Mac Marshall

Unlike most other honorary fellows, many association members know Mac Marshall personally as well as through his scholarship. He has graciously welcomed several generations of young scholars into ASAO and encouraged them in their careers. Many of us are privileged to count him not only as a distinguished colleague, but as a friend.

Mac represents the best of ASAO, having “grown up” professionally with the organization and having helped guide and shape it into its current form. He has been involved virtually from the beginning and was an active contributor at our most recent meeting in Santa Cruz, California. Mac has served ASAO in almost every conceivable position. He was a member of the board of directors from 1984 to 1987 and chaired the association in 1986-87. As program chair in 1978- 79, he planned ASAO's eighth annual meeting. He was Newsletter editor in 1991-92 and served as monograph series editor and general publications editor for an entire decade, from 1974 through 1983. He continued his work on the editorial board for the ASAO monograph series from 1997 through 2000. In addition to these formal positions, Mac has long exemplified ASAO's informal policy of welcoming all newcomers, particularly students and young researchers. He has chaired or co-chaired numerous sessions and has been an active participant in countless others. He was organizer of the original working session on “Alcohol and Kava Use in Oceania” at the third annual meeting in 1974. He organized a session on “The Meaning of Siblingship in Oceania” that met at the symposium level in 1978 and was published as ASAO Monograph Number 8. Along with Lamont Lindstrom, he co-organized a session on “Drugs and Interpersonal Relations” that met at the symposium level in 1984, and he was co-organizer with David Lewis of informal and working sessions on “Tobacco in Oceania” in 1989 and 1990. As an active participant in the Society for Medical Anthropology and the American Anthropological Association, Mac has also been an advocate for ASAO's conference design and approach to scholarship, thereby enhancing our association's visibility in the broader anthropological community.

Critical as Mac's contributions have been to ASAO, honorary fellowship is not awarded simply in recognition of service to the organization. It is our highest honor, bestowed on outstanding scholars for their central contributions to Pacific anthropology and the discipline at large. In that respect as well, Mac is exemplary.

Mac Marshall is emeritus professor at the University of Iowa. He served multiple terms as department chair and was instrumental in shaping Iowa anthropology into a nationally-respected program at both the graduate and undergraduate levels. Equally, as a medical anthropologist he made important contributions to the University of Iowa's program in community and behavioral health. He is a core scholar in the field of alcohol and drug studies, both within the United States and in the international arena.

Mac is a leader in exploring the intersection between kinship and social practices associated with the use of drugs, alcohol, and tobacco. His research has been grounded ethnographically in Chuuk (Micronesia), Papua New Guinea, and, most recently, diasporic communities of Chuukese in Hawai'i and the United States. His publications have been expansive, from modest beginnings (“A New Method for Sewage Treatment on Coral Atolls” [Atoll Research Bulletin, 1969]) to “Structural Patterns of Sibling Classification in Island Oceania” (Current Anthropology, 1984), and “Problematizing Impairment: Cultural Competence in the Carolines” (Ethnology, 1996). He helped lay the groundwork for numerous research endeavors with the 1975 publication of Micronesia 1944-1974: A Bibliography of Anthropological and Related Source Materials (with James Nason). That was followed by a series of overviews, introductions, and conclusions to edited collections: the introduction and conclusion to Beliefs, Behaviors and Alcoholic Beverages (Marshall, ed. [1979]); the introduction to Culture, Kin and Cognition in Oceania (Marshall and Caughey, eds. [1989]); the introduction (with Robert Kiste) to American Anthropology in Micronesia (Kiste and Marshall, eds [1999]); and the preface to Relative Power: Changing Interpretations of Fosterage and Adoption in Pacific Island Societies (Dickerson-Putman and Schacter, eds. [2008]). His many books include the Micronesian ethnographic standby, Weekend Warriors: Alcohol in a Micronesian Culture (1979); Silent Voices Speak: Women and Prohibition in Truk (with Leslie Marshall [1990]); American Anthropology in Micronesia: An Assessment (with Robert Kiste [1999]); and, most recently, Namoluk Beyond the Reef: The Transformation of a Micronesian Community (2004).

There are a handful of living colleagues without whom ASAO would not exist and Pacific scholarship would be much the poorer. Mac Marshall is a core member of that exclusive group. We recommend him unequivocally for the status of ASAO Honorary Fellow.

Submitted by Larry Carucci and Rick Feinberg