For 33 months, from October until July , and again for seven months from March until September , and for several weeks in , I lived among the Sikaiana, a Polynesian people in the Solomon Islands. Part of the time, I lived with them on their coral atoll; the rest of the time was spent living with Sikaiana emigrants, mostly in and around Honiara, the capital of the Solomon Islands.
In , I went to the Solomon Islands to do research on Sikaiana culture, society, and language for my doctoral thesis in anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. I returned in to do more research on social change. I want to be very clear that this book is about Sikaiana life during the period from t0 There have been many changes since then.
Sikaiana was settled by Polynesian argonauts who journeyed across hundreds of miles of open ocean to settle a small, isolated atoll. But for many years before my arrival in , the Sikaiana had not gone on any long-distance sailing voyages. They no longer construct the seaworthy outrigger canoes necessary for such trips. The Sikaiana, like so many other people in the world, participated in intensive culture change in the 20th century.
One wakes to the calls of people going about their chores. Individuals are known for their delights, dislikes, individualities, peculiarities and these provide a source for a continuous commentary in daily life.
People encounter one another at the morning and afternoon church services, walking along the paths to the gardens, at public meetings, community work projects, and the frequent drinking bouts. There is an on-going discussion about individuals and involvement in their daily lives. Intimacy in my own society is structured around a few private relationships of extreme intensity and isolation, most apparent in marriage and nuclear families. In sociology textbooks, the term intimacy almost invariably refers to sexual intimacy.
