Madrich: Outer Islanders on Yap
Alkire, William H. (1993). "Madrich: Outer Islanders on Yap". Pacific Studies. 16: 31–66. ISSN 0275-3596.
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Abstract: Demographic changes in Yap State have been discussed in some detail in this journal by L. J. Gorenflo and M. J. Levin (1991:97-145). Their findings were primarily derived from the data of government censuses conducted between 1920 and 1987, and one of their conclusions, mentioned in several different contexts, was that internal population movement has played a “limited role” in the demographic history of this region (1991:113, 121, 124-125, 130, 134). They conclude (1991:138) that Yap state is therefore unusual in the overall context of Micronesia and, as the work of others has also suggested, certainly atypical of the insular Pacific as a whole (Spoehr 1960, 1963; Force and Bishop 1975; Shuster 1979; Chapman and Prothero 1985). I propose to provide some additional data on this topic, derived from field censuses and related observations on Yap and the outer islands.1 Since Gorenflo and Levin were analyzing official censuses that did not disaggregate the data below the district level, several of their conclusions are understandably tentative. My own work focused on a community of outer islanders settled on the southern outskirts of Colonia, the sole port town of the Yap Islands. I believe these data provide a more detailed cultural and social context that helps clarify why migration thus far has been limited. They further offer some support for Gorenflo and Levin’s tentative conclusion (1991:130) that most of the movement that has occurred between the outer islands and Colonia until very recently can be classed as “circulation” or, as I prefer to term it, “sojourning,” rather than permanent movement...
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