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Cultural Loss: How Real is the Threat?


about the islands of Micronesia

 Francis X. Hezel, SJ                                                                   Micronesian Counselor #56 (July 2005)

The Old Lament

How often have you heard someone remark in woeful tones, "How sad that Micronesians are losing their culture?" The complaint is even more poignant when it comes from one who is an Islander. Fear of loss of culture, the occasion of much fretful discussion over the past two or three decades, still seems to be very much a live issue today. Perhaps the talk of globalization, fueled by the awareness of an already changed cultural landscape, is responsible for the recent wave of concern. In any case, I'm hearing the complaint as often as ever from Micronesians with a slight tremor in their voice and a pained look in their eyes.


The laments for a culture that is feared to be moribund are prompted by the sea of change that is washing over the shores of the islands. Everywhere one looks there are signs of cultural change: not just in the schools and the churches and the retail stores, but in the political institutions, and in the household economy, and in the very heart of the family. These changes, which go well beyond the more obvious material changes, have touched the heads and hearts of most island people, even affecting some of their core beliefs and values. Signs along the roadside urging young people to use condoms are a measure of how far we have come from the days in which such explicitly sexual topics were tabooed as a topic for public discussion. The simplest things, whether the food on the shelves of supermarkets in town or the satellite dishes that put us in Internet contact with the rest of the world, seem to carry the seeds of radical cultural change.

The carriers of change are everywhere. The ones we usually single out as most pernicious are the media–television, radio and now Internet–but there are others, less conspicuous but just as capable of making their impact felt. Young Micronesians returning from college abroad who take a different view of so much that they grew up with, foreign consultants who advise us that changes in law and land policy are needed if we are to encourage business investment from abroad, social affairs specialists who urge everyone to let their guard down and reveal their innermost feelings, the better to channel them in positive directions. As if all this weren't enough, the harbingers of globalization are stepping off the plane nearly every week to proclaim the urgency of still more changes.

Change itself is not so much the problem as what it may lead to: the death of the culture. In the minds of many, cultural extinction can occur either through the cumulative effect of culture change or through the debilitating effect key changes may have upon the basic institutions of their society. Either way, the eventual outcome of intensive culture change could be the demise of the culture.

A Tidal Wave or a Deadly Virus?

Culture change is upon us, many fear, like a tsunami advancing rapidly to the shore threatening to engulf whole populations, erasing them and all memory of what they once held dear. Once the wave washes over the island and retreats again, all we can expect to find is the debris of what formerly had been a living and vibrant culture. The assumption here is that a people can endure only so much change, just as waves can beat against a building for only so long and with only such an intensity before the entire building collapses. At some point at the height of the storm, the waves will topple the edifice just as the impact of cultural change topples the culture. If the force of the cultural change persists, the culture is doomed.

Take, for instance, the Re Mataw, those "sea people" from the Central Carolines with their colorful and distinctive way of life who are generally regarded as symbolic of all that is special about Micronesia. They now cook with iron pots and blend some store-bought goods into their local diet. Shots of vodka are sometimes passed around the drinking circle with tuba, or local brew. Although most of them still wear traditional clothing, there may come a time when this will change. If the lavalavas and loincloths disappear, and the old navigational system vanishes, and sailing canoes are no longer made, then the process of cultural attrition could well continue until the last of the distinctive features of these people is lost. At that point, this model suggests, our worst fears would be realized and the culture would be extinct.

In another model close to the first, cultural change is viewed as a deadly virus or microbe that attacks one of the bodily systems rendering it dysfunctional and leading to complications in others systems as well. An illness that affects the liver will very likely lead to problems in the kidneys, with debilitating side effects in other parts of the body. The final result may be a shutdown of the entire organism, even death. Likewise, when social changes resulting in part from a new cash economy infect the cultural system to the point where they bring about a radical reorganization of the basic family, they can be expected to have an impact on other parts of the culture as well. The damaging effects of these changes could well interfere with the functioning of the other systems deep in the culture. Before long the culture is dead, a victim of the fatal virus that seemed so harmless at the start.

This is the model that underlies some of the classical anthropological works on culture change: "Steel Axes for Stone-age Australians," for instance. That article describes the cultural impact occurring when modern steel axes, which were a status marker and restricted to older males, were passed out to young men and women. Axes are much more than tools, the articles shows us; they can overturn the status and authority system in a society and touch other parts of the culture as well, wreaking havoc as the causal chain progresses. If the foreign cultural "microbe" burrows deeply enough into the system, it can have the same fatal results as a virus. We are warned that cultures, like bodies, can contract deadly illness. Once this happens, little can be done but wait until the end comes.

Is Preservation the Answer?

All this is based on the supposition, of course, that cultures can become extinct just like the various species of plant and animal life. Everywhere in the islands these days we are confronted by posters urging us to protect our endangered local wildlife–the Pohnpeian Serehd, the Chuukese Monarch, the Micronesian Kingfisher. Other posters warn us that invasive species, mostly weeds, are threatening to overwhelm and kill off our indigenous plant forms. We are called on to redouble our efforts to ensure that the last of these distinctive birds or plants does not die, all the more so because these life forms are so intimately associated with these islands. These calls to preservation are evocative of our fears regarding the very cultures of these islands. If we are being summoned to save the local birds and plants, it would seem reasonable to expend even greater effort to preserve as many of those distinctive features associated with culture as possible. Otherwise, the local culture could become as extinct as the other forms of life we are urged to protect. Needless to say, this would be a disaster for the people of that society, but it would also bother others, if only because the world would be losing one more species of culture, thus subtracting a bit from the colorful bouquet of folkways on the planet and thereby impoverishing its cultural diversity.

The watchword, then, is cultural preservation: keeping a close lookout for whatever might imperil the culture, eradicating anything that threatens to suffocate those cultural forms we know as customs, employing the same measures we have learned to take to preserve our wildlife. But doing so with redoubled diligence since we would be losing not just some form of life symbolic of the culture, but the culture itself. Therefore, we man the watchtowers and keep a vigilant eye out for massive change–that last attacking force that will overwhelm the citadel, or the final towering wave that will wash away the remainder of our culture.

Although the human reaction is understandable, the model upon which it is based is apocryphal in the extreme. If the flood is already upon us, what response can we make other than stoically to await the end? Cultural change in Micronesia has been occurring for centuries, but never more intensely than during the past fifty years. The waves have long since started washing over these islands, and there is no indication that the storm will abate in this present era of globalization. We can expect much more of the same in the years ahead. Under these conditions, it would appear that our cultures are doomed.

If this is the way you think of culture change and possible culture loss, please read on. The models of culture extinction described above, although commonly held, are grossly inadequate and unduly alarmist. If uncorrected, they could sap energy and divert attention away from constructive approaches. In the remainder of this article I will attempt to offer what I hope is a more balanced view of culture change.

© 2006 nopukob.com