Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2013. xii, 182 pp. (Maps, figures.) US$27.00, cloth. ISBN 978-0-8248-3661-0.
Fran Hezel is a Jesuit priest who has worked in Micronesia for 45 years. He’s seen colleagues, Peace Corps volunteers, researchers, contract workers in education, healthcare and development, and a dozen other types of international visitors struggle to understand Island society. This short, readable and informative book distills his substantial scholarship and extensive personal experience of Micronesian life into a form that offers frank and useful advice to the next generations of foreigners lucky enough to spend time in the region.
Like Raymonde Carroll’s Cultural Misunderstandings (1990, U. Chicago Press), Hezel uses the idea of cultural logic to uncover the principles of human relationship that underlie behaviour. His anthropological analysis, though, is soft-focused through straightforward prose and the use of anecdotes and personal experiences to show the principles in action.
The book consists of 12 brief chapters, each dealing with a sphere of life in which Micronesian and American (or “western”) cultural expectations fail to find common ground. Each begins with a personal story, then briefly explains the cultural principle that underlies the behaviour (often puzzling to outsiders), and discusses how changing conditions over the past half-century have created strains in Micronesian life. For example, the chapter on “forging an identity” discusses how matrilineages and extended families governed life, and how recent changes have increased individualism and altered the family’s role, creating problems such as youth suicide. The chapter on “the uses of information” describes how Micronesians—though generous in sharing wealth—tend to hold information close, seeing knowledge as a protected personal resource. Thus, “public information” is hard to come by, and even administrators who have had specialized training at the government’s expense tend to hoard their expertise.
Topics covered are the emphasis on personal qualities, the role of the family, ideas of privacy, the obligation for individuals to respond to family needs, “rights” discourse, sharing and generosity as marks of wealth, secrecy, social signals such as silence and withdrawal, respect, gender relations, sex, expressions of love and caring, and dealing with conflict, loss and grief. While Hezel’s affection for Micronesians and respect for their society is evident, he does not avoid discussion of land disputes, family conflict, incest, alcohol abuse and political challenges. The final section, “In Summary,” argues that this very wide range of behaviours can be understood—by the patient and observant cross-cultural visitor—as the reflection of several underlying cultural principles: personalization, the “primacy of group identity,” and patterns of cooperation.
While anthropologists might disdain quick-read “cross-cultural manuals,” it cannot be denied that they offer a valuable opportunity to inform international workers about a host culture. The worst of these offer brief “how-tos” or lists of “customs” and “taboos.” Hezel’s book takes a much more rewarding approach, inviting the newcomer to think about the cultural principles that underlie unfamiliar behaviour, and to develop the capacity to patiently explore cultural differences.
Those who know Micronesia well will find little that is new here, and they might even disagree with some of Hezel’s evaluations (for example, his assumption that “modernization” is inevitably changing Micronesian society in the direction of Western individualism, or his necessarily brief analysis of gender roles as balanced and complementary). But, even these readers will enjoy the author’s insights and obvious appreciation of island cultures.
The brevity and clear writing in this book make it a great deal more accessible to the non-specialist than nearly all ethnography or anthropological analysis. Yet it should not be thought that this clarity reflects any superficial understanding of Micronesian cultures. Fran Hezel knows the islands and its people intimately, and his goodness in sharing his knowledge so lucidly emphasizes how important he thinks it is that foreigners who go to Micronesia to “help” take the time to learn about the people they hope to serve. “There is no shortcut for understanding a culture,” he writes (164), but this book will surely make the trip easier for those spending time in Micronesia. It might also give Islanders themselves some new ways to think about their culture’s past, present and future.
Lin Poyer
University of Wyoming, Laramie, USA