International Postdoctoral Fellows Program: Rapid Change and the Production of Inequality in East Kwaio, Solomon Islands

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9504555 Akin This award is under the International Junior Investigator and Postdoctoral Fellows Program, which enables U.S. scientists and engineers to conduct three to twenty-four months of research abroad. The program's awards provide opportunities for joint research, and the use of unique or complementary facilities, expertise and experimental conditions abroad. Financial support for this award is from the East Asia Pacific Program. This award will partially support a fifteen month postdoctoral research visit by David W. Akin to work with John Laete'esafi, Organizer of the Kwaio Cultural Centre in East Kwaio, Malaita, Solomon Islands. This research is an anthropological study of how genderbased inequality is being created and perpetuated in a situation of rapid social change. The PI will examine the relationship between gender relations and change in belief among the people of Kwaio in the Solomon Islands. The mountain Kwaio are the last major non-Christian group in the Solomon Islands, and they continue to worship spirits of their ancestors, that enforce a strict code of behavior. However, the Kwaio have been steadily reinterpreting and reshaping their beliefs to make them compatible with changing social conditions. Akin will test and refine a hypothesis as to how particular aspects of this chanee are taking place. This is a study of the role of human agency in processes of social transformation. He will investigate how incremental adjustments in belief and practice may, over time, produce significant socio-structural change. ***