Women in exchange: Negotiated relations, practice, and the constitution of female power in processes of cultural reproduction and change in Pohnpei, Micronesia

This is a study of how Pohnpeian women maintain their power and efficacy in contemporary society through their central involvement in feasting and exchange, which serve as representations of Pohnpeian custom. The roles women play in kinship and production as well as cultural reproduction and change as these are articulated through the medium of exchange form the main focus of inquiry.;Exchange is viewed from a broad perspective where women's roles in exchange practice comprising material production and public performance are examined as are their roles in exchange relations involving women's access to and authority over individuals and groups. Pohnpeian women as producers and exchangers and as kinswomen and wives are shown to be active participants in processes of cultural recreation, appropriation, and transformation.;The constitution of women's work is analyzed to illustrate its importance to exchange relations, products, and events and to women's interpersonal authority in family and domestic affairs. Women's structural salience as kinswomen, affines, and wives is also discussed, particularly in terms of how these female structural domains are actualized in the practice of exchange and given agency in the larger culture. The fact of matrilineality gives mothers and sisters a primary place of value in which they alone are responsible for the continuity of descent and kin groups and for the regeneration of matrilineal and social identity, which oftentimes have political consequences.;The interplay of the structural principles of alliance and cross-siblingship is examined in this study from the perspective of sisters and wives. Women as sisters establish significant relationships between lineages, extended families, and individuals when they marry. These affinal connections are crucially important for full participation in feasting and exchange, and for prestige enhancement. As wives, women are valued for the important affinal relationships they make possible and for the power they hold within the marital relationship and household.;The actualization of these structural principles in exchange as formal and nonformal event and everyday practice is shown to place Pohnpeian women as mothers, sisters, and wives at the social and political center of the reproduction of culture and in its reconstitution according to a present-day significance.