A Widow, a Child, and Two Lineages: Exploring Kinship and Attachment in Chuuk

Abstract

This article brings together a life span perspective on emotional attachments and recent anthropological studies of the formation of personal and cultural understandings of kinship. It argues three main points. First, people share idealized cultural models of attachment that associate particular kinds of need fulfillment with particular kinds of kin‐based social relationships. Second, these idealized models are the products of typical relational histories of reciprocated need fulfillment that are significant during various periods of the life span beginning in infancy and continuing into adulthood. Third, these idealized models of attachment shape the ongoing construction and legitimization of kin‐based social relationships in everyday life. After reviewing the relevant literature regarding the formation of emotional attachments in social relationships, I address the main understandings of kinship and emotional attachments for adults who live in Chuuk Lagoon (formerly Truk). This analysis involves two parts. First, a description of an observed ethnographic case offers a real world example of how certain core cultural premises of kinship are brought to bear on actual constructions of kinbased identity, Second, an analysis of data from a survey of perceived social support reveals the basic structure of association between kin‐based social identities and expectations of need fulfillment. The article concludes with a brief discussion of how the idealized cultural models of kinship and attachment are expressed in everyday practice and shape active negotiations of kinship in Chuuk. [Key words: kinship, attachment, Chuuk, Pacific]