Academia-Politics Collisions in the Aftermath of a Coup: A Fijian Encounter

Abstract

As the previous chapters have exemplified, the connections between the world of politics and that of research, particularly social research, are numerous and take on many different forms, depending on the objectives and interests at stake. Different as they may be, though, in many or most cases the connections concerned are structural, either as a result of deliberate structuring and organizational linkages being sought or developed, or structural in the sense that they constitute largely habitual and experientially-based modes of relating to each other from the two spheres of involvement. Within the latter category, reciprocal orientations between politics and research may be positive and mutually supportive, negative and antagonistic, or variable and mixed, depending on the nature of the issues up for political action, the kind of research scrutiny pursued and the assessments that follow. Nonetheless, in any such instances research–politics relationships by and large conform to the roles and expectations normally associated with different institutional engagements in this area, carrying structural features marked by basic continuities and predictability.