TITLE:
Alcohol Use and Everyday Resistance in the World of Fiji Soccer, 1980-2000
AUTHORS:
Kieran Edmond James, Henry Dyer Tuidraki, Sheikh Ali Tanzil
KEYWORDS:
Alcohol, Everyday Resistance, Fiji Indians, Fiji Islands, Fiji Soccer History, Indigenous Fijians, Race and Class, Sociology of Soccer, Wistfulness
JOURNAL NAME:
Advances in Applied Sociology,
Vol.15 No.9,
September
23,
2025
ABSTRACT: This article, part of a broader investigation into Fiji soccer history, focuses on alcohol and everyday resistance among players in the context of the Fiji Premier League and the Fiji national team. It highlights the role of alcohol as being a way of forging collective memories and as sometimes a tool that expresses frustration and resistance towards control by Fiji Indian team managements. Their wealth and lifestyle opportunities loom large as a spectre in the minds of Indigenous Fijians. Apart from soccer and after soccer, most Indigenous ex-players stay as subsistence farmers in the villages and find it hard to move into paid employment in soccer or in related positions outside the game such as in media. They lack capital to start businesses, as ex-players in Global North countries can, because of the amateur nature of the sport, even at Fiji Premier League level, back in the 1980s. This contrasts too with the money earned by Indigenous Fijian rugby players overseas today. This creates not resentment, but melancholy and wistfulness as ex-players see the huge disparities in wealth between rugby stars of today that make it overseas and even the most talented soccer players of the 1980s.