Ph.D. - Anthropology

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10125/592

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“Ko ‘emau nofo pē ‘eni ia ‘o pukepuke fonua” we are sitting here, tightly holding onto the land: Kava and fonua in Koʻolauloa
(University of Hawai'i at Manoa, 2025) Funaki, Sione; Tengan, Ty K.; Anthropology
The protective actions for Mauna Kea by the Kanaka Maoli in 2019 drew the support of local and other Indigenous communities from around Hawaiʻi. This movement was the catalyst that influenced the Kū Kiaʻi Kahuku movement that sought to protect the Kahuku community from the construction of industrial turbines in dangerously close proximity to the community. It was within these social and environmental justice movements that Kanaka Maoli and Tongan transindigenous solidarity was established not only through shared Moanan ancestry and loyalty to community, but also through Indigenous ceremony and epistemology such as common kava/ʻawa practices. Various studies have explored the sociocultural potency of kava and kava practices within different Moanan societies as well as the importance of kava in nurturing identity and sociospatial relationships in diasporic communities. In this dissertation I explore the different ways in which Tongans and Kanaka Maoli of the district of Koʻolauloa utilize kava/ʻawa practices to connect to the concept of fonua. For Tongans of Koʻolauloa, kava practices are a way to maintain a connection to the Tongan homeland while living in diaspora. They are also a way for local Tongans and Kanaka Maoli of Koʻolauloa to sustain an identity and connection with their home community such as Lāʻie. These kava practices were also essential in facilitating tauhi vā (nurturing of sociospatial relationships) but also in challenging colonial constructs of gender, family makeup, and family obligations. Kava practices were especially essential to generating transindigenous and/or hoa-solidarities that continued to challenge colonial and capitalist narratives of relationality. Kava practices of Koʻolauloa act as modern-day puʻuhonua, spaces of refuge and sanctuary that mediate the connection between people, the land, and each other. This work utilizes the Tā-Vā Theory of Reality as well as environmental/kava-centered frameworks, whereas Indigenous methodologies such as talanoa, noho a kupa, and tauhi fonua were utilized in interactions with the different kava groups and individuals to conduct talanoa and interview sessions with Tongan, Hawaiian, and Koʻolauloa kava users and community members. The stories and narratives told in this dissertation illustrate the importance of Indigenous practices and epistemologies in connecting people to the fonua as the land, people, and culture of the Moana, even while residing in diaspora. It is especially essential for Indigenous peoples like Tongans and Kanaka Maoli who continue to live in Hawaiʻi to utilize ʻawa practices as puʻuhonua to challenge dominant colonial capitalist notions of relationality.
Habitual activity induced musculoskeletal stress markers among prehistoric hunter-gather-fishers and farmers: A case study from Japan
(University of Hawai'i at Manoa, 2025) Atkins, Ashley Michelle; Bae, Christopher J.; Anthropology
The transition from fishing, hunting, and gathering to full time agriculture occurred at different times in different places throughout the world. The global shift from foraging to agriculture is widely recognized to have intensified physical stress on the human body. This dissertation examines musculoskeletal stress markers (MSM) to assess the impact of habitual activity on the skeleton during this transition in prehistoric Japan. By analyzing skeletal remains from Jomon hunter-gatherer-fishers, Yayoi farmers, and historical modern Japanese farmers, this dissertation investigates changes in biomechanical stress associated with shifting subsistence strategies and labor demands. This research uses a combination of a traditional scoring semi-quantitative method and an innovative three-dimensional quantitative methodology to enhance the precision of MSM assessment. The skeletal collections analyzed include well-preserved remains from 743 individuals from 24 archaeological sites across Japan. This research tests hypotheses related to increased physical stress with the intensification of rice paddy farming in Japan. The results indicate a considerable increase in MSM expression among Yayoi farmers compared to the Jomon hunter-gatherer-fishers, supporting the hypothesis that farming required greater physical stress. Furthermore, evidence suggests variation in MSM expression related to geographic location, with inland Yayoi groups displaying higher MSM levels than the coastal and riverine groups. This study contributes to bioarchaeology by refining methodologies for MSM assessment and providing data on the skeletal impacts of different subsistence strategies. The findings have broader implications for understanding skeletal adaptations to habitual activity across time and geographic regions. By using both semi-qualitative and quantitative approaches, this research advances the study of MSM and entheseal change.
Queering Japan: Transformational encounters within American fandom of Japanese popular culture
(University of Hawai'i at Manoa, 2025) Clyde, Deirdre Alison; Yano, Christine; Anthropology
Within the United States, recent years have seen a proliferation of gender identities thatresist and remix elements of what has traditionally been understood as “feminine” and “masculine.” This is seen in the emergence of not only such identificatory terms as "nonbinary," "genderfluid," and "agendered," but also new ways of being transgendered even among those who do express their gender identities along binary lines, as well as reinterpretations of femininity and masculinity among people who do identify with the gender they were assigned at birth. In 14 years of intermittent and sustained ethnographic work among members of American fandom subcultures dedicated to Japanese popular media--particularly anime (animation), manga (comic books), and Japanese street fashion trends such as gothic lolita--conducted at fan conventions as well as smaller local gatherings in both public and private spaces in person and online, I began to observe these identities, and the social attitudes that embrace them, nearly a decade before this phenomenon emerged on social media platforms and in academic settings. The character tropes and visual elements of manga and anime, particularly those inherited from Japan's fetishism of Europe and Euro-America during the modernization of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, are often used by gender dysphoric people and other self-identified gender misfits to forge new categories of identification, lifting them above the societal norms and expectations that they experience as oppressive, and which cause them psycho-emotional discomfort and distress. In particular, shōjo (girls') media's historical ethos of true love and the authentic self, coupled with a character aesthetic that has been historically influenced by the all-female Takarazuka theatre and the Taisho period that birthed it, provide LGBTQ fans and their allies with a symbolic framework, which they use to create a socially networked fantasy space in which elements of femininity and masculinity, previously seen as fixed, can be deconstructed and remodeled into new forms, granting fans the confidence to carry these discoveries into their everyday lives.
Embodiment and Precarity in Deep Seabed Mining: Extraction on the Blue Green Resource Frontier
(University of Hawai'i at Manoa, 2024) Harris, Lindsey; Mawyer, Alexander; Anthropology
The deep seabed and its resources remain tantalizing mysteries, not only in science fiction, but increasingly in scientific and technological inquiry. Recent interest in deep seabed mining in the seabed beyond national jurisdiction (the Area) in the Pacific Ocean has fluctuated since John Mero asserted the vast potential economic value of polymetallic nodules (Mero 1962), which some actors now view as a sustainable and ethical alternative to terrestrial mining. This dissertation argues that deep seabed mining has also continued to struggle to become a commercial industry in part because it is vulnerable to several different types of precarities: including the production of scientific and embodied knowledge about how to conduct offshore deep seabed mining fieldwork, the properties and topography of seabed, the resource, and related marine ecosystems; the attrition of deep seabed mining-experienced sub-contractors into other offshore regimes; the struggle to attract potential investors; the ongoing evolution of the regulatory bodies charged to administer the seabed and mineral resources in areas beyond national jurisdiction; the difficulty obtaining the social license to commence deep seabed mining; and long-term efficacy of capacity building training programs meant to provide individuals, especially those from developing countries, with jobs in an industry that has yet to fully form. This dissertation both builds upon existing literature defining precarity as the conditions by which harm is externalized upon communities such that they are disproportionately and systematically disenfranchised or exposed to violence and extends precarity to examine the myriad ways that stakeholders contend with and contest this proposed regime’s vulnerabilities to capital, personnel, and knowledge conditions. In doing so, this dissertation describes some of the ways that the production of unstable labor regimes is entangled with the wobbliness of corporate extraction regimes and ‘green’ investment on marine resource frontiers. This dissertation employs ‘nodal’ ethnography to follow deep seabed mining proponents and opponents from the floor of The International Seabed Authority's Assembly Room to the offshore labs of science teams producing data and technologies that make visible and possible different deep seabed mining futures.
Trauma, National Belonging, and Politics: The Cultural Production of North Korean Arrivals in South Korea Under the Cold War Legacy
(University of Hawai'i at Manoa, 2024) Shin, Hae Eun; Bae, Christopher J.; Anthropology
This dissertation examines how migrants develop and maintain a sense of national belonging to their country of birth while at the same time demonstrating their social belonging in their host country. Taking the case of North Korean arrivals (NKAs) in South Korea, I specifically focus on NKAs who engage in creative activities as their primary occupation, including poets, novelists, painters, web cartoonists, playwrights, film and theatre directors, and YouTube creators. Based on ethnographic fieldwork – through interviews and participant observation – conducted in South Korea between April 2021 and May 2022, this research analyzes how NKA cultural producers use their creative activities as a political medium in fulfilling their emotional obligations to their compatriots in North Korea. As trauma survivors of the dictatorship, NKA cultural producers seek a compassionate understanding of North Koreans from South Korean and global audiences, anticipating this will ultimately lead to change in North Korea. To this end, NKA cultural producers demonstrate their political alignment with South Korean audiences by manifesting an identification with anti-communist ultra-conservatism. I analyze how NKA cultural producers strategically exploit two discourses – those of Korean ethnic nationalism and Cold War ideology – in order to be accepted as co-ethnics and not lose the South Korean audience’s support. I conclude that NKA cultural producers stabilize their political and social positioning in South Korea while expressing resistance to the North Korean dictatorship through their creative works as North Korean expatriates.
Hōʻale Ka Lepo Pōpolo: The Sociopolitical Evolution of Molokaʻi, Hawaiʻi, An Ethnohistoric-Archaeological Study of the Manawai Heiau Complex
(University of Hawai'i at Manoa, 2024) Lima, Cheney-Ann Pulama; Kirch, Patrick V.; Tengan, Ty K.; Anthropology
In recent decades, archaeologists have made significant strides in unraveling the intricate processes that contributed to the development of the ancient Hawaiian society. This study delves into Molokaʻi’s sociopolitical evolution, an island whose significance has often been overlooked within the broader narrative of the archipelago’s complex history. Through a comparative analysis of ethnohistoric records, archaeological correlates, moʻolelo (oral traditions), and moʻokūʻauhau (genealogies), this research constructs a chronological account of Molokaʻi’s ancient past. Furthermore, this research investigates the role of religion and ideology as proxies of societal evolution through the archaeological and ethnohistorical analysis of the Manawai Heiau Complex, a temple cluster located on the eastern end of the island. By examining these interconnected series of events, social dynamics, ideological beliefs, and environmental influences that have shaped the island’s development, this study illuminates the nuanced tempo of political change on Molokaʻi. From A.D. 1244 to 1670, the island’s sociopolitical evolution unfolded gradually, reflecting long-term societal transformations. While these transformations were marked by distinct periods and characterized by shifts in the political landscape, they nevertheless occurred steadily over time. This trajectory, however, was disrupted between A.D. 1670 and 1710 when the island experienced abrupt shifts in governance structures and power dynamics. These punctuated bursts led to a period of conflict, resistance, and ultimately, the annexation of Molokaʻi by its larger neighboring islands. The analysis of these events and the preceding circumstances, as presented in this study, contributes to a more holistic discussion of social complexity and the emergence of archaic states in Hawaiʻi.
Cultivating for the Sun Kings: A Land Use History of the Pre-Angkor to Angkor Period Political Transition at Prasat Basaet in the Battambang Region of Cambodia (6th–15th Centuries CE)
(University of Hawai'i at Manoa, 2023) France, Phoebe; Stark, Miriam; Anthropology
This dissertation investigates the relationship between political change and agricultural production strategies in the Battambang region of Cambodia during the political transition from the Pre-Angkor (c.500–800 CE) to the Angkor periods (c.800–1430 CE). It looks at the relationship between Angkorian state development and agricultural practices of the communities surrounding the 11th century Angkorian temple of Prasat Basaet. While the role of intensive agricultural production in archaic states has been identified as a salient topic in archaeological research, with increased production necessary for sustaining cities and non-producing elites, the actual trajectories of agricultural change have rarely been demonstrated using empirical data. Tracking trajectories of agricultural change related to early state development can depict the long-term processes involved in the development of social and economic inequality and ecological change. This study uses phytolith, soil chemistry, chronological, and spatial data from the landscape surrounding Prasat Basaet to investigate the location and mode of agricultural practices across the region during the Pre-Angkor and Angkor periods in relationship to the expanding temple economy. The phytolith analysis in this project with support from allied lines of data identified that both intensive and extensive agricultural strategies were employed in the landscape around Prasat Basaet during the Pre-Angkor and Angkor periods. Rice agriculture expanded and likely intensified during the Pre-Angkor period in relationship to the installation of temple economies, and expansion increased during the Angkor era to replace extensive strategies and open forest management. The changes in production strategies were part of political and economic changes that took place at the local level, and involved displays of power through ceremonial activities involving local elites with ritual functions that tied them to Pre-Angkorian and Angkorian kingship. These results tell us that the intensification and expansion of rice production was not just an Angkorian-era phenomenon, or one confined to the capital city. Local Pre-Angkorian elites in provincial Battambang had the power to dictate land use and mobilize labor to meet local temple and state tribute demands, and the processes of the expansion of rice cultivation associated with temple economies began during the Pre-Angkor period and increased in scale during the Angkor period. The findings also tell us that provincial farmers were reliant on extensive production practices through the Angkor period, which demonstrates that diverse agricultural strategies and not just specialization in rice were a part of both Pre- Angkorian and Angkorian economic organization. The outcomes point towards a longer-term local trajectory of political and agricultural change related to rice agriculture and forest management, and suggest a need to look at earlier political and economic developments to understand the course of change towards complexity and state-building in Cambodia, which cannot be attributed to the adoption of hindic-inspired temples and ideas. As the first study of phytoliths in a landscape context in Cambodia, this study contributes to the still emerging field of global comparative phytolith research by identifying and documenting the local phytolith forms found and their diagnostic specificity.
Qualia in Markets: Ruili's Jadeite Marketplaces in the China-Myanmar Borderland
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2023) Ma, Yi; Golub, Alex; Anthropology
This dissertation examines how qualia, qualities, and quality-like variables of commodities, are both constitutive of a market and produced by it. By looking at the heterogeneity of a market, this research also explains how a concrete market is configured, practiced and negotiated by a diverse group of actors and agents such as states, market organizations/unions, firms, trading specialists, and street peddlers, and the specified commodities. I present my ethnographic study of Ruili, a jadeite marketplace in Southwest China’s border with Myanmar, and I argue that “qualia” (Munn 1986) as qualities, and quality-like variables of commodities, in the process of market practice, are constantly made and remade through market agencement, the mutuality of heterogenous actors and agents in a market setting (Callon 1990, 1998, 2021). In practice, the “qualia” of jadeite, I suggest, are constitutive of market management and the economics/knowledge of the market (Callon 1990,1998). This research contributes to the study of markets through ethnography of a jadeite marketplace explains how a market is configured and experienced through a set of qualitative dimensions (commodity qualia are realized in addition to labor costs and scarcity as the economics of jadeite), and in turn how these qualitative dimensions are reproduced through market agencement---the constant process of market practice by heterogenous actors and agents in a spatial-temporal framework. In this process, these qualitative dimensions are constantly quantified through commodity pricing, daring modes of business and life (betting), as mastered as expertise and specialization in market management. By combing qualitative dimensions and market agencement, “qualia in markets” provides one way to understand the alignment of human and nonhuman actors, the interplay of structures (Giddens 1984) and the agency of different actors (Callon 1986a, 1998, 2021). It contributes to the epistemology of markets and exemplifies how the anthropology of markets can provide fruitful ways to understand our world. In my analysis, I show how agents price and judge jadeite commodities based on the physical qualities and appearances of jadeite stone, ie. the “qualia of jadeite,” as one way to understand “contemporary jade culture in a market” in Ruili in Chapter 3. Grading and pricing based on preferred qualities and appearances of jadeite commodities (economic valuation), which I also frame as the knowledge/economics of jadeite, is at the core of how this market operates and is set up on the ground. In turn, given the physical characteristics that raw jadeite stones exude and possess, such as their non-perishable character, jadeite commodities are sold, stored, and displayed accordingly to constitute a spatial structure of “qualia in markets” in Chapter 2. Further, the potential of raw jadeite stones that appears as quality-like variables such as the “skin/crust” and color and veins on the surfaces that exude information about whether raw jadeite commodities might be desirable, have further configured a type of “betting” life in Ruili’s jadeite markets in chapter 4. If reading and assessing jadeite stones is an individual practice, are there any market standards? How do traders negotiate in market practice? Chapter 5 further shows a broad range of these valuation criteria, ie. the qualia of jadeite, is further constituted through bargaining as a market mechanism in Ruili. Chapter 5 also shows how bargaining in Ruili’s marketplace is associated with norms and rituals in wider structures of economic life in Ruili. In Chapter 6, I illustrate how the arrival of new e-commerce in jadeite business has reshaped market management in Ruili, with market organizations have playing a “visible hand” in market regulation. The qualia of jadeite commodities are constituted through the expertise and specialization in market organizations. Here trading specialists are conferred expertise by mastering the “knowledge/economic of jadeite” through their extended years of practice which is crucial in the process of market management. Through “qualia in markets” that heterogenous actors and agents are mutually dependent upon, this dissertation shows the alignment of human and nonhuman actors and the interplay of individuals and institutional practice. “Qualia in markets” could be an exemplary form of “reciprocal conception” as framed by Zygmunt Bauman (2002 in Beck and Beck-Gernsheim’s book): “Society shaping the individuality of its members and the individuals forming society out of their life actions while pursuing strategies plausible and feasible within the socially woven web of their dependencies” (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim’s 2002: 14). I intend for this research to evoke more theoretical discussions about qualia and markets, and also showcase how the anthropology of markets can provide fruitful ways of understanding our world.
Deliberate Noncitizenship: A Generational Project Of The Bamar Muslim Families In The Thai-Burmese Borderland
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2023) Intarat, Phianphachong; Padwe, Jonathan; Anthropology
The Bamar Muslims are a group of Muslim minorities in Myanmar. The Bamar Muslims discussed in this study are those who moved to Mae Sot, a Thai western border town, during the 1970s-90s, and their descendants born and raised therein. The Bamar Muslims believed that, in Myanmar, their ethnoreligious identity caused them everyday life discrimination and a rejection of Burmese citizenship whereas in Thailand, the Thai state regarded them as illegal immigrants from Myanmar. This double legal exclusion renders the Bamar Muslims in Thailand stateless across generations. Against this backdrop, the stateless Bamar Muslims in Mae Sot strived to formalize their belonging to the Thai polity through Thai state-issued identity document acquirement. Central to this attempt is a legal status entitled the "Person Without Registration Status" colloquially known among the locals as the "Ten-Year card." The status indicates the Thai state’s formal recognition of an individual's legal personhood without guaranteed pathways to Thai citizenship. Despite its seemingly inconsequential benefits, the Ten-Year card is highly sought after among the stateless Bamar Muslims in Mae Sot. In this study, I look at the multi-generational stateless Bamar Muslims’ everyday life struggles and their strategies to acquire Thai state-issues IDs to understand what the Ten-Year card category can tell us about the relationship between the state and its noncitizens, and how this noncitizenship experience differs among the Bamar Muslims of different age, gender, and sexuality. I propose to understand the Ten-Year category as deliberate noncitizenship, a pragmatic state-individual relationship that both parties intentionally establish while allowing normative obligations to one another to be contingent, nonreciprocal, and not guaranteed. Deliberate noncitizenship arises and dwells in the context where various forms of the state’s exclusionary practices such as border demarcation and immigration controls are at work, and yet vii never fully function as they are intended to. Moreover, the pathways to acquire this pragmatic status are not evenly accessible for all noncitizens but are forged by unequal power relations that accompany noncitizen individuals’ different embodiments of age, gender, and sexuality. These power dynamics at play in the Bamar Muslim families connect noncitizen domesticity at a micro level to the larger field of political membership and belonging to the Thai state and society. In sum, this present study provides the field of migration and (non)citizenship studies with an analysis that bridges the often separated discussions between vulnerable mobile figures on the one hand and the statelessness in situ on the other hand. In other words, it points out the interconnectedness between movement and stasis in noncitizenship and its vulnerability. Moreover, by foregrounding multi-generational Bamar Muslim families and their domesticity, the present study enhances the understanding of migration phenomena beyond the hegemonic narrative of labor migration that emphasizes the economic relations between host states and mobile figures.
Remapping The Boundaries Of Polynesian Hospitality: Kānaka Maoli Strategies To Sustain Ancestral Relationships To Material And Spiritual Ecologies Of Ko‘olau Ka‘āina O Ka Wai A Kane
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2022) broadhurst, philip; Tengan, Ty P.; Anthropology
ABSTRACT Although Hawaiian people are often touted for their hospitality and generosity, perhaps more frequently than any other distinct culture group on the planet, the sociopolitical and economic implications of propagating hoʻokipa or “Hawaiian hospitality” as a local, domestic, and global symbol, and institution of modern Hawaiian society, has largely remained an overlooked, or arguably taboo topic for social scientific inquiry, which this dissertation addresses. A central question of the research is: How do Hawaiians of today reckon with local, domestic, and global demands for Hawaiian hospitality? Broadly, this dissertation uses the lens of hospitality to examine the complexity of negotiating the permanent presence of temporary occupants in Hawaiʻi. Specifically, this ethnographic analysis examines some of the ways that hoʻokipa is contemporarily practiced among Hawaiians to sustain ancestral human-environment relationships to Koʻolau Maui which is also commonly called “East Maui”. The dissertation demonstrates some of the ways ho‘okipa is used by Kānaka Maoli of today in multiple ways to achieve various objectives in Ko‘olau Maui. The research revealed that ho‘okipa is used to establish rapport with “outsiders” (strangers) to share weather or roadway concerns to foster higher levels of safety among visitors to the region. Villagers of Ko‘olau Maui also frequently utilize ho‘okipa as a method to increase visitor awareness of the cultural landscape in order to shield or minimize the ravages of overtourism inflicted upon it. In this context, ho‘okipa acts as an adaptive cultural mechanism utilized to sustain connections to the cultural landscape by collapsing the social distance between residents and visitors. The dissertation will display through text, sound, and image that contemporary forms of ho‘okipa in Ko‘olau Maui are often transmitted as a strategy in order to sustain ancestral relationships to the material and spiritual ecologies of the region. The dissertation argues that contemporary practices of ho‘okipa or Hawaiian hospitality is at once an integral dimension of an underlying indigenous value system that functions as an adaptive cultural mechanism to negotiate shifting social conditions and political climates, as well as a monolithic institutional hegemonic edict that animates the very conditions that many Hawaiians of today are seemingly too often compelled to adapt to.
Conceal at All Costs: Lived Experiences of Menstruation in Japan
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2022) Stephens-Chu, Maura Haley; Brunson, Jan; Anthropology
Although reproductive technologies and the gendered dimensions of medicalization have been thoroughly studied in anthropology, menstruation itself is a neglected topic, especially in urban and post-industrial settings. This research takes as its focus the complex and varied experiences of menstruation for young Japanese women in the Tokyo metropolitan area and examines the Japanese menstrual product industry from an ethnographic and critical feminist perspective. Informed by interdisciplinary studies on embodiment, gender, and reproductive health, I interrogate taken-for-granted notions of “normal” menstrual cycles, menstrual products, and menstrual education by highlighting the diversity of physiological, social, and emotional experiences surrounding menstruation. “Hegemonic menstruality” is what I call the macro, public discourse of menstruation – built up through school lessons and textbooks, commercial menstrual products and their advertisements, and media treatment of women and their bodies. Young women encounter and interact with hegemonic menstruality on a daily basis, and this project details the varied ways in which they embrace, conform, adapt, resist, and/or reject this hegemony. Simply put, hegemonic menstruality refers to the “correct” way to menstruate as a member of society; it is a particular form of menstrual being that, if followed, lends a menstruator more power, or at least less stigma, than if not followed. Due to cultural connections between menstruation, sex, and reproduction, as well as strong expectations of motherhood for women, hegemonic menstruality and hegemonic femininity have quite a few (implicit and explicit) overlaps. Hegemonic menstruality promotes two conflicting components of an ideal woman: 1) she has a “regular” menstrual cycle – perfect reproductive health – and thus is capable of producing children, 2) and simultaneously, she conceals from public perception all signs of that all-important menstrual cycle. Pain, discomfort, and discursive silence are normalized aspects of menstruation for Japanese women, and failure to conceal menstruation – through sight, smell, sound, and affect – connotes a lack of discipline and femininity which women are expected to maintain. Menstrual product advertisements enforce these expectations of disciplined femininity, and the products themselves are technologies that act as mediators (or barriers) between a woman and her menstrual body. Tokyo as a research site provides the opportunity to study the effect of pronatalist government policies and discourses about fertility, gender roles, and parenthood on embodied experiences of menstruation. In the context of twenty-first century economic precarity, prolonged singlehood, and changing social relations, menstruation – with its discursive connection to motherhood – can have great significance to young Japanese women, who must balance career goals with personal desires and/or social pressures to have a family.
A tale of two cities: an evaluation of political evolution in the Eastern Caroline Islands of Micronesia since AD 1000
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1984) Bath, Joyce E.; Anthropology
The history of political evolution is traced in two highly stratified island societies in the Eastern carolines of Micronesia. The people of the two islands, Ponape and Kosrae, are closely linked genetically, linguistically and culturally. Yet at the time
Communal versus individual socialization at home and in school in rural and urban Western Samoa
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1980) Sutter, Frederic Koehler; Anthropology
When cultural differences exist between students and their school, the educational process is often impeded. Children from traditional societies around the world have experienced difficulty in learning in introduced Western-oriented schools . The complex
Samoan perceptions of work: moving up and moving around
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1985) Franco, Robert W.; Anthropology
In this dissertation I argue that structural theories of immigration and adaptation do not give adequate attention to cultural variation, and in particular, to cultural variation in perceptions of work. Such perceptions are fundamental to the immigration
Heart disease in a migrating population
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1979) Hornick, Conrad Anthony; Anthropology
Anthropometric and biochemical data were collected on 419 Samoan adults representing unacculturated, acculturated and migrant populations with the aim of isolating risk factors associated with a documented rise in heart disease in westernized Samoan populations. Analysis of data revealed that acculturation results in a more atherogenic lipid profile with respect to cholesterol, HDL cholesterol and triglycerides. Acculturated males also show an increase in blood pressure, insulin and obesity when compared with the more traditional group, though these differences are not so distinct in females. The results were interpreted as indicating changes in diet and activity pattern most likely responsible for the alterations in acculturated males whereas a change in diet alone could account for female differences. Migration was found to make no significant change in the likelihood of acculturated Samoans developing heart disease. Cholesterol and blood pressure as indicators of stress were found to be slightly lower in migrants than Samoans living in Tutuila. It is hypothesized that alternative coping behaviors may be available to migrants responding to stress in a non-traditional situation. A negative correlation was demonstrated between HDL cholesterol and fasting insulin levels in all populations examined after controlling for age, place, sex and obesity. It is proposed that this may be a fundamental relationship in the pathogenesis of heart disease.
The economy and cultural ecology of Teop: an analysis of the fishing, gardening, and cash cropping systems in a Melanesian Society
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1976) Shoffner, Robert Kirk; Anthropology
In the summer of 1972 a reconnaisance trip was made to an island of Bougainville, Papua New Guinea. During this period the Teop Census Division in the northeast corner of Bougainville was selected as the area for study. Within this district, research was
Houses without walls: Samoan social control
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1978) Keene, Dennis T. P.; Anthropology
This thesis examines conflicting images of Samoans. Comparative material, including problems of emigrants, is used for the insights it may provide in the indigenous system. The study of law and ethics will also necessarily involve the other mechanisms of
The Samoan immigrant: acculturation, enculturation, and the child in school
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1973) Bloombaum, Mildred; Anthropology
In this research the principal question involves the effect of Samoan culture on the school performance of Samoan children in Hawaii. The problem is construed as a component of the larger process of acculturation through which the child must traverse -- e
Super-Natural Breastfeeding: How Lactation Consultants in Hawai‘i Demedicalize and Reshape Women's Embodied Experiences
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2021) Cooper, Crystal Renee; Brunson, Jan; Anthropology
Women’s difficulties and negative experiences with breastfeeding have prompted a backlash in the U.S. against its promotion, as well as attempts to change the discourse to say it is insignificant and potentially dangerous with benefits that are overstated. My dissertation examines how lactation consultants in Hawai‘i confronted dominant ideologies that affect breastfeeding and helped women having difficulties. Data was collected over 2.5 years through participant observation at La Leche League meetings, with 7 lactation consultants and their clients, IBCLC training with 4 of the lactation consultants, and interviews of 8 lactation consultants and 15 clients. The research uncovers the contrasting concepts of lactation consultants and breastfeeding mothers. It demonstrates that dominant ideologies inform women’s concepts of the lactating body as likely to fail, and this promotes medicalization and ignores structural barriers. It provides insights into how lactation consultants help mothers form new concepts for positive embodied experiences, and demedicalize breastfeeding from within medical environments. It is significant for its contribution to efforts to improve maternal and infant experiences and health outcomes, and its contributions to the anthropological literature on medicalization, embodiment, and science as culture.
Seeking mo‘ui lelei abroad: Tongan medical mobilities and transnational practices of health
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2021) Boeger, Zakea; Brunson, Jan; Anthropology
International travel for access to health care, while not a new phenomenon, has grown exponentially since the 1990s, drawing increased attention from anthropologists, who continue to emphasize the diversity of circumstances surrounding medical travel. In this dissertation, I explore the experiences of Tongan medical travelers who draw on diasporic networks to pursue biomedical treatment for noncommunicable diseases in Australia, Aotearoa/New Zealand, and the United States. Based on fieldwork in Nuku‘alofa, Tonga, in which I worked with local biomedical practitioners, patients, and caregivers so as to track state-sponsored and private routes to treatment abroad, this research shows how individuals’ abilities to pursue treatment are largely dependent on the ongoing circulation of biomedical resources in and out of Tonga, including health technologies, volunteer practitioners, and foreign aid. When these resources are either unable or insufficient to support medical travel, Tongan transnational networks of care frequently step in to help address the resulting disparities, sometimes reshaping long-standing socioeconomic networks in the process. For some patients, medical travel thus comes to be characterized not only by issues of practicality but also by a rethinking of the moral and social implications of patienthood and personhood—of what it means to pursue individualized care through collective-oriented social networks—both during and after treatment. This research also reveals how, for those with chronic illnesses, seeking indefinite treatment abroad can entangle patients and caregivers in affectively and politically fraught situations in which treatment access must be continually renegotiated by both familial and state institutions. In exploring these experiences, this work expands anthropological scholarship by illustrating how transnational mobilities and political economies of medical travel are generated through intersections of physical capital (e.g., foreign aid) and network capital (e.g., diasporic connections), in addition to showing how medical travelers must navigate ongoing health disparities and reoriented social relations upon returning to Tonga.

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