Outline for Romantic Love Presentation



Kristen Norment

Emotion in Oceania

Abstract

For decades, social scientists assumed that the emotions and language surrounding romantic love was limited to Western societies. Researchers such as Margaret Mead left much of the world with the idea of the “lustful” savage with their conclusion that romantic relationships were void of emotional ties and were purely sexual. Until recently, the study of romantic love has been practically non-existent.

This paper explores the experience of romantic love in nonwestern cultures of Oceania. Through ethnographic research of romantic love in various cultures, I identify romantic love as a universal experience. In particular, this paper seeks to highlight statistical research that proves romantic love as a shared experience and focuses that experience on Oceanic communities.

Romantic Love in Oceania:

A Look at Samoa

Romantic love is an emotion that is understudied within Anthropology and the other social sciences. It is traditionally viewed as an inner, invisible, psychological issue that cannot be studied or analyzed by a social scientist in the field (Lutz 1988: 41). This paper will discuss the experience of romantic love in Oceania, more specifically how it is experienced in Samoa. First, I will discuss what led me to this topic and then give background information on Oceania and Samoa. I will continue with a review of some of the literature that has been written on romantic love. Finally, I will provide a few examples from interviews and my look at Samoa.

Oceania and Samoa Background

In the Fall of 2007, I participated in a study abroad program in Samoa. During a month long independent study project on identity, I realized that many of my interviewees often moved conversations into discussions about their love lives. I recognized that my age and gender probably helped facilitate these discussions as I was initially interviewing young college-aged students. However, I recalled that during my first few weeks in Samoa, I was often taken aback at the displays (or lack thereof) of affection and I thought back to Margaret Mead’s early study of Samoan adolescents and wondered how her conclusions from more than eighty years ago would hold up today.

Geographically, Oceania refers to the islands of the Pacific. Most often it describes the regions of Melanesia, Micronesia, Polynesia, Australia, and sometimes Malaysia. Given the vastness of the region and the incredible differences among the peoples that live there, it is impossible for this short study to completely generalize the experience of romantic love for all of Oceania. Therefore, this paper will focus on Samoa. Samoa is located roughly between Hawai’i and New Zealand. Today Samoa is divided politically into Independent Samoa and American Samoa. Both of these political entities share a language, kinships, and customs.

Background Literature

Putting an exact definition to romantic love can be difficult because it can and often is defined differently by different people. For the purposes of this paper, I use Jankowiak and Fischer’s (1992:150) definition of romantic love as “any intense attraction that involves the idealization of the other, within an erotic context, with the expectation of enduring for sometime in the future.”

The study of romantic love has been overwhelmingly left for psychologists and neuroscientists. For decades, psychologists researched it until Zick Rubin “established love as a legitimate topic for scholarly interest” in the social sciences (Harris 1995: 99). Catherine Lutz has done extensive fieldwork for emotion in Oceania. She notes that social scientists often stay away from emotion because it is considered an inner, private, and hidden psychological event (1988: 41-42). When emotion is viewed from a social science framework, focus is most often placed on facial expressions. Lutz points out that it is imperative that the study of any type of emotion takes into consideration the ways groups of people talk about their emotional experiences (1988: 44).

Thanks to explorers, missionaries, and early anthropologists such as Margaret Mead, Samoans have been erroneously labeled as a “lusty savage”. There has been a prevailing idea that romantic love does not exist in Samoa as it does in our Euro-American culture. Missionary workers came to Samoa in 1830 with the arrival of John Williams and the London Missionary Society. At the time, Samoa had already clashed with many of the colonial powers because the islands are in a prime refueling location. Missionaries arrived with the intent of refining the Samoan. They set out not only to evangelize, but also to change the intricate Samoan culture so that it mirrored the Western one, including the behaviors and emotions of the people.

Furthermore, Samoans suffered a setback in the worldwide view of them when Margaret Mead wrote in her widely received ethnography, Coming of Age in Samoa where she concluded “romantic love as it occurs in our civilization…does not occur in Samoa.” (1928: 79). She went on to write that Samoans laugh at the idea of romantic love even though she acknowledges that informants did admit that they felt intense feelings of love towards another (1928: 78).

Mead was a leading voice in the social sciences that claimed that emotions such as romantic love are not universal. However, in 1992, Fischer and Jankowiak surveyed a number of cultures around the world to determine if romantic love is a universal experience. They found that romantic love is indeed a universal and was found in 88.5% of surveyed cultures which directly contradicts the notion that it is a product or Euro-Western culture (1992: 153).

My Look at Samoa

The language of the people one is researching is very important to consider, especially when looking at emotions such as romantic love. In Samoan, alofa is the word used for love. It is used often in everyday conversation and can express love for hospitality, love for kin, as well as romantic love. In order to express one’s love towards another, one would say “ou te alofa ia te oe” which translates literally into “I love you.”

The legends of Samoa, which are not written, but passed down orally, show that romantic love existed long before contact with the West. One significant legend is about the origin of the coconut tree. The story goes that an eel followed Sina all over Samoa expressing his undying love for her. Sina tried hard to escape the eel, but finally relented as she realized his love for her. At his death, he asked Sina to plant him in the ground if she really loved him and a tree would grow. Sina buried the eel’s head and in it’s spot a coconut tree grew.

When asked about what they thought of this legend, Samoans saw it not only as an important history of how their prized staple came into being, but also as a story on how acknowledging, accepting, and following through on one’s feelings of romantic love towards another is key to improving and continuing the fa’asamoa, or the Samoan way of life. Informant A claimed that he often thinks about the eel’s love for Sina when he is having problems with his marriage. He stated that there are times when he thinks he wants to leave his wife, but then he realizes how much alofa (love) he has for her and he knows that love creates great things, such as the coconut tree.

Aside from legends, there are multiple ways to show that romantic love as we know it in the west is present in Samoa. While speaking with informants, I found that there was a distinct difference in the ideas and experiences of romantic love between generations. The first is Informant B, a 20-year-old college female residing in the only urban area of Independent Samoa. She described to me the physical feelings she has when she is romantically in love with someone. She said being in love is like running across hot coals. It is “exciting and painful all at the same time.” She had a difficult time describing feelings in English, but through a translator, she spoke in Samoan and used words such as longing, pain, yearning, and happiness to describe how one physically feels when they are in love.

Informant C was another woman I spoke with. She is in her late 50’s and lives in a very rural part of the islands. She was not concerned with the physical aspects of what love felt like but did tell me that when she first saw her husband, she knew instantly that she loved him. When they spoke to one another for the first times, they talked about alofa and aiga (family). Informant C also informed me that she knows that love is very much a part of the Samoan culture because her parents used to share stories about their experiences with romantic love.

Analysis and Conclusion

Given the informant’s responses above and examination of Samoan legend, romantic love as defined as “any intense attraction that involves the idealization of the other, within an erotic context, with the expectation of enduring for sometime in the future (Jankowiak, Fischer 1992: 150)” most certainly exists in Samoa. While I provided only two examples, almost all of my informants stated that romantic love is part of Samoan culture and existed long before the West began to arrive on ships and Bibles.

I acknowledge that my lack of Samoan language abilities was a limitation. However, I agree with Lutz in that the study of any emotion must be made with the examiner full capable in the language of the people’s she is researching. This study merits further, more in-depth research into the experience of romantic love in Samoa and Oceania.

Glossary

Fa’asamoa: Loosely translates into the samoan way, but can be used to describe anything

that is particular to Samoan culture, language, or people.

Alofa: Love

Aiga: family

Ou te alofa ia te oe: I love you

Informants

Informant A: Middle aged man

Informant B: 20-year-old college female, urban area

Informant C: 50-year-old female, rural area

References

Jankowiak, William, ed.

1995 Romantic Passion: A Universal Experience? New York: Columbia University Press.

Jankowiak, William R. & Edward F. Fischer.

1992. “A Cross-Cultural Perspective on Romantic Love.” Ehtnology, Vol. 31,

No. 2. Apr., pp. 149-155.

Lutz, Catherine

1988 Unnatural Emotions: Everyday Sentiments on a Micronesian Atoll & Their Challenge to Western Theory. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Mead, Margaret

1928 Coming of Age in Samoa. William Morrow and Company.

................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download