Types of Social Structure in Eastern Indonesia

Types of Social Structure in Eastern Indonesia PDF Author: Franciscus Antonius Evert Wouden
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401510768
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 215

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Book Description
BY G. W. LOCHER Some years ago, in a discussion of the modern concept of structure, Levi-Strauss contended that the extraordinarily widespread employment of the term "structure" since 1930 reflected a rediscovery of the concept and the term rather than the continuation of a prior usage. This assertion may be correct in general, but it does not apply to the N ether lands, at least nOlI: so far as the concept of structure is concerned. The transmission of the concept in that country can in fact be quite easily traced. It began in 1917 with the publication by van Ossenbruggen of a study of the Javanese notion of montja-pat,l a paper which was in fluenced to a high degree by the famous monograph by Durkheim and Mauss, "De quelques formes primitives de classification", which had been published at the beginning of the century. 2 An even clearer structural approach is to be found in the extensive Leiden thesis of 3 W. H. Rassers, De Pandji-Roman. This dissertation itself refers with particular emphasis to van Ossenbruggen's paper and to the monograph by Durkheim and Mauss, as well as to various other publications by them. The ,studies later made by Rassers were also of such a kind that when a collection of them was published in English in 1959, under the title Panji, The Culture Hero, 4 they were aptly subtitled "A Structural Study of Religion in Java".

Types of Social Structure in Eastern Indonesia

Types of Social Structure in Eastern Indonesia PDF Author: Franciscus Antonius Evert Wouden
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401510768
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 215

Get Book Here

Book Description
BY G. W. LOCHER Some years ago, in a discussion of the modern concept of structure, Levi-Strauss contended that the extraordinarily widespread employment of the term "structure" since 1930 reflected a rediscovery of the concept and the term rather than the continuation of a prior usage. This assertion may be correct in general, but it does not apply to the N ether lands, at least nOlI: so far as the concept of structure is concerned. The transmission of the concept in that country can in fact be quite easily traced. It began in 1917 with the publication by van Ossenbruggen of a study of the Javanese notion of montja-pat,l a paper which was in fluenced to a high degree by the famous monograph by Durkheim and Mauss, "De quelques formes primitives de classification", which had been published at the beginning of the century. 2 An even clearer structural approach is to be found in the extensive Leiden thesis of 3 W. H. Rassers, De Pandji-Roman. This dissertation itself refers with particular emphasis to van Ossenbruggen's paper and to the monograph by Durkheim and Mauss, as well as to various other publications by them. The ,studies later made by Rassers were also of such a kind that when a collection of them was published in English in 1959, under the title Panji, The Culture Hero, 4 they were aptly subtitled "A Structural Study of Religion in Java".

Potent Landscapes

Potent Landscapes PDF Author: Catherine Allerton
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824837991
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
The Manggarai people of eastern Indonesia believe their land can talk, that its appetite demands sacrificial ritual, and that its energy can kill as well as nurture. They tell their children to avoid certain streams and fields and view unusual environmental events as omens of misfortune. Yet, far from being preoccupied with the dangers of this animate landscape, Manggarai people strive to make places and pathways “lively,” re-traveling routes between houses and villages and highlighting the advantages of mobility. Through everyday and ritual activities that emphasize “liveliness,” the land gains a further potency: the power to evoke memories of birth, death, and marriage, to influence human health and fertility. Potent Landscapes is an ethnographic investigation of the power of the landscape and the implications of that power for human needs, behavior, and emotions. Based on two years of fieldwork in rural Flores, the book situates Manggarai place-making and mobility within the larger contexts of diverse human-environment interactions as well as adat revival in postcolonial Indonesia. Although it focuses on social life in one region of eastern Indonesia, the work engages with broader theoretical discussions of landscape, travel, materiality, cultural politics, kinship, and animism. Written in a clear and accessible style, Potent Landscapes will appeal to students and specialists of Southeast Asia as well as to those interested in the comparative anthropological study of place and environment. The analysis moves out from rooms and houses in a series of concentric circles, outlining at each successive point the broader implications of Manggarai place- and path-making. This gradual expansion of scale allows the work to build a subtle, cumulative picture of the potent landscapes within which Manggarai people raise families, forge alliances, plant crops, build houses, and engage with local state actors. Landscapes are significant, the author argues, not only as sacred or mythic realms, or as contexts for the imposition of colonial space; they are also significant as vernacular contexts shaped by daily practices. The book analyzes the power of a collective landscape shaped both by the Indonesian state’s development policies and by responses to religious change.

Traditions and Transformations of Habitation in Indonesia

Traditions and Transformations of Habitation in Indonesia PDF Author: Bagoes Wiryomartono
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 9811534055
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 314

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Book Description
This book raises the issue of the practice of patrimonial power with a focus on habitations, particularly in the urban areas of Indonesia. An assemblage of interdisciplinary studies within the framework of environmental humanities, covering the arts, architecture, urban studies, geography, cultural anthropology, and sociology, this multifaceted framework divulges the interactive connectivity between Indonesia’s patrimonial culture and the socio-culturally constructed system of habitation. The interdisciplinary study of the pertinent practices of patrimonial power that have been represented and been manifested by various political and traditional regimes in terms of the built environment and habitation in Indonesia contributes to a new understanding of Indonesian urban spatial development, from the pre-colonial era to the present. The book poses that in order to understand the politics of Indonesia, one must understand the culture and tradition of the political leadership of the country. The author presents such an understanding in exploring and unpacking the relationship between people and place that constructs, develops, sustains, and conserves Indonesian culture and traditions of habitation. This book is of interest to graduate scholars and researchers in Asian Studies in numerous disciplines, including urban studies, urban planning and design, political science, architecture, anthropology of space, public administration, and political philosophy.

Grandchildren of the Ga'e Ancestors

Grandchildren of the Ga'e Ancestors PDF Author: A. Molnar
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004454268
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
Grandchildren of the Gaíe Ancestors focuses on the social organization, cosmology and ritual system of Hoga Sara society on the island of Flores. The first anthropological account of this eastern Indonesian people, this study challenges the classical models of descent and alliance by demonstrating the limitations of these analytical abstractions for understanding the social system of the Hoga Sara. The intricacies of social organization and the formation of social identities of groups and individuals are disentangled by utilizing the concepts of 'house society', 'origin structures' and 'orders of precedence'. Aspects focused on include the pivotal role of the first-born, historical development of the society, sacrificial practices, and the instrumental role of the ritual system in the continuing exchanges among people and with their ancestors.

Framing Indonesian Realities

Framing Indonesian Realities PDF Author: Peter J.M. Nas
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004486828
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 428

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Book Description
Ritual language, wild and domestic animals, and objects of material culture like houses, palaces, and works of art, are often loaded with symbolic meaning. Reading the landscape , or giving meaning to the natural environment, is a cultural act as well, and one must discover what mountains, coastlines, and islands mean to different groups of people. In this book, written on the occasion of Professor Reimar Schefold s retirement from the Department of Cultural Anthropology at Leiden University, colleagues and former students from the Netherlands and abroad demonstrate the variety and wealth of the field of symbolic anthropology. The regional focus of the book is Indonesia. The studies presented range from small island communities in western, northern, and eastern Indonesia to urban settlements in Java and Sumatra. All the contributions are in one way or another related to Reimar Schefold s work over the past thirty-five years, work that includes extensive studies on material culture, rituals, and the use of symbols in the expression of ethnicity among the various cultural groups of Indonesia.

The Land of Gold

The Land of Gold PDF Author: Judith M. Bovensiepen
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501725920
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 219

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Book Description
In the village of Funar, located in the central highlands of Timor-Leste, the disturbing events of the twenty-four-year-long Indonesian occupation are rarely articulated in narratives of suffering. Instead, the highlanders emphasize the significance of their return to the sacred land of the ancestors, a place where "gold" is abundant and life is thought to originate. On one hand, this collective amnesia is due to villagers' exclusion from contemporary nation-building processes, which bestow recognition only on those who actively participated in the resistance struggle against Indonesia. On the other hand, the cultural revival and the privileging of the ancestral landscape and traditions over narratives of suffering derive from a particular understanding of how human subjects are constituted. Before life and after death, humans and the land are composed of the same substance; only during life are they separated. To recover from the forced dislocation the highlanders experienced under the Indonesian occupation, they thus seek to reestablish a mythical, primordial unity with the land by reinvigorating ancestral practices. Never leaving out of sight the intense political and emotional dilemmas imposed by the past on people’s daily lives, The Land of Gold seeks to go beyond prevailing theories of postconflict reconstruction that prioritize human relationships. Instead, it explores the significance of people’s affective and ritual engagement with the environment and with their ancestors as survivors come to terms with the disruptive events of the past.

Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology

Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology PDF Author: Alan Barnard
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135236410
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 888

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Book Description
Written by leading scholars in the field, this comprehensive and readable resource gives anthropology students a unique guide to the ideas, arguments and history of the discipline. The fully revised and expanded second edition reflects major changes in anthropology in the past decade.

Selling the Sea, Fishing for Power

Selling the Sea, Fishing for Power PDF Author: Dedy Supriadi Adhuri
Publisher: ANU E Press
ISBN: 1922144835
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
This book is an ethnographic study of several coastal communities in the Kei Islands of eastern Indonesia. Central to Dr. Adhuri’s argument is an insistence that systems of local marine resource management cannot be studied on their own, in isolation from either the complex cultural and historical conditions that give impetus to community action or from the equally complex regional and national contexts within which such action is undertaken.

The Elementary Structures of Kinship

The Elementary Structures of Kinship PDF Author: Claude Levi-Strauss
Publisher: Beacon Press
ISBN: 0807096806
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 588

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Book Description
Professor Lévi-Strauss’s first major work, Les Structures élémentaires de la Parenté, has acquired a classic reputation since its original publication in 1949; and it has become the constant focus of academic debate about central theoretical concerns in social anthropology. It is, however, a long and difficult book for many students to read in French, and its arguments have consequently become known, even among professional anthropologists, largely through critical analysis. It was republished in a revised French edition in 1967 with a new foreword by the author, and it is this text with his further emendations that has been used in this translation. Lévi-Strauss applies his intellectual powers to the perennial problem of incest, which he elucidates by means of the concept of exchange as formulated by Marcel Mauss in his famous analysis of the gift (Essai sur le don, 1925). He distinguishes two elementary modes of exchange which govern not only the conventional variety of goods and services but also the transfer of women in marriage: these are “restricted” and “generalized” exchange. With a mass of ethnographic evidence he demonstrates how the formidable intricacy of marriage customs, comprising moral and jural ideas and institutions (which appear to be essentially arbitrary), can be seen as local and historical rules of exchange. Charles Lévi-Strauss traces these rules throughout a vast range of simple societies, chiefly in Australia and mainland Southeast Asia but also in the Americas, in Oceania, and in other parts of the world. To this survey he adds two extended sections on the great civilizations of China and India. He continues with a briefer consideration of the passage from elementary to complex structures, with particular reference to African societies, and concludes with a stimulating chapter on the principles of kinship, exchange as the universal basis for marriage prohibitions, and the formal relations between the sexes as part of a universe of communication. Although much of the work is technical, consisting of detailed analyses of types of social organization with which social anthropologists will be most familiar, it also contains much that will be of interest to psychologists, linguists, and philosophers, and to all who are interested in the possibility and the technique of the structural analysis of human activity. After the successes, moreover, of Lévi-Strauss’s subsequent books—notably Structural Anthropology, Tristes Tropiques, Totemism, and The Savage Mind—this new edition of the work which founded his present outstanding reputation will have additional value as a further means of contact with one of the original minds of this century. The translation has been made by James Harle Bell and John Richard von Sturmer, of the University of New England, Australia, and by Rodney Needham, of the University of Oxford. Dr. Needham also acted as general editor and supplied the work with a new general index. He is the translator of Lévi-Strauss’s Le Totemisme aujourd’hui and author of Structure and Sentiment (1962) and numerous papers which have contributed to the recognition of Professor Lévi-Strauss’s work in the English-speaking world.

About the House

About the House PDF Author: Janet Carsten
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316582531
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
The domestic unit is inseparable from its homestead, and the 'house', at once a physical place and a social unit, is often also a unit of production and consumption, a cult group, and even a political faction. Inspired by Lévi-Strauss's suggestion that the multi-functional noble houses of medieval Europe were simply the best-known examples of a widespread social institution, the contributors to this collection analyse 'house' systems in Southeast Asia and South America, exploring the interrelationships between buildings, people, and ideas. They reveal some of the ways in which houses can stand for social groups and serve as images of process and order.