American Anthropology in Micronesia: An Assessment

Chapter Six: Ethnicity and Identity in Micronesia

197 CHA PTER SI X Ethnicity and Identity in Micronesia Lin Poyer In the last fifteen years, issues concerning ethnicity and personal and group identity have come to occupy an increasingly central place in anthropological theory. Ethnicity and identity studies have engaged a growing number of Pacific scholars, particularly those working in the new nations of Melanesia (e.g., Gewertz and Errington 1991; Keesing 1992; Larcom 1990; Pomponio 1992; Watson 1990; G. White 1991) and in such multiethnic societies as Hawai‘i, New Zealand, and Fiji (e.g., Dominy 1990; Hanson 1989; Hazlehurst 1993; Lal 1986; Linnekin 1983). Indeed, studies from the Pacific Islands have contributed to a range of issues related to cultural identity (e.g., A. Howard 1990; M. Howard 1989a; Jolly 1992; Keesing 1991; Keesing and Tonkinson 1982; Linnekin 1990; Linnekin and Poyer 1990a; Trask 1991). Illustrating this, the contributors to Jocelyn Linnekin and Lin Poyer’s edited collection, Cultural Identity and Ethnicity in the Pacific (1990a), explicitly related work on Oceanic constructions of identity to general theoretical issues in the study of ethnicity. The volume presented Pacific examples of the cultural construction of community identities; chapter authors recognized that Pacific Islanders have different models of personal and group identity, that ethnicity is linked with history, and that analysis of these topics must include symbolic as well as material correlates of community identity. Three chapters deal with areas of Micronesia: Kapingamarangi and Pohnpei (Lieber 1990), Pulap and Chuuk (Flinn 1990), and Sapwuahfik (Poyer 1990). The Micronesian studies in this recent volume on ethnicity theory reveal a line of thought that can be traced to post–World War II applied anthropolo- 198 LIN POY ER gists concerned with “problems” of minorities in the region’s population centers . Following the Coordinated Investigation of Micronesian Anthropology (cima), and overlapping with the work of district anthropologists, the 1950s and 1960s saw a new generation of researchers enter Micronesia. Like their predecessors, many were both problem-solving applied anthropologists and academic scholars; their writings began to link Micronesian ethnography more directly to contemporary topics in anthropological theory. Reflecting current developments in anthropology, the postwar decades saw applications of cognitive and cultural analyses to Micronesian cases. In recent years, symbolic approaches have intersected with history and political economy in the study of cultural similarities and differences (cf. Hanlon, chap. 2 and Petersen, chap. 5). In this review, I describe the origins of American anthropology’s study of Micronesian ethnicity in the postwar context and trace the development of studies of cultural identity through the 1990s. This chapter addresses two related intellectual issues: first, interaction among neighboring populations (the sociological study of ethnic relations), and second, internal and external perceptions of differences among populations (the cultural study of group identity). Inquiries into the study of differences among peoples in Micronesia reveal systematic changes in the language used to write about them. As Micronesian studies kept pace with broader theoretical developments, writing about ethnic issues decreased for a time in favor of writing in terms of “culture.” The subject of ethnicity spoke to differential power relations and entailed both political and economic analysis; it was thus appropriate for examinations of local policy and administrative issues. By contrast, “culture” spoke to a global professional scholarly audience for anthropological theory and, until recently, has had relatively minor practical spin-off. These paradigmatic shifts followed trends in anthropological theory, but also reflected the ever changing relations between Americans and Micronesians, as well as altered relations among Micronesians themselves. BACKGROUND To understand ethnicity in American Micronesia, it is necessary to begin well before World War II. How islanders constructed cultural sameness and difference —that is, ethnic distinctions—before the era of Spanish contact remains a matter for discussion and is largely unknowable. Yet it is clear that as soon as European concepts of ethnicity entered the Pacific, they interacted with local Ethnicity and Identity in Micronesia 199 realities to produce new sensibilities about islander vs. non-islander identities, and about differences among islanders. Spanish and Germans, through formal colonial policy, and British, Americans, and others, through less formal interactions , constructed groupings of what they saw as similar island populations, naming them in accordance with their own purposes.1 It is beyond the scope of this chapter to explore the seventeenth to nineteenth century constructions of ethnic groups through the interaction of indigenous and European categories . However, a brief discussion of the ethnic categories operative in Micronesia immediately...