Ghost, spirits and Christian denominational politics : a case from Fiji

Ancestral spirits and ghosts have always been prominent in the indigenous Fijian pantheon, folklore and everyday beliefs. In these narratives their presence have not always been perceived threatening or negatively. In fact, ancestral spirits were often perceived as integral to the social equilibrium and protectors of tradition to the extent that they have been used discursively to affirm ethno-political demands and lend legitimacy to both traditional and political leaders until quite recently. In contemporary Fiji, however, ghosts are increasingly constructed as more sinister, violent and foreboding catastrophe. A key shift in these discourses appears to be that the presence of a ghost signifies spiritual pollution and a threat to the community; problems that can only be solved by intense praying and spiritual cleansing. This recent change in the cultural construction of spirits is, I suggest, associated with the growth of Pentecostalism and the increasingly fundamental nature of dominant religious discourse in Fiji. These movements discursively create pre-Christian Fijian traditions and cultural expressions as anti-Christian, and often advocate that a radical break with all pre-modern beliefs and cultural expressions is a necessity for the well-being of the vanua1 (the community and the land). The reconstruction of ghosts and spirits, from useful and potentially good forces of the land to evil enemies of health and wellbeing, thus highlights an intensification of the perceived opposition between Fiji’s pre-Christian customs and devotion to the Christian god. By looking at ghosts and spirits as cultural signifiers I thus suggest that constructions of the monstrous are a particular strategy communities use to deal with the dialectics of tradition and modernity. In more general terms, I use ethnographic examples to show how monsters and spirits can change appearance and meaning in new contexts, but also how these shifts impact localised discourses about belonging and identity.