Geoffrey M. White

The Pacific theater : island representations of World War II

Contributions from anthropologists participating in a symposium of the Association for Social Anthropology in Oceania, New Harmony, Indiana, 1986, examine the experiences of Pacific Islanders in the war and their remembrances of it as observers, laborers, on patrol, under bombardment. The studies de

The Ethnographic Study of Cultural Knowledge of “Mental Disorder”

Illness and medicine are among a limited number of topical domains which cross-cultural researchers have for some time described as organized bodies of cultural knowledge (e.g., Clements 1932; and see Conklin 1972:363–392 for a bibliography). One reason for this is that illness is viewed universally as an intrusive disruption of body, person and community which requires explanation and corrective action (Fabrega 1974) and thus gives rise to some form of folk theory as a basis for interpreting or “making sense” of that experience. While particular definitions of illness may vary widely, concern with illness as an area of problematic human experience (and as a topic for folk theories) is commonly expressed in ordinary conversation across cultures. Thus, interpretations of illness events are an important focus for comparative research on social, cultural and cognitive questions generally, as well as for the investigation of medical issues. Just as cultural understandings about social organization may be most visible during “conflict” situations in which normative, desirable relations are discussed more openly or deliberately, so cultural understandings about personhood and social behavior may be brought closer to the surface of natural discourse by illness events which evoke interpretations of personal dysfunction or deviations from social norms. The ethnographic study of cultural knowledge of illness attempts to discover and represent conceptual models which underly the construction of meaningful interpretations of illness. As discussed below, this enterprise must venture well beyond the narrow confines of “illness and medicine”.

Introduction: Cultural Conceptions in Mental Health Research and Practice

The notion of “cultural conceptions of mental health” refers to “common sense” knowledge which is used to interpret social and medical experience, and which plays an important role in shaping both professional and “everyday” views of mental disorder. A growing amount of cultural and psychiatric research is showing that illness experience is an interpretive enterprise which is constructed in social situations according to the premises of cultural “theories” about illness and social behavior generally. Despite the large number of anthropological and psychiatric studies which have offered accounts of cultural beliefs about mental disorder, these accounts have generally been secondary to more broad ethnographic and clinical objectives of research. We still know very little about the symbolic and cognitive organization of common sense understandings about mental disorder which give illness experience cultural meaning and social significance. Research on these topics is essential for progress on answering fundamental questions about the universality and culture-specificity of aspects of mental disorder, its comprehension in human knowledge systems, and its significance for individuals and social communities. This book presents a series of papers whose primary objective is to examine conceptions of mental health as culturally ordered symbolic systems, and in so doing to draw attention to their relevance for understanding and treating mental disorder across cultures.

Memorializing Pearl Harbor: Unfinished Histories and the Work of Remembrance

Memorializing Pearl Harbor examines the challenge of representing history at the site of the attack that brought America into World War II. Analyzing moments in which history is re-presented—in commemorative events, documentary films, museum design, and educational programming—Geoffrey M. White shows that the memorial to the Pearl Harbor bombing is not a fixed or singular institution. Rather, it has become a site in which many histories are performed, validated, and challenged. In addition to valorizing military service and sacrifice, the memorial has become a place where Japanese veterans have come to seek recognition and reconciliation, where Japanese Americans have sought to correct narratives of racial mistrust, and where Native Hawaiians have challenged their ongoing erasure from their own land. Drawing on extended ethnographic fieldwork, White maps these struggles onto larger controversies about public history, museum practices, and national memory.

Identity Through History: Living Stories in a Solomon Islands Society.

Acknowledgments 1. Introduction Part I. Orientations: 2. First encounters 3. Portraits of the past 4. Chiefs, persons and power Part II. Transformations: 5. Crisis and Christianity 6. Conversions and consolidation Part III. Narrations: 7. Becoming Christian: playing with history 8. Missionary encounters: narrating the self Part IV. Revitalization: 9. Collisions and convergence 10. The paramount chief: rites of renewal 11. Conclusion Notes References.