Being A Palauan: written by H. G. Barnett, and 50 similar items

After spending nine months in a Palauan village on Babeldaob in 1947-8 and several shorter stays during the following decade, Barnett here attempts "to convey an understanding of Palauan society and culture by presenting the Palauan view of the world in terms of the author's understanding of how the Palauan sees and comprehends what goes on around him. The objective, then, has been to delineate a way of life as free from the anthropologist's conventionalized structuring of it as possible, in the hope of communicating what it means to live and die in a small village in Palau. Palauan men praise women and state with pride, "Women are strong; men are weak." But men do the planning and make the decisions. This is no more strange to a Palauan than the fact that many children whose biological parents are still alive are adopted many times, and that material advantage should accrue from these transactions to several kinsmen of the child.