Ethnography at its best is a dialogical interaction between understanding the specificity of life in a particular cultural setting and elaborating theoretical concepts in order to gain insight into human existence. Throop achieves this goal in the form of a cultural phenomenology that consists on the one hand of using phenomenological method, concepts, and sensibility in the interpretation of ethnographic data, and on the other of using ethnographic instances as the concrete data for phenomenological reflection. Insofar as this approach hinges on experiential immediacy, Throop takes seriously the current move in anthropology to embrace experience as a legitimate theoretical and empirical category, working specifically to develop a cultural phenomenology of moral experience.

Ethnographically, this is a study of the moral valence of suffering based on ethnographic fieldwork in the Micronesian island of Yap. Although it is thematically focused on “the vicissitudes and existential structure of pain,” the monograph presents a well-rounded understanding of contemporary Yapese society. Throop situates his account in the historical context of the early habitation of the island extending through the colonial and post-colonial periods, as well as (building on works by previous ethnographers of Yap) in the context of social structure and social relations framed by the dialectics between suffering (gaafgow) and compassion (runguy), power that is controllable (tabugul) and uncontrollable (taqay), reflective mental life (yaen') and impulsive somatic life (doow), and mere suffering without meaning or purpose and suffering for the sake of others.

In one respect, Throop uses pain as a lens for understanding Yapese culture, while in another sense he explains pain in a way that throws light on domains of human existence including suffering, subjectivity, social action, care, respect, morality, temporality, narrativity, attention, and embodiment. He brings multiple strategies to bear on the task of elucidating these existential domains, including detailed elaboration of a large lexicon of indigenous terms and the communicative settings in which they are used; precise phenomenological description of emotion, feeling, and somatic experience; social structure as lived through the ethics and aesthetics of relationships; and the hierarchical ordering and transformation of space through communal labor and sustained effort. He enriches these analyses by presenting case studies focusing on narratives of pain elicited from Yapese interlocutors.

Throop's writing exhibits equal appreciation of both embodiment and language. With respect to embodiment, for example, he describes a disposition to avoid the unexpected or unpredictable so deeply inculcated that Yapese exhibit a highly sensitive startle response, and observes the meaningful elaboration of walking on slippery stone paths as an element of mindful deliberation and care in the conduct of social life. On the side of language, he describes an ethic of reserve, including communicative strategies to enhance ambiguity in interactive situations, as well as a language ideology that emphasizes the hidden meaning of speech. The care and precision of Throop's exposition provide a solid foundation for his concluding reflections on Emmanuel Levinas' concern for a relation with the Other “structured in the form of a question, a question that does not anticipate its answer” (p. 272), an ethnographic epoché as the methodological figure of this existential stance, and the cultural phenomenology of suffering as an enterprise that strikes a balance between understanding the moral worth of the Other in terms of uniqueness and typicality.