BOOK REVIEWS 237

Unnatural Emotions: Everyday Senti­ments on a Micronesian Atoll andTheir Challenge to Western Theory, byCatherine A. Lutz. Chicago: Universityof Chicago Press, 1988. ISBN 0-226­

49721-6, xii + 273 pp, maps;photo­graphs, notes, bibliography, index.US$35.00 cloth; US$I3.95 paper.

Unnatural Emotions is a valuablework, contributing insights into Mi­cronesian life and American culture. Itsets new standards for ethnopsycho­logy, the effort by anthropologists,especially students of Pacific societies,to appreciate the meaningful world ofpeoples in part through those peoples'understandings of psychology.

The title is ironic: Haluk emotionsare unnatural only from the Westernview that emotions are somehow natu­ral and universal. Lutz sets out to

rapid cultural change, these studies aretimely, and they should serve as areminder that the Micronesian way oflife is an integral part of the Microne­sian built environment. Changes andalterations to one will inevitably affectthe other. In addition to their intellec­tually stimulating content, these stu­dies could potentially provide practicalguidelines to Micronesian governmentleaders on such matters as urban devel­opment and housing construction.Finally, archaeologists, ethnographers,and historians who are studying Mi­cronesian culture and history from theIslanders' perspectives would benefitfrom reading these studies.

RUFINO MAURICIO

University ofOregon

tations of the data generated. WhileMorgan's interpretations are func­tional and tend to be environmentallydeterministic, Hockings' are structuraland historical. Hockings' theoreticalapproach is the Levi-Straussian brandof structuralism that addressed ele­ments ofsocial relations as expressedin spatial (built environment) termsand articulated by binary oppositions.

The following examples illustratethe types of interpretations one mightexpect from these studies whose sub­ject matter is basically the same andwhose theoretical approach is differ­ent. Morgan suggests that the loweringof the bai roof like a sail is an ingeniousmethod of protecting the house fromtyphoons (ISO). Hockings points outthat should the oka (rafters) protrudeabove their longitudinal roof plate,there would be continual fighting andargument within the maneaba.Morgan suggests that relatively highpopulation densities in the past influ­enced the Micronesian architecturalevolution (ISO). Hockings points outthat symbolic means of continuing def­inition of the rights and responsibilitiesof the various clans toward each otherwere reflected in the allocation ofkainga (clan estate) sites and the partic­ular orientation of inaki (roof panels)within the maneaba geometry (245).

Although it is a matter of opinionwhich interpretation is correct, mostMicronesians adhere to both types ofinterpretation.

The last two decades have witnesseddrastic alteration and transformationof the Micronesian built environment,and it appears that this trend will accel­erate at an even faster pace during thenext two decades. Given this pattern of

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THE CONTEMPORARY PACIFIC. SPRING 1991

deconstruct both academic and folkmodels that lead Americans to treatemotions as irrational and precultural.The ethnography of Haluk emotionallife is presented not just for its ownsake, but with a critical aim. (Such anaim may always underlie ethnography.Lutz is clear about her intentions anddiligent in researching American cul­ture along with Haluk.)

Lutz begins by introducing her pro­ject and Haluk together. She summa­rizes past and present ties between Ha­luk and the outside world well. Shegoes on to show how Haluk ideasshaped her role as a female ethnogra­pher and hence shaped her research.

Next, broad cultural "views of emo­tion and self" are identified. The majorchapter on Western ideas-dealingabove all with the dominant culture inthe United States-is a lucid account ofviews of emotions in relation to nature,rationality, control, physical being,subjectivity, gender, and value.

In the next chapter, Lutz defines andexemplifies Haluk notions of per­sonhood and emotion/thought/ desire.She shows that Haluk notions divide upthe realm of psychological processes ina way quite distinct from Americannotions. Haluk concepts allot a role tohuman will in all psychological pro­cesses. They provide clearer indica­tions of the social orientation of psy­chological states and processes thancomparable American notions do.

At the heart of the book are deftanalyses of the ideas, actions, and rela­tionships in which fago 'compassion',song 'justifiable anger', and metagu'fear' arise. Elucidating the Halukunderstanding of song as a moralcapacity, Lutz contrasts this view with

American notions of anger, frustration,and control. (Pacific Islanders may findthis chapter helpful as an account ofAmericans' ambivalence and overreac­tions concerning anger.)

Haluk is known to anthropologistslargely for Melford Spiro's psychody­namic account of fear of ghosts. Spiroargued that inevitable anxieties thatHaluk minimize and hostile feelingsthey seek to banish find an outlet inexpectations of aggression by ghostsagainst humans. In this account, anxi­ety and anger are outside human reach.

Lutz in contrast seeks to learn whatsort of dangers Haluk recognize, thevarious ways fear arises in Haluk lives,the communicative functions of fear,and the moral discourse fear supports.She accepts a functional analysis-fearof spirits and outsiders and drunksdramatizes the dangers of violence in asmall community and wards againstsuch violence. However, the emphasisis on the moral sense that fear makes,not on latent functions.

Lutz's account is complex. Onestrand of the analysis is the relationbetween fear and justifiable anger.Superiors are appropriately angrywhen relatives of lower rank overstepnormal bounds of decorum. Inferiorsare appropriately fearful both whensuch anger is expressed and when it islikely to arise: "To the Haluk way ofthinking, fear is what keeps peoplegood." Fear is a product of learning, anindex of relationship, and a sign that aperson accepts norms, not just a re­pressed by-product of earlier experi­ence.

Spiro's fear and Lutz's fear differeven more than the two scholars' ex­planations do. Lutz takes care not to

BOOK REVIEWS 239

Islands, Islanders and the World: TheColonial and Post-Colonial Experiencea/Eastern Fiji, by T. P. Bayliss-Smith,Richard Bedford, Harold Brookfield,Marc Latham, and Muriel Brookfield.Cambridge: Cambridge University

treat either American or Haluk con­cepts as underlying entities. Basically,she argues that her explanation isricher, not that Spiro's is necessarilywrong.

Lutz goes on to distinguish amongseveral varieties of emotion theories.These concluding remarks make ex­plicit what the preceding anecdotes andanalysis made vivid: theories of emo­tions as things separate from humanmoral activity presuppose alienation ofthe individual or the body from experi­ence and relatedness. Lutz argues thatemotional activity and talk illuminatesocial life in both Haluk and Americanworlds, so academic emotion theorymust be considered a product of West­ern ideas, rather than a reflection ofexperience.

Lutz has largely succeeded in pre­senting Ifaluk lives and discourse ashaving meaning apart from Westernpreconceptions of them. She has identi­fied ways in which Americans are aptto reduce others' communications tonatural behaviors or drives and proce­dures to resist such reduction. She pro­vides a model of self-conscious andother-respecting ethnography that, Idevoutly hope, will be followed andamended by anthropologists in thenext few years.

JOHN KIRKPATRICK

University ofHawaii at Manoa

::. *

Press, I988. ISBN 952I-26877-X, xvii+ 323 pp, illustrations, tables, notes,appendix, references, index. US$49.50.

Few works of scholarship, especiallythose resulting, as this does, from themultiple endeavors of a large team ofresearchers over many years, haveabout them so refreshing a sense ofhumility as this useful volume. It is thepublicly available fruit of a project thatbegan in I974 under the auspices of theMan and the Biosphere (MAB) programinitiated by UNESCO in I97I. It drawstogether the most important aspects ofresearch on the islands of Lomaivitiand Lau in eastern Fiji that were previ­ously published in a difficult-to-obtainseries of project working papers, islandreports, and general reports (obtain­able from the Australian National Uni­versity).

The distillation benefits, however,from a return visit to eastern Fiji inI983 by the chief investigators and theirdecision to write a book "about whathas happened in Eastern Fiji, and whatthis might add to the sum of knowledgeabout the colonial and post-colonialexperience of the developing world"(xv). It also benefits from their conclu­sion, as a result of the military coups ofI987, that their analysis had been moreculturally conditioned than they hadrealized. "Even when a real effort ismade to 'understand' the minds of apeople being studied," the editorwrites, "social scientists inevitably findthemselves asking questions whichderive from their own disciplinary sys­tems of theory, and moreover reason­ing from the norms of their own soci­ety" (IO). The team was fascinated byyoung people who had experienced the