Review
". . . I wrote the first edition of Nest in the Wind with the shameless goal of enticing students into the romance of anthropology, of making readers part of the smells, tastes, and sensations of the island culture I had come to love. Three decades later I went back to discover what had happened and learned what none of us had predicted." from the Introduction --From the Author
During her first visit to the beautiful island of Pohnpei in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, anthropologist Martha Ward discovered people who grew quarter-ton yams in secret and ritually shared a powerful drink called kava. She managed a medical research project, ate dog, became pregnant, and responded to spells placed on her. Thirty years later she returned to Pohnpei to learn what had happened there since her first visit. Were islanders still relaxed and casual about sex? Were they still obsessed with titles and social rank? Was the island still lush and beautiful? Had the inhabitants remained healthy? This second edition of Ward’s best-selling account is a rare, longitudinal study that tracks people, processes, and a place through decades of change. It is also an intimate record of doing fieldwork that immerses readers in the sights, smells, tastes, sounds, and the sensory richness of Pohnpei. Ward addresses the ageless ethnographic questions about family life, politics, religion, traditional medicine, magic, and death together with contemporary concerns about postcolonial survival, the discontinuities of culture, and adaptation to the demands of a global age. Her insightful discoveries illuminate the evolution of a culture possibly distant from yet important to people living in other parts of the world. (Not-for-sale instructor resource material available to college and university faculty only; contact the publisher directly.) --From the Publisher
From the Publisher
During her first visit to the beautiful island of Pohnpei in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, anthropologist Martha Ward discovered people who grew quarter-ton yams in secret and ritually shared a powerful drink called kava. She managed a medical research project, ate dog, became pregnant, and responded to spells placed on her. Thirty years later she returned to Pohnpei to learn what had happened there since her first visit. Were islanders still relaxed and casual about sex? Were they still obsessed with titles and social rank? Was the island still lush and beautiful? Had the inhabitants remained healthy? This second edition of Ward’s best-selling account is a rare, longitudinal study that tracks people, processes, and a place through decades of change. It is also an intimate record of doing fieldwork that immerses readers in the sights, smells, tastes, sounds, and the sensory richness of Pohnpei. Ward addresses the ageless ethnographic questions about family life, politics, religion, traditional medicine, magic, and death together with contemporary concerns about postcolonial survival, the discontinuities of culture, and adaptation to the demands of a global age. Her insightful discoveries illuminate the evolution of a culture possibly distant from yet important to people living in other parts of the world. (Not-for-sale instructor resource material available to college and university faculty only; contact the publisher directly.)
From the Author
"I am committed to writing and communicating the insights of anthropology in a clear and entertaining way, thus, making the material exciting and easily accessible . . . Nest in the Wind was written for those who have a curiosity about the lives of people different from themselves, or who may have wished, from time to time, to live on a tropical island . . . The underlying story is, of course, how we learn first to survive in another culture, then to adjust to strange customs, and later to appreciate the integrity and cohesiveness of another people's lives."
