Writings by Anne and Keith
You can click and read these. Most can also be downloaded
Nanumea, September 1973
Unity of Heart: Culture and Change in a Polynesian Atoll Society
A book by Anne and Keith together, published by Waveland Press in 2001. 283 pages.
We intended two audiences for this readable book about Nanumea and our research trips there over many decades. The first group was Nanumeans themselves - our most important audience. We wanted them, especially the younger people who might be growing up away from the island itself, to be able to read about their amazing home island and its culture. The other group was university students who would read about Nanumea if they took classes in anthropology or Pacific-focused studies. Anne assigned the book as one text in her classes, and it is still being used in university classes in 2026.
More than twenty years after it was first published this book is still in print, available at Amazon as a paperback and also as an e-book for Kindle. For this reason we are not able to include a full pdf copy here. The book can be found in libraries in New Zealand, Fiji, Hawaii, Australia, the USA and other places. The Amazon link is: Unity of Heart
Heirs of Tefolaha: Tradition and Social Organization in Nanumea, a Polynesian Atoll Society
Keith's PhD thesis (pepa faka oti) — (1984) pdf, 345 pages.
In this study I first provide an overview of Nanumea and its environment and social and cultural life. But then the main focus is on the interplay of traditional history about the founding of Nanumea and the founder, Tefolaha, and the chiefly system which sprang from him. I try to show how these traditions about the founding of Nanumea and the workings of the chiefly system continue to be important in today’s society. This book also provides historical detail on Ahiga use, aliki maga, kopiti groups, and Tefolaha and the groups which descend from him. Many leading elders of Nanumea in the period 1973-1984 were interviewed as part of the research leading to this book.
Talking with Noa, 1996
Exchange and Social Organization in Nanumea, a Polynesian Atoll Society
This is Anne’s PhD thesis (pepa faka oti) -- (1983) pdf, 238 pages.
How did the Nanumean community make its living in 1973-74? And how did people’s economic practices interact with their social relationships? This study sought to answer these two questions drawing on information from an extended survey of household economic activities and the author’s two years of ethnographic fieldwork. My research showed that sharing of material goods and expertise (technically termed generalized reciprocity) was the community’s “dominant mode of exchange.”
Unlike the economic system of western societies, the Nanumean economy was based on a flow of open-ended “gifts,” both those freely given (meaalofa) and those in response to a request (akai). This everyday sharing was the main fact of daily social and economic life, especially for relatives and neighbors, but also for the community as a whole as people responded to particular events and relationship expectations. People felt that sharing had very different social and moral meanings than either buying-and-selling (togi) and balanced exchanges (taui). Nanumea’s sharing-based economy was exceptionally good at balancing resources against needs, strengthening the community’s socio-economic resilience while expressing its key values of equality and solidarity.
Written by Anne just after we completed our first long stay in Nanumea in early 1975. Republished in 1984 and that version is available by clicking above.
This book describes the socio-economic organization of the community of Nanumea in 1973-74. It offers a detailed overview of local lifestyle, economic patterns, social structure and culture with a focus on current and historic processes of change. It is based on 21 months of ethnographic and archival research.
The book was originally published by Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand in 1975 with the title Nanumea Report: A Socio-Economic Survey of Nanumea Atoll, Tuvalu. In 1984 it was re-published by Australian National University Press with minor changes and titled Nanumea, which was no. 6 in Atoll Economy: Social Change in Kiribati and Tuvalu. (1984) pdf, 334 pages)
Reproduction in Nanumea (Tuvalu): an Ethnography of Fertility and Birth
A study Anne carried out in Nanumea in 1984, published in 1986 as a Working Paper by the University of Auckland Department of Anthropology. (pdf, 338 pages.)
This book describes attitudes and practices of Nanumean women regarding reproduction. Its focus is broad, involving a complex realm in which gender expectations, physiology and health, fertility decision-making, marriage, pregnancy, birth, and child-rearing are all involved. My research included participant-observation, a comprehensive fertility history survey, our village census data, interviews with community members and specialists, and previous fieldwork in Nanumea. Demographic and situational information shared by local women is related to the community’s social institutions, behavioral norms, cultural assumptions and values, economic patterns, and environmental parameters.
With increasing population growth a matter of national concern in newly-independent Tuvalu at the time of my research, I hoped that women’s’ own perspectives provided by an ethnographic case study would have practical and applied uses locally, and that the study would also contribute to relatively-scarce ethnographic literature regarding reproduction in traditional societies.
Engaging the World: Four Decades of Intensifying Change in Tuvalu
A paper by Anne and Keith discussing change in Nanumea (and Tuvalu) as they have seen it in over 40 years of research. (2018) pdf, 20 pp.
Five Takes on Climate and Cultural Change in Tuvalu
Film review (5 Films about Tuvalu and Climate Change) by Anne and Keith published in The Contemporary Pacific, University of Hawaii Press, vol 19 no. 1, 2007, pp 293-306. pdf, 14 pages.