Accounting and the Reproduction of Race Relations in Fiji: A Discourse On Race and Accounting in Colonial Context

This study analyses the role of accounting related issues in the production and reproduction of racial tensions in Fiji, and explores the impact of colonial discourses on the debates. By way of illustration, two historically constituted accounting related practices have been identified that demonstrate how accounting and race relations in Fiji are intertwined. These are rental income on native land operating leases and the government’s budgetary allocations for affirmative action programmes in favour of indigenous Fijians and Rotumans. There is hardly a more universal complaint among Fijian landowners than that they receive unfairly low rental income from their land leased to Indo-Fijian tenants which aggravates race relations between indigenous Fijians and Indo-Fijians. Further, the objectives of the Government on affirmative action being in dispute, it is argued that the annual Government budget is a tool often used to articulate and promote racial differences in Fiji.