Download or read book Traditional Micronesian Societies written by Glenn Petersen and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Traditional Micronesian Societies explores the extraordinary successes of the ancient voyaging peoples who first settled the Central Pacific islands some two thousand years ago. They and their descendants devised social and cultural adaptations that have enabled them to survive—and thrive—under the most demanding environmental conditions. The dispersed matrilineal clans so typical of Micronesian societies ensure that every individual, every local family and lineage, and every community maintain close relations with the peoples of many other islands. When hurricanes and droughts or political struggles force a group to move, they are sure of being taken in by kin residing elsewhere. Out of this common theme, shared patterns of land tenure, political rule, philosophy, and even personal character have flowed. To describe and explain Micronesian societies, the author begins with an overview of the region, including a brief consideration of the scholarly debate about whether Micronesia actually exists as a genuine and meaningful region. This is followed by an account of how Micronesia was originally settled, how its peoples adapted to conditions there, and how several basic adaptations diffused throughout the islands. He then considers the fundamental matters of descent (ideas about how individuals and groups are bound together through ties of kinship) and descent groups and the closely interlinked subjects of households, families, land, and labor. Because women form the core of the clans, their roles are particularly respected and their contributions to social life honored. Socio-political life, art, religion, and values are discussed in detail. Finally, the author examines a number of exceptions to these common Micronesian patterns of social life. Traditional Micronesian Societies illustrates the idiosyncrasies of individual Micronesian communities and celebrates the Micronesians’ shared ability to adapt, survive, and thrive over millennia. At a time when global climate change has seized our imaginations, the Micronesians’ historical ability to cope with their watery environment is of the greatest relevance.

Download or read book A Chuukese Theory of Personhood written by Lothar Käser and published by . This book was released on 2016-12-31 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: People in non-western societies conceive of personhood and personality in ways which overlap with but are not at all identical with western (European, American) conceptions. In their desire to comprehend the concept of man belonging to different societies and cultures ethnographers mostly started from the features defining their own concept of man, including particularly their own concept of the soul, and looked for comparable elements in the culture they studied. In this way they did indeed find material which when pieced together produced something which had similarities with their own concept of man. But they were for the most part blind to other features which defined over and above that notions of body, soul, mind and spirit in the cultural setting they studied. Moreover their knowledge of the language was limited. Often the result was a description containing serious gaps, possibly only contributing non-essentials, falsely evaluating essentials, and in extreme cases leading to the conclusion that the foreign concept of body, soul, mind and spirit was somehow identical with that of Europe and the West. This study about the inhabitants of Chuuk (Federated States of Micronesia) in the Western Pacific is different. It starts strictly from the features defining Chuukese concepts of personhood using the vocabulary and other features of their language in order to work out the so-called emic categories the islanders use to make sense of the world which is their living space. The author is professor of anthropology. He spent five years of fieldwork in the South Pacific, and has visited Africa, Asia and South America for research on many occasions.

Download or read book Counting in Chuukese written by Gerard Aflague and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2016-09-12 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Counting in Chuukese is a fun and colorful counting book. Through the use of vibrant imagery, this book teaches children to count in Chuukese, which is one of many languages of the people of Micronesia. In Chuukese, each different type of thing or object must be counted using a different numbering system, according to the shape of the object being counted. In this book, we will teach you five of the many counting systems used in Chuuk. The systems we will teach include: counting general things, people/animals, round objects, long objects, and flat objects.

Download or read book Indigenous Literatures from Micronesia written by Evelyn Flores and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2019-04-30 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For the first time, poetry, short stories, critical and creative essays, chants, and excerpts of plays by Indigenous Micronesian authors have been brought together to form a resounding—and distinctly Micronesian—voice. With over two thousand islands spread across almost three million square miles of the Pacific Ocean, Micronesia and its peoples have too often been rendered invisible and insignificant both in and out of academia. This long-awaited anthology of contemporary indigenous literature will reshape Micronesia’s historical and literary landscape. Presenting over seventy authors and one hundred pieces, Indigenous Literatures from Micronesia features nine of the thirteen basic language groups, including Palauan, Chamorro, Chuukese, I-Kiribati, Kosraean, Marshallese, Nauruan, Pohnpeian, and Yapese. The volume editors, from Micronesia themselves, have selected representative works from throughout the region—from Palau in the west, to Kiribati in the east, to the global diaspora. They have reached back for historically groundbreaking work and scouted the present for some of the most cited and provocative of published pieces and for the most promising new authors. Richly diverse, the stories of Micronesia’s resilient peoples are as vast as the sea and as deep as the Mariana Trench. Challenging centuries-old reductive representations, writers passionately explore seven complex themes: “Origins” explores creation, foundational, and ancestral stories; “Resistance” responds to colonialism and militarism; “Remembering” captures diverse memories and experiences; “Identities” articulates the nuances of culture; “Voyages” maps migration and diaspora; “Family” delves into interpersonal and community relationships; and “New Micronesia” gathers experimental, liminal, and cutting-edge voices. This anthology reflects a worldview unique to the islands of Micronesia, yet it also connects to broader issues facing Pacific Islanders and indigenous peoples throughout the world. It is essential reading for anyone interested in Pacific, indigenous, diasporic, postcolonial, and environmental studies and literatures.

Download or read book Summoning the Powers Beyond written by Jay Dobbin and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2011-09-30 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Summoning the Powers Beyond collects and reconstructs the old religions of preindustrial Micronesia. It draws mostly from written sources from the turn of the nineteenth century and the period immediately after World War II: reports of the Hamburg South Sea Expedition of 1908–1910, articles by German Roman Catholic missionaries in Micronesia included in the journal Anthropos, and reports by the Coordinated Investigation of Micronesian Anthropology (CIMA) and the American Board of Commissioners of the Foreign Missions (ABCFM). A detailed introduction and an overview of Micronesian religion are followed by separate chapters detailing religion in the Chuukic-speaking islands, Pohnpei, Kosrae, the Marshall Islands, Yap, Palau, Kiribati, and Nauru. The Chamorro-speaking group of the Marianas is omitted because lengthy periods of intense military and missionary activity eradicated most of the local religion. The Polynesian outliers Nukuoro and Kapingamarangi are discussed at the end primarily to underscore the contrasts between Polynesian and Micronesian religion. In a concluding chapter, the author highlights the similarities and differences between the areas within Micronesia and then attempts an appreciation or evaluation of Micronesia religion. Finally, he addresses the evidence of a tentative hypothesis that Micronesian religion is sufficiently different from that of Polynesia and Melanesia to justify the continued claim of a separate Micronesian religion.

Download or read book Trukese English Dictionary written by Ward Hunt Goodenough and published by American Philosophical Society. This book was released on 1990 with total page 590 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This second volume of the Trukese-English Dictionary supplements the first one, published in 1980. It provides an English-Trukese index or finderlist for the Trukese-English of the first volume & a concordance of roots, including what appear to be complex words that we cannot analyze into constituent elements. The Truk Dictionary Project was supported by the Nat. Science Found. (NSF), the Dept. of Ed. of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, the Univ. of Penna., & the Univ. of Hawaii. Illustration.

Download or read book Under Heaven s Brow written by Ward Hunt Goodenough and published by American Philosophical Society. This book was released on 2002 with total page 458 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For the people of Chuuk and for students of religion and Micronesian culture, this book pulls together and makes available in English the somewhat scattered published accounts (largely in German), along with Goodenough's own (as yet unpublished) information about religious beliefs and ritual practices in pre-Christian Chuuk. The materials are presented in a way that seeks to document and illustrate a particular approach, a functional one, to understanding the kinds of human concerns that give rise to religious behavior. Simply to describe traditional beliefs and rituals without the relevant social background information leaves the reader without any feeling for what were the emotional concerns, engendered by life in Chuukese society, that ritual practices helped people address. Ward Goodenough offers a theoretical introduction, the necessary background information about Chuuk and the ways in which members of Chuukese society experienced themselves and their fellows, the world view and overall set of beliefs providing the intellectual framework within which ritual practices were formulated and understood, and the various bodies of ritual practices. He concludes the book with a summary that pulls together how the rituals described appear to related to the emotional concerns that growing up and living in Chuuk tended to create.

Download or read book Micronesian Legends written by Bo Flood and published by Bess Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Legends from the Northern Mariana Islands and Guam, Palau, Yap, Chuuk, Pohnpei, Kosrae, and the Republic of the Marshall Islands are interwoven with historical interludes and beautiful woodcut illustrations.

Download or read book Engaged Language Policy and Practices written by Kathryn A. Davis and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2016-12-08 with total page 147 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Engaged Language Policy and Practices re-envisions language policy and planning as an engaged approach, drawing on and portraying theoretical and educational equity perspectives. It calls for the right to language policy-making in which all concerned—communities, parents, students, educators, and advocates—collectively imagine new strategies for resisting global neoliberal marginalization of home languages and cultural identities. This book subsequently emphasizes the means by which engaged dialectic processes can inform and clarify language policy-making decisions that promote equity. In other words, rather than descriptions of outcomes, the authors emphasize the need to detail the means by which local/regional actors resist and transform inequitable policies. These descriptions of processes thereby provide all actors with ideological, pedagogical, and equity policy tools that can inform situated school and community policy-making. This book depicts ways in which engaged language policy embodies the intersection of critical inquiry, participant involvement, and ongoing engaged language planning processes. It further offers an alternative to the traditional top-down approach to language education policy-making. Engaged Language Policy and Practices is essential reading for scholars, teachers, students, communities, and others concerned with worldwide language and identity equity.

Download or read book Remaking Micronesia written by David L. Hanlon and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 1998-03-01 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: America's efforts at economic development in the Caroline, Mariana, and Marshall Islands proved to be about transforming in dramatic fashion people who occupied real estate deemed vital to American strategic concerns. Called "Micronesians," these island people were regarded as other, and their otherness came to be seen as incompatible with American interests. And so, underneath the liberal rhetoric that surrounded arguments, proposals, and programs for economic development was a deeper purpose. America's domination would be sustained by the remaking of these islands into places that had the look, feel, sound, speed, smell, and taste of America - had the many and varied plans actually succeeded. However, the gap between intent and effect holds a rich and deeply entangled history. Remaking Micronesia stands as an important, imaginative, much needed contribution to the study of Micronesia, American policy in the Pacific, and the larger debate about development. It will be an important source of insight and critique for scholars and students working at the intersection of history, culture, and power in the Pacific.

Download or read book The Languages of the World written by Kenneth Katzner and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2002-09-11 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This third edition of Kenneth Katzner's best-selling guide to languages is essential reading for language enthusiasts everywhere. Written with the non-specialist in mind, its user-friendly style and layout, delightful original passages, and exotic scripts, will continue to fascinate the reader. This new edition has been thoroughly revised to include more languages, more countries, and up-to-date data on populations. Features include: *information on nearly 600 languages *individual descriptions of 200 languages, with sample passages and English translations *concise notes on where each language is spoken, its history, alphabet and pronunciation *coverage of every country in the world, its main language and speaker numbers *an introduction to language families

Download or read book The First Taint of Civilization written by Francis X. Hezel and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2021-05-25 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Hezel writes clearly and with erudition and commands an impressive body of information. His book is a tour de force.... Not only will it be read eagerly by Pacific scholars, but it should find a wide audience among well-educated Micronesians hungry for greater understanding of how their islands have become ensnared in world geopolitics.” —Ethnohistory

Download or read book Namoluk Beyond The Reef written by Mac Marshall and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-02-28 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This case study examines emigrants from Namoluk Atoll in the Eastern caroline islands of Micronesia, in the Western pacific. Most members of the Namoluk Community (cbon Namoluk) do not currently live there. some 60 percent of them have moved to chuuk, Guam, Hawai'i, or the mainland United states (such as Eureka, California). The question is how (and why) those expatriates contine to think of themselves as cbon Namoluk, amd behave accodingly, despite being a far-flung network of people, with inevitable erosions of shared language and culture.

Download or read book Human written by Robert Winston and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 978 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Humanis a comprehensive, highly illustrated account of what makes us what we are- how we evolved, how our bodies develop and work, and how we think and behave both as individuals and as members of society. It not only examines the qualities we all share and that define us as a species, but also highlights the fascinating diversity of human society and culture. Human is genuinely unique. No other book covers all aspects of human life, from evolution and biology to society, culture, and the future of our species Professor Robert Winston is chief UK consultant, backed up by a team of authoritative contributors and consultants from a wide variety of fields The immense variety in society and culture worldwide is revealed through comparative profiles of beliefs, customs, rituals, and the arts Structure and workings of the human body and mind are fully illustrated and explained Panels throughout the book highlight fascinating facts, environmental and health issues, and cutting-edge developments

Download or read book My Urohs written by Emelihter Kihleng and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2008 with total page 74 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first collection of poetry by a Pohnpeian poet, Emelihter Kihleng's My Urohs is described by distinguished Samoan writer and artist Albert Wendt as "refreshingly innovative and compelling, a new way of seeing ourselves in our islands, an important and influential addition to our [Pacific] literature."

Download or read book Linguistics Student s Handbook written by Professor Laurie Bauer and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book that tells you all the things you felt you were expected to know about linguistics, but were afraid to ask about.*What do you know about Burushaski and Miwok?*What's the difference between paradigmatic and syntagmatic?*What is E-language?*What is a language?*Do parenthetical and non-restrictive mean the same thing?*How do you write a bibiliographic entry for a work you have not seen?Every student who has asked these questions needs this book. A compendium of useful things for linguistics students to know, from the IPA chart to the Saussurean dichotomies, this book will be the constant companion of anyone undertaking studies of linguistics. Part reference work, part revision guide, and with tables providing summary information on some 280 languages, the book provides a new learning tool as a supplement to the usual textbooks and glossaries.

Download or read book The New Shape of Old Island Cultures written by Francis X. Hezel and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The years since World War II have brought unprecedented social change to Micronesia. Now, drawing on over four decades of experience living and working in the region, the author assess the most striking changes to have swept over the islands since the 1950s.