Belau / Maryanne Force.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Force, Maryanne, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Ethnology--Palau.

Ethnology.

Palau--Description and travel.

Palau.

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Place of Publication:

New Haven, Conn : Human Relations Area Files, 2011.

Summary:

This collection of 16 documents covers a wide range of ethnographic information collected in 1940s to 1990s about the Belauans. The oldest available ethnographic information on Belauan culture and society in the collection was compiled by Augustin Krämer, a German ethnographer who visited Belau and neighboring islands in the early 1880s. Originally published in German in 1900, this document provides important information relating to traditional history, status and role of chiefs, kinship stem, family life, gender and sexuality, property inheritance, and crime and social control. The best general introduction to Belauan culture and society are the works of anthropologist H.G. Barnett. Together, these works describe several themes, including child care and development, women's status, economic activities, reciprocity and other forms of exchange, marriage and family relations, social personality, religion and recreation, as observed in the late 1940s. R.W. Force further enriched the information from 1940s with two books published based on fieldwork undertaken in 1954-1971. One of these books focuses on leadership and culture change. The other describes and analysis Belauan kinship. The remaining documents in the collection provide in-depth analysis of other themes, including changes in Belauan social structure as observed in 1970-1983; the dynamics of political life; traditional history and inter-village relations; money and the morality of exchange; social change at the family and community levels such as the impacts of war on family ties and shared cultural ideals, the ways traditional stories and mythologies are used in contemporary political life, and the rise of alcohol drinking and domestic violence; practices associated with the Belauan money-raising custom of ocheraol, an institution for mutual help by which a person asks relatives and in-laws to contribute money often to be used for constructing house or purchasing other key assets; and the effects of the Compact of Free Association agreement between the United States and Belau.

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.