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Pacific Studies Journal

Abstract

From 1902–1903 Emile Durkheim offered a series of lectures at the Sorbonne in which he suggested that participation in a “moral community” compels us to recognize ourselves in the collectivity and to commit ourselves to moral goals of the group. This essay discusses the formation of a Durkheimian community by migrants from the Republic of the Marshall Islands to the midwestern city of Enid, Oklahoma, and attempts to identify the political and economic factors that made the community’s formation possible. More important, however, this essay explains why this particular moral community became essential for the social and psychological survival of the Enid Marshallese group.

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