Horse race gambling and the economy of 'bad money' in contemporary Fiji

Since emerging in Fiji in 1964, betting on Australian horseracing has become an increasingly common pastime for Fijian men. A recently introduced urban practice, this type of gambling is associated with 'modern' social settings and is ideologically situated outside the traditional Fijian paradigm. It faces widespread condemnation as an economic pursuit, with cash circulated through the betting shops often being labelled 'bad' money. Paradoxically, this negative valuation of gambling also appears to be one of the most alluring aspects of it. As a public arena, the betting shops provide a social space in which Fijian men interact on the basis of overt egalitarianism, disorder, and rowdiness, principles and behavioural patterns largely discouraged within the traditional boundaries of the village. Gambling is subversive because money generated from these pursuits is unsuitable for the village economy and thus becomes available to spend freely on luxury goods, namely alcohol, tobacco, or take-away food, all of which are otherwise largely inaccessible. Gambling on horse racing is consequently gaining increasing social importance for Fijian men who wish to negate the constraints of traditional village life and partake in social and economic activities governed by personal desires and consumption rather than traditional communalism. While commercial betting in Melanesia has largely been ignored by anthropologists, this paper proposes that it is a salient point of study for understanding the complex social dynamics that emerge at the interface of gendered and ethnic identities and tradition and modernity in Fiji.