Under Heaven's Brow: Pre-Christian Religious Tradition in Chuuk (review)

Ward H Goodenough makes two contributions in this book, one ethnographic and one theoretical. First, he brings together in one place much of the ethnographic materials on pre-Christian, precolonial religious belief for Chuuk Lagoon (dating to the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries) that have been collected by several ethnographers. Large amounts of his own previously unpublished ethnographic data is included. He hopes that bringing all of these together into one published source will benefit the people of Chuuk (who have no other written record of many pre-Christian/precolonial beliefs and practices) and also the community of Micronesian scholars and historians who might otherwise have to search a wide variety of different sources, some not previously available in English, for the same material. Much of these original data are presented in several useful appendixes.

His theoretical contribution presents a "functional" approach to the comparative study of religious belief and practice, after Malinowski, using the materials from Chuuk as an illustration. A functional view of religious beliefs and practices sees them as addressing the emotionally laden needs and concerns surrounding the maintenance, repair, and transformation of people's inner senses of self and their social selves (ie, how they and others see their various social identities, including roles and reputation) across social contexts and across the life course. These senses of self are the personal and social products of everyday participation in local social life. Goodenough recognizes that religion and ritual can also be about imposing a self-definition on others through the exercise of power and domination, but this is not the emphasis in his analysis.

In order to illustrate this theoretical lens in the study of religion, Goodenough must first present a fairly comprehensive summary of local social organization, everyday family production, and typical developmental experiences across the life course. He must then document how fundamental needs and concerns associated with the personal and social construction of self come out of the everyday experiences within these aspects of local social life. Finally, he must show how the religious beliefs and practices he describes address those needs and concerns.

Toward these ends, the book opens with summary chapters that describe the social organization of property and community in Chuuk at the turn of the twentieth century and the stereotypical expectations among kin. Chapters concerning the widespread psychological needs and concerns associated with personhood and self follow. Goodenough's efforts in these latter chapters are greatly helped by the ethnographic and psychological materials collected by a number of psychological anthropologists who worked in Chuuk Lagoon in the decades following World War II.

Based on his review of the ethnographic and psychological materials collected in Chuuk, Goodenough identifies a number of core concerns surrounding a person's sense of self-that-is-right-with-the-world (ie, well-being). These include the following: avoiding hunger, avoiding giving offense to spirits and demons who can cause illness, having dependency needs met by family and community elders, managing anger and hostility, controlling personal desire, and being respectful and generous to others while also being brave and effective in accomplishing tasks and achieving personal goals.

The succeeding chapters describe a wide variety of beliefs and practices. First, three chapters orient the reader to the locally recognized gods and spirits, their origins and the origins of the people, and the local beliefs in the souls of the living and the spirits of the dead. Eleven very rich chapters follow, discussing rituals involving spirit mediums, divination, collecting and distributing fish and other foods, health and illness, crafts and construction, courtship, communicating with food, sorcery, war, itang (political priests), and the telling of morality tales.

The book concludes with the observation that ritual behavior in Chuuk is not about addressing a need or concern over salvation in life after death—even though there was and isa...