American Anthropology in Micronesia: An Assessment

Chapter Four: “Partial Connections”: Kinship and Social Organization in Micronesia

107 C HAPTER FO UR “Partial Connections”: Kinship and Social Organization in Micronesia Mac Marshall According to recent work by Marilyn Strathern (1991), Papua New Guinea highlands societies can be seen as variants of each other as a result of people’s communications and contacts with one another. In these communications , Highlanders draw from a pool of ideas that is always expanding and contracting, as new ideas are substituted for old and circulate among the interlinked societies. Though she discussed what she calls a “kind of conventional repertoire,” Strathern rejected the idea of a regional highlands culture in which every society is “a variation on the same theme” (1991, 72–73), emphasizing instead the “partial connections” that exist among different populations over time. Thus there is a set of social and cultural themes drawn from a common but ever-changing store of ideas, variously combined and recombined in different societies over time. Like the societies of the Papua New Guinea highlands, Micronesian societies may be thought of as “complex parts and uneven outgrowths of one another. If they are connected, they are only partially so” (Strathern 1991, 54). I use Strathern’s perspective to examine kinship and social organization in Micronesia . I focus on the general set of themes from which local social forms developed rather than try to specify each and every different combination that developed over time as ideas and objects moved among the different Micronesian populations. While I see Micronesian societies as “partially connected” in Strathern’s sense, it seems clear that over the years Micronesians have drawn on a conventional cultural repertoire—a common pool of ideas (including 108 MAC MA RSH ALL similar colonial experiences)—as they crafted the different sociocultural systems that exist from island to island today. In this chapter I address seven intersecting topics or themes that allow for a discussion of significant debates in the literature on kinship and social organization . This also permits an evaluation of the theoretical and methodological contributions to the wider discipline by anthropologists who have worked in Micronesia. The seven major topics are: (1) siblingship; (2) systems of kinship and descent; (3) adoption, fosterage, and ritual kinship; (4) the links among kinship, land, and food; (5) marriage systems and practices; (6) incest taboos; and (7) postmarital residence rules. In organizing my contribution in this way, certain closely related and relevant topics necessarily will receive only passing mention, and some subjects will not be discussed at all.1 THE CONVENTIONAL MICRONESIAN CULTURAL AND SOCIAL REPERTOIRE At a very general level it is possible to identify a conventional repertoire that provides a framework of “Micronesian-ness.” This repertoire is found throughout the Caroline Islands, the Marshall Islands, and Palau, but it is not represented in the contemporary Marianas (with the exceptions of the Carolinian population on Saipan and the communities of recent immigrants from elsewhere in Micronesia that are now established on Guam and Saipan). As is well known, Chamorro culture was radically altered during the Spanish conquest in the seventeenth century, thus moving it away from the conventional repertoire of Micronesian culture.2 From the perspective of kinship and social organization several elements make up the conventional Micronesian repertoire, though these elements may have developed into particular specific forms from one island to the next. Throughout Micronesia, islands were divided into what usually are called districts in the literature, and these districts are major components of local social organization. Districts are named geographical entities occupied by members of named, ranked, nonlocalized, exogamous matriclans. The ranking of these clans is based on their putative order of settlement on the island and subsequent victories or defeats in interisland warfare, and their hereditary leaders hold positions in the traditional political order. These clans are divided into localized, property-holding matrilineages in most cases, with the following exceptions: the contemporary Chamorro (Spoehr 1954) and contemporary Kosraens (Ritter 1980, 770);3 on the two Polynesian outliers of Nukuoro and Kinship and Social Organization 109 Kapingamarangi (Carroll 1966; Lieber 1968b); on Yap (Labby 1976a; Schneider 1984); and on Pingelap (Damas 1979, 1981; Schneider 1980) and Mokil (Weckler 1953). The Chamorro, Kosraens, Nukuoro, and Kapingamarangi have cognatic systems of descent; Mokil is patrilineal; and Yap and Pingelap are reported to have double descent, although this remains a matter of debate (see further discussion below). Hence Micronesian social organization is usually constructed around matrilineages composed of descent lines that typically form the basis...