| In this work I examine some of the changes in Marshallese society over the past on and one-half centuries, giving attention to both underlying continuities in Marshallese culture and practice and the changing contexts in which they participate. I adopt a dual focus, looking on one side at events and representations within Marshallese social spaces at levels of both persons and polities, and on the other side at concepts and metaphors through which non-Marshallese perceive, analyses, and represent Marshallese actions.; My study is based upon fieldwork in two fieldwork projects covering three locations: a study of a Marshallese immigrant community in Orange County, California, and research on a fisheries project spanning urban Majuro Atoll and rural Arno Atoll in the Marshall Islands. Both projects combined participant observation, focused interviews, census and survey data collection, and archival research. Chapters 4 and 6 of this dissertation are previously published reports on these projects, and Chapter 3 has been submitted for publication in an edited volume. Detailed results are presented in each of the substantive chapters.; European and Asian states and peoples, pursuing projects variously directed at accumulating wealth, souls, territory, and political power, have introduced many new institutions to Marshallese society, in the process constructing Marshallese society out of the peoples and places of the Marshallese archipelago. Marshallese have largely accepted these introductions, if not always welcomed them, and adapted them to their own projects when possible, creating new options and extensions of Marshallese social space through the paths they have traced to new locations, statuses, and roles. Marshallese culture provides models for making sense of novel institutions and events, and templates that support flexible responses to the complexities and contingencies of their extended social space. At other times Marshallese have struggled against the impositions of outsiders, often with some success. In altering the projects of world powers, they have made their own mark on world history. At times victims of globalization, they are also its agents. Our understanding of Marshallese projects is often hindered by political and conceptual borders which break living systems into unsustainable fragments. |
