| Sustainable Human Development in the FSM | |
| MicSem Articles | economic | |
CHAPTER 10: The New Social Order
The environmental and economic issues that FSM faces today cannot be addressed adequately without giving serious attention to the sociocultural changes that are also occurring. Any formula for economic development must look to the institutions that will be responsible for implementing proposed changes. Hence, the new forms of family and community that are emerging in Micronesia are of great importance for development. They are important in their own right if the nation is to look to Sustainable Human Development. But they are also key factors in carrying out any economic policies that the government might endorse.
The Family
The Micronesian family today, as we have seen in Chapter Two, has been moving rapidly toward a Western-style nuclear family under the impact of the money economy. In most parts of Micronesia the form of the traditional extended family--the lineage or other group--is still recognized as important, but it no longer plays the same enormous role that it once did. Lineages celebrate together important events like marriages and funerals, and they assemble for occasional feasts. Yet, the extended family group does not exercise nearly as great an influence over its members on a daily basis as it once did.
While this change may be liberating people from the strong social controls under which they were once required to live their lives, it has also weakened many of the supports upon which they depended. It leaves people, children and women included, freer but less protected.
As the biological parents assume more direct control over their children, young people can not as easily turn to some other member of their extended family for guidance or advice, or to intervene when they are being mistreated by their parents. The maternal uncle, who once provided balance and stability in child rearing, is no longer a significant presence in most families. The "canoe" of the family, if we can return to this old image, has lost the feature that once gave it balance.
Without the support system of the extended family, the young man is left to navigate the often difficult relationship between him and his father alone. The high suicide rate in FSM, which began increasing in the late 1960s and continues to the present, attests to the frequent failure of young men to do so (Hezel, Rubinstein & White, 1985). Severe beatings of children also seem to have become more common today, as is suggested by a study of child abuse and neglect conducted by the Micronesian Seminar (Marcus, 1991).
Women, too, are being left to the mercy of their husbands, since their brothers and other blood relatives often do not whisk them away from being beaten as they would have in years gone by. Many a woman's male kin are now saying that the quarrels leading to such beatings "must be worked out within the family." Thus, they no longer take an active role in protecting their kinswomen in such circumstances.
New Solutions to Old Problems
Stripped of the resources that it once possessed, the family today is forced to turn to other institutions to provide for much of what it once was able to handle by itself. If a teenager gets drunk and begins breaking the furniture and windows in his home, the family may call the police for assistance. If a child is being mistreated by his stepfather, his natural mother may seek the outside help rather than take the matter to her older brother. Now that the extended family is well on its way to being cut down to nuclear size, people often feel that they have no choice but to appeal to community institutions for help in carrying out what the traditional family once did for itself.
In the past, parents who were leaving home could easily find caretakers for their children in their extended family network. Grandparents, aunts and uncles would naturally step in to act as surrogate parents until the couple returned. Today there are more and more children who are left on their own, without proper supervision, even for extended periods of time. Not long ago, a father who was left with the custody of his four children, ranging from 8 to 15 years of age, went off island to visit his relatives in another state. He gave his oldest son, a high school student, $75 and told him to take care of the family until he returned a month later. His son, who had already been having discipline problems in school, was unequal to this responsibility. He spent the money on alcohol, was caught drinking with his friends on the school campus, and was suspended from school for this infraction. Meanwhile, the younger children in the family were left to fend for themselves and had to beg from door to door to get enough to eat. When school authorities found out what was going on, they tried to help but they do not have the resources to treat social welfare problems like this.
Without the safety net that the extended family once provided, people are in need of new social services. The response of the government has been to try to find the funding, usually through US Federal grant money, to open welfare offices to respond to these needs. There is an FSM child abuse/neglect program at the national and state levels, an alcohol and substance abuse treatment program, a suicide intervention center, and many other programs that seek to respond to these needs. There are new shingles hung out all over town, but Micronesians remain reluctant to speak to strangers about their intimate problems, especially ones concerning their family. Despite the good will of those running these offices, then, the programs catch only a very small percentage of the social problems.
If Sustainable Human Development looks to improved quality of life, a great part of which is social, serious efforts will have to be made to provide more effective ways of repairing the safety net. Monetization was responsible for changing the shape of the family; money alone will not repair the damage that has been done. The population will have to decide what measures must be taken to restore the quality of family life under the new changes and to ensure that no one is left without assistance.
The Community
The community, like the family, has been fragmented by the changes of recent years. In the early post-war years traditional village and sectional chiefs were still recognized as the main authorities in community affairs. In most places they adjudicated disputes, were responsible for maintaining the peace, and initiated or approved community projects. In the elections held during these early years at the insistence of the US administration, the chiefs or their handpicked representatives were chosen to fill the local elected positions. In time, however, traditional chiefs lost much of their control over the new elected offices and a parallel political system developed, with grants-in-aid and other monies channeled through the elected magistrates.
Village and sectional chiefs are still widely respected today, but they do not have access to government funds for development projects. Likewise, with the establishment of municipal courts, they have lost some of their hold over dispute settlement and other community affairs. They can no longer be relied on to initiate community projects or to oversee the general welfare of the community as they once could.
In Yap, where the authority of village chiefs remains strong, social control is weakest at the village boundaries. Some of the roads are now treated as no-man's land; it is at these spots, interstices in the traditional authority network, that violence is most likely to occur. In the other states, people have come to depend almost entirely on the police force to maintain public order and to deal with offenders.
Mounting Community Projects
Some years ago the paramount chief of Net, one of the districts of Pohnpei, initiated a campaign to have his people do farming. He urged his people to begin garden plots on their land and to fence in their pigs so that they would not damage the crops. Under his leadership, people began growing garden crops everywhere in the district. The crops grown were not just the traditional ones of yams and sakau, but vegetables and fruits that were consumed by the households. The surplus was sold at the local markets to provide a small cash income for the families. He drew upon the competitive nature of his people by organizing annual farm fairs at which the biggest and best of the produce was displayed and prizes awarded to the best farmers. Land was well utilized and Net won recognition all over Pohnpei for its efforts. This successful program faded away when the paramount chief died, however.
Today The Nature Conservancy (TNC) leads a multi-agency program to instruct people of Pohnpei on conserving the watershed. Much of its effort has gone into community workshops to warn people of the ecological danger of planting sakau in the highlands where it interferes with the watershed. The project is largely being funded by outside sources, but much of its effect is due to the fact that the Nahnken of Net, the second highest chief in the district, is collaborating with the project in doing the community education work. Traditional chiefs may not be able to run such programs on their own, but they are an invaluable resource in making a program work even today.
There are serious gaps in the new social order left by the retrenchment of the extended family and the decline of authority in traditional community leaders. We need only consider the following examples:
In former times the family and community would have taken care of all these situations. Who is to do so today?
"Let the government handle it," is the most frequent response to such situations today. As social problems come to the fore, they are relegated to a government office established to meet this new need. Frequently funded by a US Federal program, the new office recruits a cadre of employees to begin the search for clientele. Most of the employees work in an office in town, only rarely visiting the outlying areas. Even if they did, they would come in as strangers to attempt to talk with pregnant girls, angry youth, and quarreling families about highly personal matters. Sometimes the office hires people living and working in the local community, but their caseload is usually light and they can easily become demoralized. Neglect of even the small work load they have is often the result.
People in FSM look to the government to solve social problems for the same reasons they do in other nations. The government is perceived as having adequate financial resources to deal with the problems. Besides, once the problem is relegated to the government, we can all turn our attention to other things. The local communities have taken one more item off their agenda and transferred it to the government.
A True Parable: In the days before Kosrae (then Kusaie) became a sub-district center of Pohnpei, repairs on the road were done by competitive teams organized in each of the villages. They spent a day each week keeping their assigned section of the road in repair, filling in potholes, cutting back the growth alongside the road, and keeping the road passable and clean. Then, in 1971, the people received word that Kosrae was to be an administrative sub-section of Pohnpei District and that the district government would thenceforth maintain all the public roads. Everyone waited for the bulldozers and graders to appear, but shipping delays and mechanical problems with the heavy equipment kept delaying their arrival. In the meantime, the village teams were disbanded, since people lost interest in doing with picks and shovels what large and costly machines could do. After long delays the equipment finally came, but it broke down not long after it was shipped out. And so the roads were worse than they had ever been before.
Who are Most Vulnerable?
It might legitimately be said that development in the FSM has rendered everyone vulnerable, no matter what his age, gender and socio-economic status, as a consequence of the sweeping social changes that it has brought during the past three or four decades.
There are a few groups that can be called vulnerable in the sense that their upward mobility is more limited than most. Women can be put into this category since, despite the educational gains they have made in the past 30 years, public higher status positions are not open to them for the most part. Even today very few women have attained political leadership or management positions. Even more serious, however, is the loss of traditional roles that women are suffering as the extended family is broken down. This includes the important role of acting as caretakers of the land which they once enjoyed but which is now greatly threatened.
Low caste Yapese and outer island Yapese, like women, were traditionally well protected (although less so today). Yet, they are regarded as "children" and denied access to many key positions in Yapese society.
This having been said, there are a few groups that deserve special mention here for the problems they face in this change-swept society.
Young Males Conventional wisdom suggests that women, in Pacific societies as in the West, are more vulnerable than males. In Micronesia, however, there are indications that suggest the opposite is true. Young women can appear to be domestic servants who are kept on a short leash, but they have some important but less visible advantages over young men. Women have retained their work roles within the family circle and seem to have an easier relationship with their mothers than young men do with their fathers. They appear to be better protected, exhibit more confidence in their place in the family, and suffer less dislocation from their family after marriage.
In the eyes of a foreigner, young males will appear to be pampered by their sisters. Yet, they are shuttled around more easily from residence to residence, and their bonding with their fathers is problematic today. For various reasons, many young men seem to feel unwanted and unimportant within and outside of their family circles. They are certainly more susceptible to the kinds of social problems that draw public attention today. Their suicide rate outnumbers that of women by a ratio of 11 to 1; their measured rate of serious mental illness is four times higher than women; the high school dropout rate of males is higher than females; and young men account for virtually all the serious alcohol abuse and delinquency in the islands. (Hezel, Rubinstein & Wylie, 1985; Micronesian Seminar, 1981).
The Landless In former times it would have been unimaginable for people to be without land. The land and kin system was so vital to life that landless people would have had as much chance of survival as a headless or lungless person. Today, however, they are to be found in small numbers in every state. They can become landless in a number of ways: by being deprived of their land by other family members; by voluntarily leaving their land and emigrating to town, sometimes becoming squatters on public land or on land belonging to another; and by selling their land to pay debts or buy attractive new commodities like a pickup truck.
There are numerous cases of such people today. Often they wander from place to place, staying with relatives or friends until they wear out their welcome and then moving on to someone else. They have no earning capacity at all. If they did, they would buy land and produce food crops for their sustenance or work in town and rent a place.
Those Without Formal Education Those who have not finished at least elementary school have little hope of entering the wage economy. This in itself is not a serious problem, since the majority of FSM citizens are outside the wage economy anyway. More significant is the limited options these people have. Since they are generally not English-speakers and have limited skills, they usually do not emigrate to seek new opportunities outside FSM. Their role within their communities is limited, for they are usually not the most capable and resourceful of their age group. Their participation in and understanding of the events that impinge on their communities is often minimal as well. This is particularly true of younger men and women, whose peers had access to high school and college.
Resources at Hand: The Women's Army
To speak of turning over responsibility to the community is fine in theory, but what community institutions, outside of government-supported ones, can be identified? There are political organizations in some parts of FSM. Based on old village and blood affiliations, they are more than Western-type political parties although their aim is to organize political campaigns and rally support for select candidates. Where these organizations exist, they are almost entirely under the control of men.
The most effective NGOs, on the other hand, seem to be women's groups with a strong interest in community welfare. Chuuk alone has several such groups: Truk Women's Club, a social club for younger women; Club 20, a women's organization that does fund-raising for worthy projects; the 40-60 Club, an organization for retired nurses; and the Red Cross Association. In addition, there are a number of women's church organizations. In Pohnpei there are three women's organizations that draw their membership from younger, professional women: the Pohnpei Women's Federation, the Pohnpei Ladies Club, and the FSM Women Association Network. The first two are mainly concerned with raising financial support for women's education, while the third focuses on networking among women's groups. Yap has two women's groups: Yap Women's Association for Yapese living in town; and the Madrich Women's Association, a parallel group for outer island women living in the settlement on Yap known as Madrich. Although the latter is not a religious organization as such, many of its activities center around the Catholic Church. (Schoeffel, 1993; UNPFA, 1994)
Some of the strongest and most effective of the women's groups are church-based. The United Church of Christ on Kosrae has women's groups at the municipal and island-wide level. Besides assisting in the organization of the church choirs and other religious tasks, the women's groups help run youth groups, provide family services for those who need them, and undertake cleanup and beautification programs around the island. On Pohnpei there are two major church-based women's groups: Lien Alem and Pwihnen Mercedes. Lien Alem, which literally means "Friday Ladies", takes its name from the traditional Friday women's church services conducted in the United Church of Christ. Pwihnen Mercedes, named after the Mercedarian Sisters who ran the old Catholic boarding schools, is open to non-graduates of these schools and has become the Catholic counterpart of Lien Alem. Both organizations engage largely in church service and charity work, but occasionally also sponsor broader community education efforts. Chuuk has an even wider variety of women's church groups: Mwichen Mercedes and Mwichen Maria for Catholics, Fin Anisi for United Church of Christ, and another group for the Evangelical Church.
In surveying the array of community organizations that function at present, we might conclude that the division of labor between men's groups and women's groups is very much honored today. Men's groups, where they exist, seem to be focused rather narrowly on the political life of the community, while women's groups have a much broader range of interests. Many of the most long-lived of these groups are church-based. While the latter may have as their principal goal support for church programs, they often undertake a much broader range of activities, including social services to the needy. The long life and durability of these groups is owing to the strong roots they have in the community and the sense of purpose they draw from the church to which they are affiliated. They are not organizations that depend simply on a group of women with a cause and a set of bylaws but are doomed as the founders retire from the group; the church groups are bigger than this and have far more hope for continuity.
It is hard to avoid the conclusion that women's groups, especially but not exclusively women's church groups, represent a tremendous resource for the community that has only been partially tapped. Because the traditional distinctions between men and women's roles are still in force, women are denied access to the most visible and prestigious political roles. There have been no females among the chief executives at the state or national level, and there have been only three or four females ever elected to the state legislatures. Barred from entering the public arena, women have poured their creative energies into other outlets, especially these informal community associations. Although from a modern feminist standpoint this might seem unfair, the community is also enriched by this turn of events. Women's groups must be recognized as the best potential vehicles for social service delivery in the community.
Women Take to the Streets Now and then Micronesian women shake off tradition to take a more public role on some matter. Often enough, it seems, the issue has to do with alcohol.
In December 1971, the administration in Pohnpei was on the point of reopening the bars when the women went into action. The bars had been closed by executive order four months earlier after two policemen were shot while attempting to break up a drunken brawl outside a bar. More than 150 women, most of them Kosraean and Kapingamarangi, marched on the public roads to protest the reopening. They carried signs saying, "We do not like the importing of liquor because it takes away the lives of our people," as they circled the district courthouse where bar owners were meeting with the licensing board to establish new drinking regulations. Four months later the ladies took to the streets again. Fifty women from town marched to the legislature building to tell the lawmakers that they were counting on them to keep the bars closed. The women prevailed for a time--until the district administrator reopened the bars under pressure from the business community a few months later.
Drinking was getting out of hand in Chuuk when women began their protest in early 1977. Members of a women's church group circulated petitions for the prohibition of alcohol throughout Weno, the main island. They spoke out openly in favor of a drinking ban at the round of meetings held in different villages. They attended public hearings on the municipal resolution to ban alcohol on Weno and encouraged voters on the day of the referendum. Their organizational efforts and strong presence on voting day made a difference, for the prohibition measure was approved by an enormous majority--93% of the vote.
(Marshall and Marshall, Silent Voices Speak, 1990)
Another valuable resource that Micronesia possesses is its youth groups. Nearly everywhere in FSM there are youth groups, usually under the direction of a slightly older male from the same community. Many of the most successful of these are church groups. Typically a youth group may meet two or three times a week, especially when it is practicing songs, preparing for an athletic contest, or planning a community project. Most of the group's effort is directed at religious activities; competitive church singing is especially popular among these groups. These organizations engage in discussions aimed at personal growth, community service projects such as cleanups, and picnics or other recreational activities. Few church congregations of any size are without their own youth group.
Summary
With the nuclearization of the Micronesian family and the loss of traditional community institutions, serious rips have appeared in the social fabric. Much of the delinquency, suicide, child abuse, domestic violence and other social problems could be avoided if the safety net were intact.
The government, which is opening one specialized office after another, is usually expected to provide solutions for these social problems. Often it cannot do so, for people affected by these problems would prefer to go to someone they know and trust, especially when speaking about intimate family matters. Government offices are often far removed from the communities in more than distance.
The local community is better equipped to intervene in such situations. Moreover, the growth of the community's confidence in itself- its empowerment- would be aided if it were to do so. The resources which the local communities possess are clubs and associations, most of them service-oriented and most run by women.
The most fruitful approach would seem to be one that makes use of those tools that society offers. FSM has institutions well rooted in society that could become effective means of delivery of social services. Rather than hoist the banner for or against gender equality, people in FSM and those who seek to assist them might do better to explore and expand the obvious potential of women's groups to provide those social services that the community and family can no longer furnish.