Contesting representations of gender stratification in Pohnpei, Micronesia

Abstract

Both space and language are resourcesin the production of social hierarchies. In Pohnpei, Micronesia, the social categorization of space in the feasthouse creates a map of the social order that includes a subordinate identity for women, that of a wife whose status depends on her husband's. However, women orators at feasts discursively subvert characterizations of women's status as contingent on men. The orators invoke a more complex range of gendered subject positions than are expressed spatially, including women's multiple identities as mother, sister, and wife. This article examines how gendered space in the Pohnpeian feasthouse relates to gendered discourse and discourse about gender. The tension between the spatial representation of women's status and the discursive one indicates that the production of social stratification is a dynamic and interactive process in Pohnpei, entailing contradiction as well as confirmation within and across semiotic modalities.

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