic, ritualistic, Catholicism — to unintentionally drive personal ambition, economic innovation, and ultimately industrialisation. His book is seminal.
Now other matters.
Contrary to what Qalo claims I have never presented myself as an “expert” on Fiji or anywhere else. Fiji is deceptively complex. Someone with a decent knowledge of particular people and places, yes. Someone ready to challenge simplistic views and media stereotypes, certainly. Alas Qalo uses “expert” to sneer.
Slighting me as a “charlatan” was equally unbecoming. I used the word as Popper did, to refer to certain kinds of political leader, tyrants in particular. I am neither.
Strange, too, to put it mildly, that Qalo sees fit to disparage the very press he was tasked to uphold at USP. Expatriate scholars have sometimes been accused of building careers in Fiji, moving on, and never giving back something accessible to ordinary people. Tending to agree and wanting to be read and judged by locals, I wrote Texts & Violence for educated Fijians and others who’d normally not touch an academic tome or journal.
For me it was a litmus test. In the end, for various reasons, I probably did not succeed, even so I think T&V still holds up well and continues to shed light on what problems the “restricted code” or culture of silence, presents to the historian and to those charged with solving social problems.
Incidentally, as humble as his own school’s press may I have been, my research has also appeared in precisely those more “prestigious” organs I am sure he would approve of. Of course writing, generally, helps us think straight.
Two other things: I am not especially “learned” nor was I ever a “professor” (except in the American sense). Small matters, perhaps, except Qalo uses the words to belittle and thereby exposes not my “anger” but his own.
Willard Millar (FT Letters, April 28) rightly says a newspaper is no place for rarefied debate. Nevertheless, I cannot finish without reminding my protagonist that in speaking of “negotiating the truth” in T&V, I drew deeply on Kuhn’s exposition of how science is actually done (Ropate mentioned Kuhn; on Michael Polanyi who wrote about science’s subjective side; and on Popper’s “World 3” concept, a world not the actual world, or world the individual grasps, but rather the intersubjective reality scholars collectively concur is the objective truth till falsified.
* The views expressed are that of the author and not of this newspaper.
