Who Can Belong to a Micronesian Household: Representations of Household Composition Across Social Contexts

Abstract

Household typologies and the developmental cycle of the household have been widely used to characterize household composition. However, neither method can adequately account for the entire range of variation in household composition. The authors describe two new methods for representation of household composition: household frequencies diagrams and correspondence analysis of the kinship relationships pertaining within households. The authors apply the methods to four communities in Kosrae, three communities in the Marshall Islands, and the Marshallese community in Southern California. They also demonstrate the ease with which such methods may be used in larger and smaller aggregations of data for comparative purposes.