Fiji | Susanna Trnka

2000 Fiji COUP

My research in Fiji culminated in a book examining the historical and political underpinnings of the 2000 Fiji coup, as well as the experiences of living under conditions of political violence.

I also examined humour during political violence and contested claims over belonging to the nation-state.

My other works on Fiji and Indo-Fijian society include examinations of embodiment, religion, and gender.

PUBLICATIONS

2012. "Cleanliness in a Caste-less Context: Collective Negotiations of Purity and Pollution among Indo-Fijian Hindus.” Anthropological Forum. 22(1): 25-43.

2011. “Specters of Uncertainty: Violence, Humor, and the Uncanny in Indo-Fijian Communities after the May 2000 Fiji Coup.” Ethos. 39(3): 331-348.

2010. “The Jungle and the City: Perceptions of the Urban among Indo-Fijians in Suva, Fiji.” In E. Dürr and R.K. Jaffe (eds). Urban Pollution: Cultural Meanings, Social Practices. Berghahn Books. Pp. 86-102.

2008. State of Suffering: Political Violence and Community Survival in Fiji. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

2008. "Tourism or Terrorism: Negotiating European Desires and Debates over Democracy in Fiji." In B.V. Lal, G. Chand, and V. Naidu (eds.). 1987: Fiji Twenty Years On. Lautoka: Fiji Institute of Applied Studies. Pp. 157-170.

2007. “Languages of Labor: Negotiating the “Real” and the Relational in Indo-Fijian Women’s Expressions of Body Pain.” Medical Anthropology Quarterly. 21(4): 388-408.

2005. “Land, Life and Labour: Indo-Fijian Claims to Citizenship in a Changing Fiji.” Oceania. 75(4): 354-367.

2005. “Between Victims and Assailants, Victims and Friends: Sociality and the Imagination in Indo-Fijian Narratives of Rural Violence During the May 2000 Fiji Coup.” In A. Strathern, P. Stewart, and N. Whitehead (eds). Terror and Violence: Imagination and the Unimaginable. London: Pluto Press. Pp. 117-141.

2005. “Violence, Agency and Freedom of Movement: Issues Emerging out of the Lata Sisters’ Disappearance” Fijian Studies. 3(2): 277-294

2005. “Bodily Translations: The Politics of Pain Expression Among Indo-Fijian Women.” Sites: A Journal of Social Anthropology and Cultural Studies. 2(2): 119-140.

2004. “Upahar Gaon” In B.V. Lal (ed.). Bittersweet. Canberra: Pandanus Books, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies. Pp. 135-150

2002. “Introduction: Communities in Crisis.” Pacific Studies. Special issue, Ethnographies of the May 2000 Fiji Coup. S. Trnka (ed). 25 (4): 1-8.

2002. TRNKA, S.H. “Foreigners at Home: Discourses of Difference, Fiji Indians and the Looting of May 19.” Pacific Studies. Special issue, Ethnographies of the May 2000 Fiji Coup. S. Trnka (ed). 25 (4): 69-92.