Gender, Missions, and Maintenance Activities in the Early Modern Globalization: Guam 1668–98

Abstract

This article proposes that early modern globalization took shape through the global circulation of gender ideologies, sexual politics, engendered technologies, and engendered knowledge. It does so by exploring the early years of Jesuit missions in Guam (Mariana Islands) and describes mission policies as engendered sexual policies that fostered the emergence of a new sex/gender system within indigenous Chamorro society. These policies targeted, among others, the sphere of maintenance activities. This concept highlights the foregrounding nature of a set of routine everyday practices that are essential to social continuity. Guam offers an interesting case study to discuss how gender transformations were performed and implemented on the ground, and what they entailed for those who experienced them.