THE MAKING AND NURTURING OF RELATIONSHIPS: AN UJELANG/ENEWETAK MODEL IN THE CONTEXT OF CHANGE

Authors

Laurence Marshall Carucci, Montana State UniversityFollow

Abstract

Pacific adoption has long served as a prototypical contrary case that complicates the ethnocentric and simplistic kinship logics of sociobiology and evolutionary psychology—logical approaches which themselves project and perpetuate Euro-American ideas about relatedness. Yet, at the same moment the Pacific adoption literature has confronted the biases of Euro-American categories of kinship and interpersonal relatedness, it also has perpetuated certain stereotypic contours of those categories by shadowing the outlines of their very existence. Escaping those contours in an English publication is, ultimately, impossible. Nevertheless, more finely rendered accounts are attainable. In this paper, I attempt to fashion one such account, a creolized rather than pidgin anthropological representation. By closely considering the etymological contours of “adoption-like” practices on Ujelang and Enewetak Atolls, by tracking meanings as well as cultural contexts of use, I expand the horizons of what is known about Marshallese nurturance and relationship-making. Kokajiriri, typically translated as “adoption,” might better be understood as “relationship-making” through “caregiving”. The varied contours of both relationship-making and caregiving are explored below, along with changes that have occurred in the form and frequency of kokajiriri relationships as a result of shifting forces of globalization and concomitant alterations in the daily lives of local Marshall Islanders.

Recommended Citation

Carucci, Laurence Marshall (2008) "THE MAKING AND NURTURING OF RELATIONSHIPS: AN UJELANG/ENEWETAK MODEL IN THE CONTEXT OF CHANGE," Pacific Studies: Vol. 31: No. 4, Article 3.
Available at: https://digitalcollections.byuh.edu/pacific-studies-journal/vol31/iss4/3