Craft and Context on Yap

S. Montvel-Cohen, Marvin S. (1982). Craft and Context on Yap (Thesis). Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms International.

Abstract: Craftsmaking on Yap is seen as a nexus of social competencies which have a cohesive effect on village life despite the forces of change which impinge on Micronesian communities today. Traditional craft processes are reviewed and found to be inseparably interwoven with village life, which is itself a fragile balance between subsistence economics and an inadequate introduced wage economy. It is suggested that Bateson's model of the steady state, developed from his work on Bali, is an effective paradigm for recognition of the condition of social entropy which has been slowly approached on Yap for a period of over one hundred years. The strength of the well-knit social system, with its built in feed-back mechanisms, has kept it functioning despite intensifying pressures for change. Making things is interrelated with social status in a manner which is explained by looking at three groups of craftsmakers. These are the saalap (master craftsmakers), malngaey (workers) and the general adult population. The place of valuables, houses, canoes, and decorative objects in daily life is considered with particular regard to their employment in ceremonies of exchange, funerals, and feasts. Village institutions are described as well as the mutual duties and obligations between superior and subordinate in the traditional land-tenure system and status hierarchy. The formulation magaer, energy directed toward the service of others, is seen as fundamentally related to the production of objects and a significant notion about obligations between people. Traditional supernatural beliefs are related to the processes of creativity. It is observed that myths and dance, rather than the plastic arts, reflect the use of art as an arena for the community's effort to reconcile socially repressed feelings and attitudes. Art for the Yapese, is understood as the cultivation of the uncultivated. Materials of the environment are seen to have the potential to be completed forms, if the proper continuity of process is carried out in their manufacture. Characteristic art forms are retained both for their functional properties in the traditional system and for their symbolic value, which reinforces it.

Extra details:

MAG: 2782763716
OpenAlex: W2782763716