Making a Living between Crises and Ceremonies in Tana Toraja

Making a Living between Crises and Ceremonies in Tana Toraja
Author: Edwin B.P. de Jong
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 346
Release: 2013-06-07
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9004252479

Making a Living between Crisis and Ceremonies offers an account on the practice of everyday life of the Torajan people both in the highlands of Tana Toraja (South Sulawesi, Indonesia) and elsewhere (Makassar, Jakarta, Maleisië).

Tana Toraja

Tana Toraja
Author: Terance W. Bigalke
Publisher: NUS Press
Total Pages: 428
Release: 2005-01-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 9789971693138

Tana Toraja is a highland region in the Indonesian province of South Sulawesi, best known today for its exquisite Arabica coffee and as an exotic destination for cultural tourism. Toraja is a place, but more importantly, it is a people who have been shaped by location, and by selective absorption of and resistance to cultural forces from the Islamic lowlands. This ambitious, multifaceted study traces the history of Tana Toraja over more than a century, from 1870, forty years before the Dutch took control of the highlands, to the 1990s. It shows how the people of this area renegotiated their place in the province and in the Indonesian nation during times of major political change, and succeeded in avoiding ethnic and religious hostility of the sort that has recently plagued nearby Central Sulawesi and other parts of Eastern Indonesia. Drawing from Dutch and Indonesian archives as well as extensive interviews, Terance Bigalke discusses a wide range of subjects, including trade (in coffee, slaves and arms), the missionary presence, colonial administration, modern education and the development of ethnic consciousness, religious change, and the growth of political activity.

Art as Politics

Art as Politics
Author: Kathleen M. Adams
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Total Pages: 313
Release: 2006-08-31
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0824861485

Art as Politics explores the intersection of art, identity politics, and tourism in Sulawesi, Indonesia. Based on long-term ethnographic research from the 1980s to the present, the book offers a nuanced portrayal of the Sa’dan Toraja, a predominantly Christian minority group in the world’s most populous Muslim country. Celebrated in anthropological and tourism literatures for their spectacular traditional houses, sculpted effigies of the dead, and pageantry-filled funeral rituals, the Toraja have entered an era of accelerated engagement with the global economy marked by on-going struggles over identity, religion, and social relations. In her engaging account, Kathleen Adams chronicles how various Toraja individuals and groups have drawn upon artistically-embellished "traditional" objects—as well as monumental displays, museums, UNESCO ideas about "word heritage," and the World Wide Web—to shore up or realign aspects of a cultural heritage perceived to be under threat. She also considers how outsiders—be they tourists, art collectors, members of rival ethnic groups, or government officials—have appropriated and reframed Toraja art objects for their own purposes. Her account illustrates how art can serve as a catalyst in identity politics, especially in the context of tourism and social upheaval. Ultimately, this insightful work prompts readers to rethink persistent and pernicious popular assumptions—that tourism invariably brings a loss of agency to local communities or that tourist art is a compromised form of expression. Art as Politics promises to be a favorite with students and scholars of anthropology, sociology, cultural studies, ethnic relations, art, and Asian studies.

Paths and Rivers

Paths and Rivers
Author: Rosana Waterson
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 552
Release: 2009-01-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004253858

Fieldwork extending over a thirty-year period provided materials for this book. Paths and Rivers offers an unusually deep and broad picture of the Sa’dan Toraja as a society in dynamic transition over the course of the past century. The Toraja inhabit the mountainous highlands of South Sulawesi, Indonesia, and are well known for their dramatic architecture, their unusual cliff burials, and their flamboyant ceremonial life, which places extraordinary economic demands on individuals and families. The analysis is informed, firstly, by a comparative perspective which sets Toraja social structure in the context of the Austronesian world. Secondly, the author delves deeply into Toraja social memory to show how people think about the past. She examines the usefulness of history and myth in the present as a source of identity, a template for action, or a resource by means of which to claim precedence. The book gives a clear picture of the structure and ethos of the indigenous Toraja religion, the Aluk To Dolo or "Way of the Ancestors", with its complex cycle of rituals. The book concludes with an analysis of the ceremonial economy, which draws upon both domestic subsistence production and the global market economy. Paths and Rivers draws together a fascinating picture of one society’s journey into modernity.

Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World

Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World
Author: Melani Budianta
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 930
Release: 2017-12-14
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1351846612

The book contains essays on current issues in arts and humanities in which peoples and cultures compete as well as collaborate in globalizing the world while maintaining their uniqueness as viewed from cross- and interdisciplinary perspectives. The book covers areas such as literature, cultural studies, archaeology, philosophy, history, language studies, information and literacy studies, and area studies. Asia and the Pacifi c are the particular regions that the conference focuses on as they have become new centers of knowledge production in arts and humanities and, in the future, seem to be able to grow signifi cantly as a major contributor of culture, science and arts to the globalized world. The book will help shed light on what arts and humanities scholars in Asia and the Pacifi c have done in terms of research and knowledge development, as well as the new frontiers of research that have been explored and opening up, which can connect the two regions with the rest of the globe.

Rural Livelihoods, Resources, and Coping with Crisis in Indonesia

Rural Livelihoods, Resources, and Coping with Crisis in Indonesia
Author: M. J. Titus
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
Total Pages: 308
Release: 2008
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 908964055X

Most literature on the economic crisis in indonesia has focused on the negative macro-economic impacts during the "crisis- years" of 1997-99. The case studies presented in this book take a different perspective. With a longitudinal research perspective, this comparative study analyses a wide variety of responses to the crisis among communities and households. The case studies in this book cover the coping and adapting mechanisms of rural households under a variety of resource use practices and resource use regulations in different areas of Indonesia.

Decentralization and Regional Autonomy in Indonesia

Decentralization and Regional Autonomy in Indonesia
Author: Coen J G Holtzappel
Publisher: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies
Total Pages: 463
Release: 2009
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9812308202

In 1999, Indonesia embarked on a reform of regional governance that brings self-governance to rural districts and municipalities, i.e., the administrative and democratic capacity needed to apply basic services like healthcare, national legislation and environment policies. This edited volume is the first book, which not only deals with the 1999 legislation but also shows how the deficiencies and contradictions of this legislation reduced implementation between 2001 and 2004 to a try-out. The book also discusses the adaptations that were the focus of the debate on the revision of the 1999 legislation that resulted in the 2004 update legislation and the amendment of the 1945 Constitution. Anthropological case studies of five provinces complement and deepen the findings of the more general survey reports.

Tourism in Southeast Asia

Tourism in Southeast Asia
Author: Michael Hitchcock
Publisher: NIAS Press
Total Pages: 370
Release: 2009
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 8776940349

Tourism in Southeast Asia provides an up-to-date exploration of the state of tourism development and associated issues in one of the world's most dynamic tourism destinations. The volume takes a close look at many of the challenges facing Southeast Asian tourism at a critical stage of transition and transformation and following a recent series of crises and disasters. Building on and advancing the path-breaking Tourism in South-East Asia, produced by the same editors in 1993, it adopts a multidisciplinary approach and includes contributions from some of the leading researchers on tourism in Southeast Asia, presenting a number of fresh perspectives.

Hosts and Guests

Hosts and Guests
Author: Valene L. Smith
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages: 354
Release: 2012-06-13
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0812208013

Tourism—one of the world's largest industries—has long been appreciated for its economic benefits, but in this volume tourism receives a unique systematic scrutiny as a medium for cultural exchange. Modern developments in technology and industry, together with masterful advertising, have created temporarily leisured people with the desire and the means to travel. They often in turn effect profound cultural change in the places they visit, and the contributors to this work all attend to the impact these "guests" have on their "hosts." In contrast to the dramatic economic transformations, the social repercussions of tourism are subtle and often recognized only by the indigenous peoples themselves and by the anthropologists who have studied them before and after the introduction of tourism. The case studies in Hosts and Guests examine the five types of tourism—historical, cultural, ethnic, environmental, and recreational—and their impact on diverse societies over a broad geographical range

Perspectives on Traditional Settlements and Communities

Perspectives on Traditional Settlements and Communities
Author: Bagoes Wiryomartono
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 200
Release: 2014-02-18
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 981458505X

This book covers the relationship between societies and their culture in the context of traditional settlement in Indonesia. The focus of the study is on the search for meanings of local concepts. This study reveals and analyzes the concepts concerning home and their sociocultural strategies for maintaining a sense of community and identity. In this study, identifying local concepts becomes the hallmark and the hub of analyses that explore, verify and establish relations between ideas and phenomena. Based on these relations, this study attempts to capture the reality of the local world that upholds and sustains the communities’ values, norms and principles for what they may call a homeland. The book is organized into two parts. Part I describes a cross-regional habitation in Indonesia, while Part II presents four ethnic regions of Indonesia - Sa’dan Toraja, Bali, Naga and Minangkabau. Their unique traditions, customs, beliefs and attitudes serve to provide diversity in terms of their backgrounds and lifestyles, though they share the challenge of sustaining their sense of home in the face of modernity as characterized by changes and developments toward a technologically industrialized society. The central research questions are - What is development in terms of culture and environmental sustainability? How do these communities respond to modernity?