Many contemporary theorists and researchers are generating new insights into ethnic relations. There is urgent need to examine the relationship between ethnicity and development in all its manifold political, economic, and social dimensions. This essay aims to offer some empirical evidence and to generate some theoretical insights into the behaviour of the ethnic factor in the developmental experience of one Third World country, Fiji. The effort is undertaken in the belief that observation of individual country experiences can provide important building blocks for the construction of a wider theory on the connection between ethnicity and development. The essay begins with a discourse on and a definition of ethnicity.
Analysts define ethnicity in different ways to suit individual research needs.
The second component of ethnicity points to certain putative commonalities such as common language, religion, region, tradition, etc., or a multiple coincidence of several of these, which together can contribute to deep divisions in a state. These congruities of blood, speech, custom, and so on, are seen to have an ineffable, and at times, over-powering coerciveness in and of themselves. The primordial factors such as religion, race, language, custom, etc. It is not important that scientific evidence bears out the accuracy of group claims to these commonly apprehended bases of identity. Neither is it significant that the boundaries of these cleavages be always maintained consistently.