Cobo and tabua in Fiji: Two forms of cultural currency in an economy of sentiment

Abstract

ABSTRACT Cultural currency, defined in performance terms, is a highly specific medium for the deployment of sentiment in community life, and it can be usefully compared with varieties of material currency. Sentiment, as a cultural system, is an intellectual rather than a material property, and, like all property, it is defined by social relationships and obligations. Cultural currencies are performances that are constrained in use by meaning and identity, rather than by physical possession. Research on the cobo and tabua in Fiji represents an ethnographic case study of cultural currency that has implications for investigating the relationships among culture, sentiment, property, and mode of production generally.