1065 PHOTO ESSAY Everything and Its Opposite: Kava Drinking in Fiji Matt Tomlinson Monash University K ava is a supersaturating sign in indigenous Fijian public life. Called yaqona in Fijian, kava is both a shrub (Piper methysticum) and the drink made from it. The plant is not especially impressive to look at: it has none of the slender grace of a tall coconut palm, none of the rude heft of yams or taro. It is a medium-sized shrub with knobby stems and stringy, dusty brown roots. What makes it impressive is the semiotic range of its social embeddings. Put simply, kava means radically different things in different contexts. It is a means of competition and also of settling for peace, the cause of social unity and also its dissolution. It is a cherished emblem of old traditions that invites dreamy speculation of affluent futures. Finally, it is a Christian symbol that is believed to summon demons. 1 Kava’s dynamic polysemy, I argue, emerges from its irresolvably problem- atic place in Fijian Christian life. More than ninety-nine percent of indigenous Fijians are Christians (Walsh 2006:201), and many describe Christianity as “traditional”—as something that was embraced by chiefs a century and a half ago. Despite the continued visibility of many traditional practices, including kava drinking, many Fijians are convinced that tradition is disappearing or already gone. They struggle to reassert its relevance, and thus, as Nicholas Thomas has noted wryly, “contemporary rural Fijian life…is much more tra-