“... to grasp the native's point of view ...” — A plea for a holistic documentation of the Trobriand Islanders' language, culture and cognition

In his famous introduction to his monograph “Argonauts of the Western Pacific” Bronislaw Malinowski (1922: 24f.) points out that a “collection of ethnographic statements, characteristic narratives, typical utterances, items of folk-lore and magical formulae has to be given as a corpus inscriptionum, as documents of native mentality”. This is one of the prerequisites to “grasp the native's point of view, his relation to life, to realize his vision of his world”. Malinowski managed to document a “Corpus Inscriptionum Agriculturae Quriviniensis” in his second volume of “Coral Gardens and their Magic” (1935 Vol II: 79-342). But he himself did not manage to come up with a holistic corpus inscriptionum for the Trobriand Islanders. One of the main aims I have been pursuing in my research on the Trobriand Islanders' language, culture, and cognition has been to fill this ethnolinguistic niche. In this essay, I report what I had to do to carry out this complex and ambitious project, what forms and kinds of linguistic and cultural competence I had to acquire, and how I planned my data collection during 16 long- and short-term field trips to the Trobriand Islands between 1982 and 2012. The paper ends with a critical assessment of my Trobriand endeavor

Lifetime Estrogen Exposure, Cumulative Lifetime Stress, and Cognition in Later Life

The main goal of this study was to begin to examine how stress and estrogen work together to influence memory and thinking in older women. We looked at how stressful experiences affected memory in older women and how the hormone estrogen influenced the relationship between stress and memory. The relationship between cognition, stress, and hormones was investigated by having 15 women aged 60 and older complete stress and hormone questionnaires and perform two memory tasks. Most likely due to the small sample size, we did not find the hypothesized combined effect of lifetime estrogen exposure and cumulative stress on cognition. Yet, this study showed a relationship between psychiatric wellbeing, estrogen, and stress exposure. Furthermore, participants’ cognitive assessment scores were correlated with estrogen exposure and age. The results suggest that estrogen and stress have individual effects on cognition

Trobriander (Ost-Neuguinea, Trobriand Inseln, Kaile'una) Fadenspiele 'ninikula'

Sammelband 1, 1985-198

Trobriander (Ost-Neuguinea, Trobriand Inseln, Kaile'una) Fadenspiele 'ninikula'

Sammelband 1, 1985-198