Ponape’s Body Politic: Island and Nation
Petersen, G. (1984). "Ponape's Body Politic: Island and Nation". Pacific Studies. 8 (1): 112–136.
- Has attachment: File:47T52DJ4.pdf
Abstract: This is a paper about politics and community on Ponape (Pohnpei), in Micronesia’s Eastern Caroline Islands, and an ethnographer’s perceptions of the direction and rate of political change there. The people of Ponape have regular, often daily, interactions with their chiefs. Essential concepts of government--notions of a hierarchy of legitimate authority and a division of responsibility in community organization and action--are deeply embedded in Ponapean culture. Because of the island’s rugged terrain and highly dispersed settlement pattern, it is more useful to conceptualize Ponapean communities in terms of families participating in joint activities than in simple territorial terms. These communities are simultaneously political units: they are the “sections” (Ponapean kousapw), the numerous, small, minor chiefdoms which in turn constitute Ponape’s five paramount chiefdoms (wehi). Ponapean politics, which permeate every aspect of life on the island, are fundamentally communal. I am, in this paper, concerned with exploring the ways in which the communal, face-to-face nature of indigenous Ponapean politics determines Ponapean responses to both the American-instituted system of bourgeois democracy on Ponape itself and the developing federal system that is intended to bind Ponape to the other islands in the Central and Eastern Carolines as the semiautonomous Federated States of Micronesia (FSM).
My thesis is that apparent turmoil in Ponapean and Micronesian governments belies a more deeply rooted process of adaptation that will gradually reshape the structure of the electoral/bureaucratic system in a fashion that allows it to respond to the flow of Ponapean culture and politics.1 The Ponapeans’ strong sense of self-government, inherent in the communal nature of their polity, should ensure a successful adaptation of this new political structure; but this same sense of face-to-face politics may pose substantial problems for interisland relations. The authority of Ponapean leadership is tested continually within the community and derives its effectiveness from the well of trust that the responses to these challenges create. Where such constant interactions are impossible, as between distant islands, leadership may be perceived as imposed and therefore to be resisted.
I shall first outline the traditional Ponapean political system both in terms of its formal structure and its place in social life. Then I shall describe the American-introduced political system. An analysis of the relationships between Ponapean culture and politics, in the context of Ponapean responses to the introduced system, will follow; and, finally, the integration of Ponape into the FSM will be considered.
Extra details:
MAG: 2584488882 CorpusID: 157852312
