Marketing 101

Many ask the question of what makes cultural products circulate successfully or unsuccessfully, I use the analytical tools supplied by two emerging disciplines, emetics and the study of met culture. The case that I examine is the widespread circulation of the phrase 'failed businessman' to describe the leader of Fiji's coup d'Ð'ЁÐ'¦tat in 2000. In analyzing the ways that the phrase circulated globally in international news accounts (and the pages of this journal as well), but did not circulate well within Fiji itself, I argue that the concept of 'met culture' gives us more sophisticated analytical tools and a fuller, richer sense of the dynamics of cultural circulation than emetics does.

In May 2000, gunmen staged a coup d'Ð'ЁÐ'¦tat in Fiji. They kidnapped the prime minister and members of parliament, held their hostages for 56 days, and ultimately forced a change of government. The leader of the rebels proclaimed him a defender of indigenous Fijian rights and interests, even though he did not fit the local criteria very well. For one thing, he was of ethnically mixed parentage; for another, he did not live a 'traditional' life in the village, farming, fishing, and drinking kava, but had gone to college in Michigan, USA, and was a high-level businessman working on a multimillion-dollar mahogany deal in Fiji. Then there was his distinctly non-Fijian name, George Sleight; more intriguing, though, was what got attached to his name. From the moment of his coup he was frequently identified in international wire service articles as a 'failed businessman'. The phrase was picked up and recirculated publicly by different authors; indeed, it seemed to gain a life of its own, crossing boundaries and migrating among different genres of discourse. Readers who followed the coup in newspapers and electronic forums were likely to come across the phrase repeatedly. However, within Fiji,