Sacred Cows of 'Development': The Ritual Incorporation of a Dairy Project in the Eastern Interior of Fiji (C.1980-1997)‪.‬

INTRODUCTION Heavily embedded within national and global markets, and tied to familiar structures of international aid, development schemes in Melanesia also tend to become significantly enmeshed in formations of ritual practice. The resulting entanglement (Thomas 1991) of new economic futures and repeated ritual returns (Eliade 1954) suggests a latterday reorientation of ritual. However, it also points up the local enchantment of developing economic sites and the transposition of projects, cosmologically speaking, onto the mythical ground of ritual. What does the ritual involution and mythical contextualisation of local projects in Oceania imply for the grand project of economic progress? How does the sacralisation of development in Oceania transform the parameters of ritual space? In this paper these questions are explored in relation to a recent Fijian case.