This book is about the relationship between the Buid value system and their history of resistance to the lowland world. The Buid of Mindoro value the equality, autonomy and solidarity of all humans, male or female, yo... more abstractThis book is about the relationship between the Buid value system and their history of resistance to the lowland world. The Buid of Mindoro value the equality, autonomy and solidarity of all humans, male or female, young or old. The Buid also maintain social relationships with many different kinds of spirits through the practice of animal sacrifice and spirit mediumship. These relationships range from hostility toward the predatory spirits, who regard humans as their and prey, to profound intimacy with the spirits of the earth, who ensure the fertility, health and well-being of the human community. With the passage of the Indigenous Peoples Rights Act of 1997, peoples like the Buid must provide Free and Prior Informed Consent to any exploration, development, exploitation or utilization of the natural resources found within their ancestral domains. Activists and civil servants who support these rights need to understand the social and religious processes by which the consensus of the whole community is achieved in egalitarian societies like that of the Buid. This edition of the book contains an extensive new introduction that reviews the social, economic and political history of the indigenous peoples of Mindoro from the time when the first edition was published in 1986 through 2014.

Indigenous Studies, Southeast Asian Studies, Indigenous Peoples Rights, Philippine Studies, Anthropology of Religion, and 1 more

Publisher: Ateneo de Manila University Press

Publication Date: Jul 2015

This volume analyzes a group of Southeast Asian societies that have in common a mode of sociality that maximizes personal autonomy, political egalitarianism, and inclusive forms of social solidarity. Their members mak... more abstractThis volume analyzes a group of Southeast Asian societies that have in common a mode of sociality that maximizes personal autonomy, political egalitarianism, and inclusive forms of social solidarity. Their members make their livings as nomadic hunter-gatherers, shifting cultivators, sea nomads, and peasants embedded in market economies. While political anarchy and radical equality appear in many societies as utopian ideals, these societies provide examples of actually existing, viable forms of "anarchy." This book documents the mechanisms that enable these societies to maintain their life-ways and suggests some moral and political lessons that those who appreciate them might apply to their own societies.

Indigenous Studies, Southeast Asian Studies, Anarchism, Egalitarianism, Indigenous Knowledge, and 4 more

Location: New Haven

More Info: Edited by Thomas Gibson and Kenneth Sillander

Publisher: Yale University Southeast Asia Studies

Publication Date: 2011

Buku ini adalah hasil penyigian Thomas Gibson di Desa Ara, Bulukumba, Sulawesi Selatan—sebuah desa Makassar di ujung selatan jazirah Sulawesi. Penelitian ini membentangkan hasil studi apik tentang komunitas-komunitas ... more abstractBuku ini adalah hasil penyigian Thomas Gibson di Desa Ara, Bulukumba, Sulawesi Selatan—sebuah desa Makassar di ujung selatan jazirah Sulawesi. Penelitian ini membentangkan hasil studi apik tentang komunitas-komunitas kompleks di Asia Tenggara Kepulauan yang memeluk Islam sejak kurun waktu 1300-1600. Di dalam buku ini, Gibson memaparkan tentang gagasan kosmologikal kerajaan-kerajaan, kosmopolitan mistisisme dan hukum Islam, serta gagasan global pada negara birokratik modern. Buku ini merupakan buku kedua profesor antropologi University of Rochester ini, setelah menulis Kekuasaan Raja, Syeikh, dan Ambtenaar: Pengetahuan Simbolik dan Kekuasaan Tradisional Makassar 1300-2000 (Ininnawa, 2009). Hasil penelitian ini mendapat anugerah Clifford Geertz Prize tahun 2008 untuk kategori antropologi agama.

Sociology of Religion, Indonesian History, Indonesian Studies, Islamic Education, Islamic Studies, and 7 more

Location: Makassar

Publisher: Penerbit Ininnawa

Publication Date: 2012

"Honorable Mention for the 2008 Clifford Geertz Prize in the Anthropology of Religion. The roots of contemporary Islamic militancy in Southeast Asia lie in the sixteenth century, when Christian Europeans first trie... more abstract"Honorable Mention for the 2008 Clifford Geertz Prize in the Anthropology of Religion. The roots of contemporary Islamic militancy in Southeast Asia lie in the sixteenth century, when Christian Europeans first tried to dominate Indian Ocean trade. Through a detailed analysis of sacred scriptures, epic narratives and oral histories from the region, this book shows how Southeast Asian Muslims combined cosmopolitan Islamic models of knowledge and authority with local Austronesian models of divine kingship to first resist and then to appropriate Dutch colonial models of rational bureaucracy. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, these models continue to shape regional responses to contemporary trends such as the rise of global Islamism. "

Sociology of Religion, Legitimacy and Authority, Narrative, Islamic Education, Colonialism, and 16 more

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Publication Date: 2007

DALAM rentangan seribu tahun, sejak tahun 600-1600, Laut Jawa didominasi oleh lingkaran kerajaan-kerajaan maritim yang penguasanya terlibat dalam penjarahan, perdaganan dan pernikahan jarak jauh. Kekuasaan Raja, Syeik... more abstractDALAM rentangan seribu tahun, sejak tahun 600-1600, Laut Jawa didominasi oleh lingkaran kerajaan-kerajaan maritim yang penguasanya terlibat dalam penjarahan, perdaganan dan pernikahan jarak jauh. Kekuasaan Raja, Syeikh, dan Ambtenaar menjelajahi proses ekonomi, politik dan simbolik yang menggabungkan masyarakat Makassar ke dalam sistem regional. Ketika kekaisaran seperti Sriwijaya, Kediri dan Melaka menggenggam hegemoni atas wilayah ini, mereka memperkenalkan model-model baru kerajaan di wilayah pinggiran seperti Makassar di pesisir Sulawesi Selatan. Saat model demi model kuasa istana bergantian duduk di singgasana, model ini melekat ke dalam mitos dan ritual lokal. Tatkala raja-raja Sulawesi Selatan memeluk Islam di awal abad ke 17, setidaknya ada enam model kekuasaan yang hadir di wilayah ini. Islam memperkenalkan model-model religius dan politik yang baru, dan menambahkan kompleksitas simbolis di kawasan ini. Untuk memahami lebih baik kaitan antara pengetahuan simbolik dan kekuasaan tradisional istana di masyarakat Makassar, Thomas Gibson menggunakan banyak jenis sumber dari beragam disiplin akademik. Dia menunjukkan bagaimana mitos dan ritual menghubungkan bentuk pengetahuan praktis (pembuatan perahu, navigasi, pertanian, peperangan) dengan kategori-kategori dasar seperti gender dan pelapisan berdasar keturunan, serta fenomena alam, ruang angkasa dan kosmologis. Dia juga memperlihatkan bagaimana agen-agen historis menggunakan infrastruktur simbolik ini untuk menggapai tujuan politik dan ideologisnya.

Mythology And Folklore, Mythology, Indonesian Culture, Indonesian History, Indonesian Studies, and 1 more

Location: Makassar

Publisher: Penerbit Ininnawa

Publication Date: 2009

Over the course of a thousand years, from 600 to 1600 CE, the Java Sea was dominated by a ring of maritime kingdoms whose rulers engaged in long-distance raiding, trading, and marriage alliances with one another. And ... more abstractOver the course of a thousand years, from 600 to 1600 CE, the Java Sea was dominated by a ring of maritime kingdoms whose rulers engaged in long-distance raiding, trading, and marriage alliances with one another. And the Sun Pursued the Moon explores the economic, political, and symbolic processes by which early Makassar communities were incorporated into this regional system. As successive empires like Srivijaya, Kediri, Majapahit, and Melaka gained hegemony over the region; they introduced different models of kingship in peripheral areas like the Makassar coast of South Sulawesi. As each successive model of royal power gained currency, it became embedded in local myth and ritual. To better understand the relationship between symbolic knowledge and traditional royal authority in Makassar society, Thomas Gibson draws on a wide range of sources and academic disciplines. He shows how myth and ritual link practical forms of knowledge (boat-building, navigation, agriculture, warfare) to basic social categories such as gender and hereditary rank, as well as to environmental, celestial, and cosmological phenomena. He also shows how concrete historical agents have used this symbolic infrastructure to advance their own political and ideological purposes. Gibson concludes by situating this material in relation to Islam and to life-cycle rituals.

Mythology And Folklore, Mythology, Southeast Asian Studies, Austronesian Languages, Kingship (Medieval History), and 4 more

Location: Honolulu

Publisher: University of Hawaii Press

Publication Date: 2005

The Buid are a group of shifting cultivators inhabiting the highlands of Mindoro. They continue to resist incorporation into the economic, political and ideological systems of the lowland Philippines. This study focus... more abstractThe Buid are a group of shifting cultivators inhabiting the highlands of Mindoro. They continue to resist incorporation into the economic, political and ideological systems of the lowland Philippines. This study focuses on the relationship between their value system and their history of resistance to the lowland world. Some of the most striking features of this value system are a thorough-going equality between women and men, old and young; a devaluation of dyadic ties of kinship and reciprocity; a high rate of divorce and remarriage which is positively valued; and, on the religious plane, the legitimation of belief through the direct personal experience of the spirit world in communal séances and sacrifices. This study is based on field research among the Buid of Ayufay, a community which formed the first large, permanent settlement in its history to counter the threat to their land, property and persons posed by settlers from the lowlands. The work will be of interest to students of ethnicity, highland/lowland relations, and indigenous resistance to the world system, as well as to anthropologists interested in kinship and religion in Southeast Asia.

Indigenous Studies, Anarchism, Shamanism, Anarchist Studies, Egalitarianism, and 5 more

Publisher: Athlone (Berg) (Bloomsbury)

Publication Date: 1986

Indigenous Studies, History of Missions, Indigenous Peoples Rights, and Philippine Studies

Four legends that originated in the different religious and colonial contexts of the Tagalog and Makassar peoples are shown to conform to Edward Tylor’s classical “hero pattern.” Using structural anthropology and cogn... more abstractFour legends that originated in the different religious and colonial contexts of the Tagalog and Makassar peoples are shown to conform to Edward Tylor’s classical “hero pattern.” Using structural anthropology and cognitive linguistics, this article argues that hero legends generated metaphors from concrete relationships in the domestic domain to conceptualize abstract relationships in a series of other domains. The hero pattern underwent transformations in tandem with changes in the political and economic institutions in which it was embedded. From its beginnings as a charter for rival city-states in the ancient Middle East, it became a charter for the universalistic world religions that arose within the empires that succeeded the city-states. In the Southeast Asian legends discussed here, it served as a charter for both collaboration with and resistance to colonial rule.

Psychoanalysis, Folklore, Mythology, History of Christianity, Shamanism, and 5 more

Publication Date: Dec 2013

Publication Name: Philippine Studies 61 (4): 437-476

Indigenous Studies, Anarchism, Southeast Asia, Egalitarianism, and Anthropology of Kinship

More Info: Edited by Thomas Gibson and Kevin Sillander

Publisher: Yale University Southeast Asia Studies Monographs No. 60.

Publication Date: 2011

Publication Name: Anarchic Solidarity: Autonomy, Equality and Familiarity in Island Southeast Asia.

This article argues that the egalitarianism, sharing and individual autonomy characteristic of many societies in the highlands of Southeast Asia represent a set of mutually reinforcing ethical values that developed in... more abstractThis article argues that the egalitarianism, sharing and individual autonomy characteristic of many societies in the highlands of Southeast Asia represent a set of mutually reinforcing ethical values that developed in opposition to the debt-bondage, tribute extraction and social hierarchy found in the lowlands of the region. The development and maintenance of these values depended on access to modes of subsistence such as hunting, fishing, gathering and shifting cultivation that freed people from the need to defend productive resources that had absorbed large amounts of previous labor, and to accept subordination to political authorities. The egalitarianism found in these societies is thus a secondary reaction to the predatory ranking of their neighbors and may be usefully compared and contrasted with the primary egalitarianism found in foraging societies, with the spiritual egalitarianism found in world religions, and with the civic egalitarianism associated with the modern nation state.

Indigenous Studies, Anarchism, Egalitarianism, and Philippine Studies

Location: New Haven

More Info: Thomas Gibson and Kenneth Sillander, eds

Publisher: Yale University Southeast Asia Studies

Publication Date: 2011

Publication Name: Anarchic Solidarity: Autonomy, Equality and Fellowship in Southeast Asia, pp. 270-293

Islamic Mysticism, Mongol, and History of Shia Islam

Journal Name: Journal of Asian Studies 67 (4): 1397-1400

Publication Date: 2008

Three political institutions came into being successively in Southeast Asia and co-existed for several centuries: stranger-kingship, cosmopolitan law and bureaucratic rationality. Each was based on a different set of ... more abstractThree political institutions came into being successively in Southeast Asia and co-existed for several centuries: stranger-kingship, cosmopolitan law and bureaucratic rationality. Each was based on a different set of practices, and each served to estrange political authorities from their subjects. Firstly, cosmological rituals placed the stranger-king above the factional loyalties of his subjects. Secondly, cosmopolitan legal codes and mystical practices derived from Islamic scriptures placed the ulama and shaikh above the elders who enforced local customs – and, in times of crisis, even above the local king. Thirdly, impersonal bureaucratic procedures and access to an archive of documents placed the officers of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) and of the colonial state above the ‘natives’. This paper argues that all three institutions be seen as a symbolic expression of a general requirement for the existence of ordered social life, namely the need for institutions that can rise above the conflicts and factionalism generated by everyday events. It traces the process by which the traditional authority of stranger-kings in south Sulawesi was complemented and contradicted after 1605 by the charismatic authority of Islamic shaikhs, and by the bureaucratic authority of Dutch officials.

Legitimacy and Authority, Islam, Dutch East India Company, Bugis-Makassar Studies, and Sacred and divine kingship

More Info: David Henley and Ian Caldwell, eds

Journal Name: Indonesia and the Malay World 37 (105): 307-319.

Publication Date: 2008

Publication Name: Stranger-Kings in Indonesia and Beyond

In this paper, I compare the egalitarian religious images that exist in one of the most hierarchical societies in Island Southeast Asia, the Makassar of coastal South Sulawesi, with the hierarchical religious images t... more abstractIn this paper, I compare the egalitarian religious images that exist in one of the most hierarchical societies in Island Southeast Asia, the Makassar of coastal South Sulawesi, with the hierarchical religious images that exist in one of the most egalitarian societies, the Buid of highland Mindoro. This comparison will allow me to cast new light on Woodburn’s argument that the the origin of social inequality in immediate-return hunter-gatherer societies may lie in the appropriation of the religious domain by senior men. In the first part of the paper, I argue that the Makassar and the Buid formed part of a single regional system in which coastal societies preyed on the members of autonomous tribal societies practicing shifting cultivation in the highlands. The depredations of the hierarchical coastal societies spawned an ethic in the highlands in which equality, autonomy and communal solidarity were valued above all else. But even within the coastal societies, the lower orders often developed a set of religious values similar to those of the highlanders, values that rejected the hierarchy, dependency and factionalism of the elite. This rejection was expressed through popular interpretations of world religions like Islam and Christianity. Historically, religions promising spiritual salvation from social bondage often arose in the most hierarchical social orders. I argue that hierarchy and equality, dependency and autonomy, solidarity and factionalism should all be viewed as conceptual oppositions that develop in tandem with one another, much like the concepts of “free gift” and “commodity” (Parry, 1986). In the second part of the paper, I approach popular ideas of salvation among the Makassar through an analysis of the epic of Datu Museng. In reciting this epic, Makassar bards simultaneously recall their experience of Dutch colonialism, express a mystical vision of life as a quest to transcend the social order and reunite with God, and rework a pervasive precoccupation of Austronesian mythology, the fate of opposite-sex twins. They also reveal a profound ambivalence toward the values of equality and hierarchy, autonomy and dependency, solidarity and factionalism. It is only because Makassar society was based on hereditary ranks, slavery and warfare that Makassar religion could develop such a clear ideal of the wandering saint who transcends all worldly spatial, temporal and categorical boundaries. In the third part of the paper, I compare the salvation Islamic saints promise the Makassar with the salvation Jesus Christ promises lowland Filipinos. In both cases, the lower orders in a hierarchical society can appeal to the transcendental values of a global religion to circumscribe the power of the local spirits and political elites. I contrast this situation with that of the Buid and the immediate-return hunter-gatherers discussed by Woodburn. In these egalitarian societies, the major threat to society comes not from elites who abuse their power but from individuals who place their own autonomy above the needs of the group. Religious rituals are used to assert the primacy of communal solidarity over individual autonomy. The seeds of inequality lie in a widespread tendency to map the opposition between communal and individual interest onto the opposition between male and female, allowing senior men to assert a monopoly of control over collective ritual.

Oral Traditions, Islamic Mysticism, Dutch East India Company, and Bugis-Makassar Studies

Location: New York

More Info: Thomas Widlok and Wolde Gossa Tadesse, eds

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Publication Date: 2005

Publication Name: Property and Equality Volume II: Encapsulation, Commercialisation, Discrimination, pp. 231-251

In this paper I argue that a theory of the articulation of global structures of meaning—Islam—and local ones—the spirit cults—is essential for an understanding of society and the state in Indonesia. Yet anthropologis... more abstractIn this paper I argue that a theory of the articulation of global structures of meaning—Islam—and local ones—the spirit cults—is essential for an understanding of society and the state in Indonesia. Yet anthropologists working on Indonesia have shown a peculiar resistance to the study of Islam since colonial times. A second aim of this paper, then, is to account for this resistance and to examine its changing political implications over the past century. A third aim of the paper is to explain how anthropologists found it possible to write coherent ethnographies of Islamic peoples in Indonesia without really mentioning Islam. To anticipate my conclusions, I will argue that it was possible because non-Islamic “local” structures of meaning really have persisted alongside Islam in Indonesia. Coherent ethnographies are produced not by inventing non-Islamic customs, but by editing out the Islamic bits.

Spirit Possession (Anthropology), Islam in Indonesia, and Clifford Geertz

Journal Name: Indonesia 69: 41-70

Publication Date: 2000

In this paper, I argue that Lévi-Strauss’s concept of the “house” cannot be applied in a straightforward way to the Indonesian societies recently characterized by Errington as “centrist” (Errington, 1989). Lévi-Strau... more abstractIn this paper, I argue that Lévi-Strauss’s concept of the “house” cannot be applied in a straightforward way to the Indonesian societies recently characterized by Errington as “centrist” (Errington, 1989). Lévi-Strauss sees the “house” as a solution to the problems of societies where “political and economic interests” have not yet “overstepped the old ties of blood”, in other words where class divisions must still be represented in a pre-class ideology of shared descent and alliance. Within Indonesia, on the other hand, we find houses playing a key symbolic role in a whole range of social forms, from self-sufficient, egalitarian “tribes”, to maritime empires to oriental despotisms. Societies at all these levels make use of the house as a symbolic device to represent social groups. I argue that this is because an idiom of siblingship, linked to an idiom of shared place, is far more important in organizing social life than the idioms of alliance and descent. In another sense, however, Lévi-Strauss's concept does have great relevance for some societies in Indonesia in which competition for wealth and power among the upper strata is intense but has not led to stable class divisions. These societies do make use of the house in a manner highly reminiscent of Lévi-Strauss's European, Japanese and Kwakiutl examples. It is this dual nature of the ‘problems' to which the house is a ‘solution' that makes the application of Lévi-Strauss's theory to feudal Indonesia so fascinating and so complex. Because of limitations of space, I will not be able to do justice to this second aspect of the problem. The rest of this paper will be devoted to demonstrating the fact that the house is solving a different problem in “centrist” Indonesia than in feudal Europe or Japan.

Kinship (Anthropology), Anthropology of Kinship, and House Societies

Location: Cambridge

More Info: Janet Carsten and Stephen Hugh-Jones, eds

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Publication Date: 1995

Publication Name: About the House: Buildings, Groups, and Categories in Holistic Perspective; Essays on an idea by C. Lévi-Strauss, pp. 197-213

In this paper, I compare and contrast “childhood” in two very different societies in island Southeast Asia: the Buid of Mindoro, Philippines and the coastal Konjo of South Sulawesi, Indonesia. I begin with some gene... more abstractIn this paper, I compare and contrast “childhood” in two very different societies in island Southeast Asia: the Buid of Mindoro, Philippines and the coastal Konjo of South Sulawesi, Indonesia. I begin with some general observations on commonalities in the use of childhood as a symbol in the Austronesian culture area, and on equally salient differences between the political cultures of Philippine and Indonesian societies due in part to their different historical experiences during the colonial period. I then deal with the Konjo and Buid cases in turn, approaching childhood as a symbolic construct from three angles. First, social relations among children as a group are contrasted with those among adults. I argue that the Buid and Konjo both attach a positive value to the social relations of childhood in contrast to those of adulthood, and that this is common to many other groups in Austronesia. Second, social relations between children and adults have a potential for symbolizing and for reproducing social hierarchy that is at least as powerful as that between female and male genders. In this regard, I argue that there is a sharp contrast between the Buid and the Konjo. Third, symbolic values may be constructed in specialized ritual activities or in the processes of everyday life, with very different implications. Here again there is a marked contrast between the Konjo and the Buid, closely related to the second point. The Konjo surround childhood with a great deal of ritual, while the Buid do not.

Anthropology of Children and Childhood, Colonialism, Empire, and Imperialism

Location: Paris

More Info: Jeannine Koubi and Josiane Massard, eds

Publisher: L'Harmattan

Publication Date: 1994

Publication Name: Enfants et sociétés d’Asie du Sud-Est, pp. 183-205

In this paper I address the relationship between symbolic knowledge, defined as the largely unconscious or preconscious network of metaphors and metonymies embedded in myth and ritual; and ideology, defined as the con... more abstractIn this paper I address the relationship between symbolic knowledge, defined as the largely unconscious or preconscious network of metaphors and metonymies embedded in myth and ritual; and ideology, defined as the conscious manipulation of aspects of symbolic knowledge for explicit political ends. I use examples both from my fieldwork among the Makassar of South Sulawesi and from the secondary literature on Suharto's New Order regime, showing how local symbolic and ideological systems are linked to the national level, and beyond that to the global systems of Islam and western capitalism. Like many other symbolic systems found around the shores of the Indian Ocean, the Makassar system draws on a complex mix of rituals, myths and scriptures derived from local (Austronesian), regional (Indic) and global (Islamic) sources. Political rulers have drawn on this reservoir of symbolic knowledge over the past thousand years to construct ideal models legitimating a number of different kinds of state. Many of these models remain available to actors today, who use them to advocate radically divergent courses of action at times of political crisis. Whether or not ordinary people find these models persuasive or not depends in part on the nature and extent of their own unconscious symbolic knowledge and of their conscious understanding of their own political and economic interests. Opportunistic political leaders like Suharto who employ multiple, and increasingly inconsistent models over their careers, gradually lose their plausibility as moral and political leaders.

Location: Vancouver

Event Date: Apr 8, 2005

Organization: Society for the Anthropology of Religion

Conference End Date: Apr 11, 2005

Shaikh Yusuf was perhaps the most famous Islamic Saint ever born in South Sulawesi. He was, however, only one of many Bugis and Makassarese who set sail across the Indian Ocean in the seventeenth century in search o... more abstractShaikh Yusuf was perhaps the most famous Islamic Saint ever born in South Sulawesi. He was, however, only one of many Bugis and Makassarese who set sail across the Indian Ocean in the seventeenth century in search of the source of ilmu, esoteric Islamic knowledge. In this paper I will treat his life as a prototype for this whole class of adventurers, and the kinds of Sufi knowledge he acquired as typical of the Islam that was implanted in the villages of South Sulawesi in the seventeenth century. The cosmopolitan consciousness induced by these trans-oceanic intellectual links remains in force to this day.

Location: Oxford

More Info: Workshop on Traditions of Learning and Networks of Knowledge, in the series on The Indian Ocean: Trans-regional Creation of Societies and Cultures

Event Date: Sep 29, 2001

Organization: Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology

Conference End Date: Sep 30, 2001

In this paper, I describe an example of ‘resistance’ by a ‘sisterhood’ to the ‘hegemonic values’ of a ‘brotherhood’ in a village in Indonesia. This resistance takes the form of the dogged performance of rituals in wh... more abstractIn this paper, I describe an example of ‘resistance’ by a ‘sisterhood’ to the ‘hegemonic values’ of a ‘brotherhood’ in a village in Indonesia. This resistance takes the form of the dogged performance of rituals in which the leader of the women is possessed by the spirits of her grandmother and their remote royal ancestors. This is despite more than half a century of vigorous repression by village leaders who denounce the cult as satanic and its practitioners as witches. Paradoxically, the values implicit in the spirit cult are those of ascribed social hierarchy, the priority of the past over the present, and the dependence of individuals on elders. The explicit values of the current ‘hegemony’ stress equality of opportunity to achieve higher wealth and status, the priority of the future over the present, and individual autonomy in thought and practice. Today’s resistance was yesterday’s hegemony, however: between 1860 and 1910 the spirit cults were a central feature of a feudal social order that Dutch liberals viewed as a barrier to capitalist progress. And today’s hegemony was yesterday’s resistance: between 1910 and 1950 the Dutch colonial state changed sides and encouraged local custom and hereditary chiefs as a bulwark against socialist, nationalist and Islamic agitators. Between 1950 and 1965 new provincial and national elites led an all-out attack on reactionary local practices, recalling the Dutch liberal policy of the previous century. But after 1965, the national state changed sides again and began encouraging local ‘culture’ as a bulwark against socialist and Islamic ‘agitators’. While policy at the national level has oscillated between radicalism and conservatism, at the local level the hereditary feudal outlook has been steadily losing ground to the achievement oriented democratic outlook. It has now become the last refuge of those for whom the competitive individualism of the modern political economy holds least promise of security: village noble women who were at the center of the old system and are at the margins of the new. In conclusion, I will argue that what counts as ‘resistance’ depends on one’s point of view, and must be determined anew for each time and place. Further, I will recall Levi-Strauss’s caution in the epigraph that the political motivations of those acting in other times and places are likely to appear obscure to us. Our own intuitions are a poor guide to diagnosing political struggles in which we are not directly involved.

Location: London School of Economics

More Info: Conference on Poverty, The Politics of Marginality and Cultures of Resistance

Event Date: Sep 27, 1996

Conference End Date: Sep 29, 1996

In this paper I outline an analysis of the turbulent political history of one district in South Sulawesi, Indonesia, from 1890 to 1990. I will argue that two forms of political action must be distinguished to underst... more abstractIn this paper I outline an analysis of the turbulent political history of one district in South Sulawesi, Indonesia, from 1890 to 1990. I will argue that two forms of political action must be distinguished to understand this history, ordinary and revolutionary politics. In ordinary politics, actors may be compared to people playing a game according to a shared set of rules. In revolutionary politics one group attempts to establish a new paradigm or model. This distinction deliberately parallels that made by Kuhn between ordinary and revolutionary science (Kuhn 1962).

Location: Chicago

More Info: Panel on on History, Religion and the State in Asia

Event Date: 1991

Organization: American Anthropological Association

In this paper I argue that traditional authority is anchored in very basic metaphors of body, sex and age. This anchoring is brought about through rituals, particularly those associated with the 'life cycle' such as ... more abstractIn this paper I argue that traditional authority is anchored in very basic metaphors of body, sex and age. This anchoring is brought about through rituals, particularly those associated with the 'life cycle' such as birth, initiation, marriage and death. Ritual is thus the very foundation of 'traditional authority'. In these rituals, a particular image of the moral and political order is built up and 'naturalised' in a way that makes social hierarchy and political authority seem compelling to the ordinary person. Attempts to institute a new political order will fail unless these rituals are restructured. This is what happened in South Sulawesi, Indonesia between 1950 and 1965, when a radically modernist Islamic insurgency tried to suppress both what it regarded as unIslamic and what it regarded as 'feudal' in traditional religion and society. In the subsequent period, however, the traditional ritual forms have gradually reasserted themselves, as has a measure of the old ranking system. The ethnography will be taken from Ara, a village in South Sulawesi that has undergone great political upheavals in the last century. In this paper, I am only be able to discuss the role of ritual in the colonial or 'feudal' period prior to 1950 in any detail. I allude to the post-colonial insurgency and restoration at the end.

Location: Atlanta

More Info: 1990 meetings of The

Event Date: Apr 26, 1990

Organization: American Ethnological Association

Conference End Date: Apr 29, 1990

This essay has two complementary objectives. It seeks, first, to rethink the dominant theoretical approaches to the study of certain hunting and gathering societies, suggesting a fundamental alteration of perspective.... more abstractThis essay has two complementary objectives. It seeks, first, to rethink the dominant theoretical approaches to the study of certain hunting and gathering societies, suggesting a fundamental alteration of perspective. Second, it subjects these same approaches to a more general critique, drawing on different traditions within anthropological theory as a whole. As a means to these ends, I deal in the first section with the theoretical analysis of the Mbuti Pygmies carred out by the Marxists Meillasoux and Godelier, and of the !Kung Bushmen carried out by the cultural ecologist Rrchard Lee. The second section places the Marxist and ecologist approaches within the context of cultural theory deriving from the school of Mauss and including Lévi-Strauss, Sahlins and Dumont. The third section is a comparative analysis of eight Afro-asian hunting and gathering societies based on the conclusions of the second section. Finally, in the conclusion, I draw these strands together and attempt some tentative generalizations on the specificity of the societies with which I deal.

Anarchism, Egalitarianism, and Hunting and Gathering

Location: London School of Economics

More Info: Winner of the Maurice Freedman Prize

Event Date: Apr 24, 1978

Political Theory, Social and Cultural Anthropology, Sovereignty, and Indonesia

Publication Date: 2014

Publication Name: American Ethnologist 41 (4): 781-782

Social and Cultural Anthropology, Cold War and Culture, Indonesia, Islam in Indonesia, and Clifford Geertz

Publication Date: 2011

Publication Name: The Journal of Asian Studies 70: 787-789

Anthropology, Museum Studies, and Marxism

Publication Date: 2011

Publication Name: Anthropology and Humanism 36 (1): 134-136.

Southeast Asian Studies, International Relations Theory, Political Theory, Contemporary Political Philosophy, Political Islam, and 3 more

Publication Date: 2001

Publication Name: Indonesia 72: 197-204.

Indonesian Studies, Quranic Studies, and Islam

Publication Date: 2005

Publication Name: Indonesia 79: 183-185.

Southeast Asian Studies, Southeast Asian Archaeology, Philippine Studies, and Philippine History

Publication Date: 2002

Publication Name: The Journal of Asian Studies 61 (2): 778-779.

Publication Date: 1999

Publication Name: JRAI 5 (4): 663-664

Publication Date: 2002

Publication Name: The Journal of Asian Studies 61 (1): 333-335

Gender Studies, Gender and Sexuality, Anthropology of Kinship, Indian Ocean Studies, Maritime India, and 3 more

Publication Date: 1999

Publication Name: Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 30 (1): 172-175.

Indigenous Studies and Philippines

Publication Date: 1993

Publication Name: Man (New Series) 28 (2): 398-399.

Southeast Asian Studies and Southeast Asia

Anthropology and Anarchism

Anarchism

Islamic Studies and Islam

Anthropology

Southeast Asian Studies, Southeast Asia, Islamic Studies, and Islam

Southeast Asian Studies, Southeast Asia, Islamic Studies, and Islam

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