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| About |
My research interests include comparative Austronesian studies of Indigenous peoples in Taiwan and Micronesia (Yap, Wa'ab), with a particular focus on symbolism, cultural forms, and futurity. My current work examines the stratified configurations of knowledge and affect in hierarchical societies, the multiple forms of China’s expanding presence in the Pacific, and the political and ontological significance of the Yapese “alterity of worlding.” I am also interested in how philosophical traditions may help relativize anthropology’s own epistemological assumptions. |
Specialities |
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Discipline(s) |
Anthropology
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Member of |
Pacific History Association (PHA)  |
Geographic administrative areas |
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Geographic places |
Micronesia
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Historical periods |
20th century
21st century
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Indigenous languages |
Yapese, Yami |
Experiences |
Masters Research (2002 to 2005)
— National Taiwan UniversityMasters Research (2007 to 2010)
— University of VirginiaPhD Research (2011 to 2017)
— University of Virginia
My dissertation describes the intricate interplay among land, leadership, and matriliny on the
Pacific island of Yap (Wa’ab), in Micronesia, as the background needed for understanding perplexing
local responses to a proposed resort development. Since 2011, a Chinese business consortium
headquartered in Chengdu, Sichuan, has presented a plan to build the resort on a large tract made up of
adjacent land parcels owned by several Yapese households and communities, which were asked to
formalize title to their lands and lease them to the project for a term of at least ninety-nine years. The
plan provoked an unprecedented dispute over the legitimacy of traditional chiefly authorities in Yap, an
island society (population approx. 11,500) long known for its robust hierarchy, strong traditionalism,
and cultural pride.
The controversy undoubtedly reflects the erosion of the land basis for traditional chiefly
authority, itself a concomitant of the gradual transformation of Yapese life since the nineteenth century:
whereas previously land was the main source of sustenance and the primary referent of personal and
political identities, Yapese today are increasingly involved in the cash economy, leading to intense
anxiety and doubt over the long-term viability of the island’s fragile economy. But the controversy also
expresses the culturally unique position of Yapese elderly women (pulwelwol) who are highly respected
for their long experience of years of difficult labor on the land, a labor that is culturally elaborated as the
physically exhausting work (magaer) that produces nourishment along with a deeply embodied tie
between specific land parcels and their own uterine offspring. This work of the elderly women is central
to the dynamics of traditional Yap land transference. While Yapese men represent themselves as the
land’s “voice,” claiming a form of authority that is symbolically sedimented in named land parcels, the
elderly women are recognized as embodying the physical labor |
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