The praxis of an Indigenous Fijian researcher who is both an insider/outsider offers some valuable lessons for ethnographic work. This paper introduces 'cultural discernment' as a concept used to ensure that the research process is culturally ethical within the research setting.An insider will always require a sense of cultural discernment, recognising that actions taken have implications that are critical and remain with the researcher for life. The paper contextualises the concept of cultural discernment in relation to Fijian epistemology. Although there are risks within any research project with regard to ethics processes and the conduct of research, this paper will illustrate how Western paradigms associated with 'expert knowledge' and the 'lay knowledges' of an Indigenous population group produce competing understandings about ethical practice. The paper draws on a doctoral research project exploring the cultural conceptualisation of health and well-being, conducted in Fiji and New Zealand. The research process and steps carried out in this study ensured those actions were culturally appropriate and ethically sound from an Indigenous Fijian perspective.
Customary land is commonly perceived as a barrier to economic development and indigenous entrepreneurship in Pacific Island countries. We turn this proposition on its head, arguing that customary land provides a solid foundation for indigenous entrepreneurs who wish to achieve social, cultural and environmental, as well as economic, goals for their businesses. Furthermore, we assert that appropriate tools are needed to measure the success of indigenous businesses on customary land, as conventional tools have a narrow focus on economics that fails to capture the more holistic, sustainable development goals that indigenous people hope to achieve through their businesses. The indicators we utilise relate to socio-cultural, economic and environmental sustainability. The tool’s usefulness was scrutinized through pre-testing on two indigenous businesses in Fiji; this revealed that culturally oriented tools are essential if the sustainability of indigenous business is to be measured in terms that are meaningful to Pacific communities.
Growth in the South Pacific tourism industry along with rising demand for mineral resources has led to increasing numbers of multinational corporations operating across the Pacific, particularly in the tourism and mining sectors. Multinational hotels and large-scale mining activities are now frequently located near communities with high development demands, and extractive industries are additionally found in very remote and rural locations. Both hotels and mines rely on local communities for access to resources and have an impact on the well-being of these communities through their presence and activities. In contexts where development needs are high, and where governments may fail to provide services, corporations face increasing demands for both philanthropic contributions and long-term service provision (Hughes and Scheyvens 2016). Thus many businesses now realize that it is in their own interests to look after their host communities, both because this enhances their reputation as an ethical business (Epler Wood and Leray 2005) and because it can decrease the risk of disruption to business operations caused by local communities (Kapelus 2002; Eweje 2007;Kalisch 2002).In addition, companies operating in the Pacific usually have formal obligations to the landowning communities whose land they lease for resource extraction, tourism, or other purposes. This obligation is significant in relation to discussions of well-being as, typically, local communities do not view their land within the narrow frame of an economic "resource."the contemporary pacific • 31:1 (2019)
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.