- Department of Anthropology
University of Rochester
Rochester NY 14627
Thomas Gibson
University of Rochester, Anthropology, Faculty Member
- Indian Ocean History, Austronesian Studies, Indonesian Politics, Philippine Indigenous Peoples, Indonesian religion, Rusyn, and 12 morePolitical Islam, Islamic Mysticism, Indigenous Studies, Anarchist Studies, Critical Social Theory, Marxist theory, Religious Nationalism, Anthropology of Kinship, Colonialism, Imperialism, Empire, and Philippe Descolaedit
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, young or old. The Buid... more
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, 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.
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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 kompleks di Asia... more
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 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.
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.
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"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... more
"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. "
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. "
Research Interests: Sociology of Religion, Legitimacy and Authority, Narrative, Islamic Education, Colonialism, and 16 moreIslamic Studies, Social movements and revolution, Narrative Theory, Southeast Asian history, Empire, Islam in Indonesia, Imperialism, Indian Muslims, New Trends in Education, Dutch East India Company, Clifford Geertz, Pesantren Studies, Muslim Society, Hadrami Studies, Malabar (Mappila Muslims), and Indonesian Muslims
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, Syeikh, dan Ambtenaar... more
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, 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.
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.
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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 the Sun Pursued the... more
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 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.
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.
Research Interests: Mythology And Folklore, Mythology, Southeast Asian Studies, Austronesian Languages, Kingship (Medieval History), and 4 moreAnthropology of Kinship, Comparative mythology, Bugis-Makassar Studies, and Religion and Art, Sanskrit Studies, Sanskrit Aesthetics, Indian Philosophy, Indian Music, Dance and Arts
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 focuses on the... more
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 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.
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This paper explores the concepts of value and sociality in the lives of human subjects living in the village of Ara, South Sulawesi, Indonesia in the 1980s. Every individual engaged in several forms of sociality that were associated with... more
This paper explores the concepts of value and sociality in the lives of human subjects living in the village of Ara, South Sulawesi, Indonesia in the 1980s. Every individual engaged in several forms of sociality that were associated with different sets of values. As members of noble houses and kingdoms they interacted with nonhuman subjects such as ancestor spirits and valued their ascribed social rank. As Muslims living in a cosmos structured as a great chain of being, they interacted with nonhuman subjects such as God, angels, jinn, and the spirits of dead mystics and valued individual salvation. As citizens of Indonesia they interacted only with other human subjects and as citizens of a nation that valued modernity and development. Individual social actors maneuvered among these symbolic complexes in accordance with the values they were pursuing at any one point in time, and were often able to strategically convert the symbolic capital they accumulated in one field of activity into a form of symbolic capital valued in another.
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Cet article compare les Buid de Mindoro (Philippines) et les Makassar du Sud de Sulawesi (Indonésie), afin de mettre en lumière deux conceptions totalement différentes de l’égalitarisme et de la hiérarchie. Ces groupes ont été choisis au... more
Cet article compare les Buid de Mindoro (Philippines) et les Makassar du Sud de Sulawesi (Indonésie), afin de mettre en lumière deux conceptions totalement différentes de l’égalitarisme et de la hiérarchie. Ces groupes ont été choisis au départ précisément parce qu’ils se situent aux extrémités opposées d’un continuum d’attitudes à l’égard de ces valeurs dans la région peu intégrée de l’Asie du Sud-Est insulaire. Au début de la période moderne, l’intensification de la traite des esclaves provoquée par l’expansion mercantiliste européenne a entraîné des transformations fondamentales au sein des formations sociales autochtones de toute l’Asie du Sud-Est. Certains peuples, comme les Buid, ont été les premières victimes de ce commerce, tandis que d’autres, comme les Makassar, en ont été les premiers bénéficiaires. Les Buid et les Makassar en sont venus à se démarquer radicalement les uns des autres par les horizons démographiques, spatiaux et temporels de leurs mondes. De ce fait, ils ont développé des valeurs politiques opposées à l’égard de la hiérarchie et de l’égalitarisme, des pratiques rituelles antinomiques d’interaction avec les êtres méta-humains et non-humains, ainsi que des cadres ontologiques caractérisés par différents degrés de complexité. Plus généralement, l’article soutient que les valeurs politiques, les pratiques rituelles et les cadres ontologiques observés à un endroit et à un moment donné au cours d’une enquête de terrain anthropologique ne doivent pas être analysés comme des éléments de « sociétés » autonomes et cohérentes, mais comme les composantes hétérogènes d’un assemblage localisé qui est en évolution interne constante et qui ne cesse d’interagir avec des assemblages plus larges à l’extérieur.
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This paper compares and contrasts attitudes toward egalitarianism and hierarchy among the Buid of Mindoro, Philippines, with the Makassar of South Sulawesi, Indonesia. These groups were originally chosen precisely because they occupied... more
This paper compares and contrasts attitudes toward egalitarianism and hierarchy among the Buid of Mindoro, Philippines, with the Makassar of South Sulawesi, Indonesia. These groups were originally chosen precisely because they occupied opposite ends of a continuum of attitudes toward these values within the loosely-integrated region of Island Southeast Asia. The intensification of the slave trade provoked by the European mercantilist expansion in the early modern period led to fundamental transformations in indigenous social formations throughout Southeast Asia. Peoples like the Buid were primarily victims of this trade, while peoples like the Makassar were primarily beneficiaries of it. They came to differ radically from one another in terms of the demographic, spatial, and temporal scales of their life worlds. As a result, they developed contrasting political values relating to hierarchy and egalitarianism; contrasting ritual practices for interacting with metahuman and nonhuman beings; and contrasting degrees of complexity in their ontological frameworks. More generally, the paper argues that the political values, ritual practices, and ontological frameworks encountered at one place and time during anthropological fieldwork should not be analyzed as parts of coherent, self contained 'societies', but as the heterogenous components of a localized assemblage that is in constant internal flux, and that is in constant interaction with encompassing external assemblages.
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Social justice requires a constant negotiation of the balance between the domestic domain of kinship and marriage, the cosmological domain of human relations with the nonhuman world, the political domain of power and authority, and the... more
Social justice requires a constant negotiation of the balance between the domestic domain of kinship and marriage, the cosmological domain of human relations with the nonhuman world, the political domain of power and authority, and the religious domain of human relations with the transcendental world of divinity. The domestic and cosmological domains are governed by symbolic schemes that draw on local sources of concrete experience, while the political and religious domains are governed by symbolic schemes that draw on abstract symbolic schemes that were often developed in remote times and places. In this paper I outline the way Makassar conceptions of social justice have changed as the relationship between these domains have undergone a series of transformations due to events such as religious conversion, colonial occupation, national liberation, and economic globalization. The paper outlines nine successive models of social justice, each of which was dominant for about two or three generations. All of these models remain available to social actors in the present through a vibrant heritage of oral, ritual, and textual traditions. Social actors draw on these models to evaluate the justice of current social arrangements and to imagine alternatives to them.
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In this paper I will compare and contrast the Austronesian symbolic elements of the two social formations within which I have conducted extensive ethnographic and archival research, that of the highly egalitarian Buid of Mindoro,... more
In this paper I will compare and contrast the Austronesian symbolic elements of the two social formations within which I have conducted extensive ethnographic and archival research, that of the highly egalitarian Buid of Mindoro, Philippines and that of the equally hierarchical Makassar of South Sulawesi, Indonesia. I will demonstrate both that their cosmological structures are built out of common symbolic elements and that these structures could be used to legitimate vastly different political systems. The common symbolic elements included a gendered cosmos inhabited by a series of parallel societies composed of animal, human and spirit subjects; the conceptualisation of human sociality as generated by shared experience within a nested series of bounded spaces; and the ability of certain agents to move between these spaces by way of specialised training, vehicles and portals.
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The current collection of articles includes a discussion of Austronesian peoples living in modern nations situated in East Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa and Melanesia. It thus crosses many long-established boundaries in area studies which... more
The current collection of articles includes a discussion of Austronesian peoples living in modern nations situated in East Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa and Melanesia. It thus crosses many long-established boundaries in area studies which tend to develop their own theoretical dialects. While there are many valid reasons for these theoretical discussions, a shift in focus from geographically defined areas to what might be called 'Greater Austronesia' brings to light new sets of theoretical problems. Our central concern is the extent to which Austronesian societies value social hierarchy over egalitarianism, and the extent to which political leadership is determined through a rule of succession or other form of status ascription, through the competitive achievements of individuals, or actively resisted in the first place through various mechanisms such as the mandatory sharing of wealth, the denigration of ambition, or the dispersal of populations.
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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 cognitive linguistics,... more
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 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.
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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 opposition to the... more
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 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.
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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 practices, and each... more
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 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.
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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 that exist in one of... more
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 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.
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.
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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 anthropologists working on... more
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 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.
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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-Strauss sees the “house”... more
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-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.
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.
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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 general observations on... more
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 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.
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This paper is intended as a contribution to an anthropological theory of resistance and revolution. The empirical material used to advance this theory is drawn from the turbulent political history of the province of South Sulawesi,... more
This paper is intended as a contribution to an anthropological theory of resistance and revolution. The empirical material used to advance this theory is drawn from the turbulent political history of the province of South Sulawesi, Indonesia. During the last century alone, periods of relative political normality have alternated with revolutionary upheavals with great frequency. After their conquest of the Makassarese kingdom of Gowa in the 1660s, the Dutch established a sort of ‘para-colonial’ government in much of the peninsula, leaving a hereditary nobility in place until the imposition of direct rule throughout the area by 1910. Between 1600 and 1900, the legitimacy of this nobility was based on an indigenous royal ancestor cult and on a version of Sufi Islam. Beginning in 1860, the Dutch slowly undermined the nobility by appointing commoner officials loyal to the colonial government. Many of these commoners turned to a form of Sufism purified of local spirit cults to legitimate their own rule. In the 1930s, the Dutch attempted to restore the old nobility as a counter-force to rising nationalism. The 1940s were marked by Japanese occupation and an anti-Dutch war of national liberation that militarized the province in an unprecedented way. The 1950s and 1960s saw a radical Islamic insurgency seize control of much of the countryside. The period since 1965 is best characterized as a ‘cold war’ between the adherents of the old spirit cults, traditional Sufism, and Islamic modernism.
In order to understand this history, I shall employ the concepts of ‘ritual practices’ and ‘ritual complexes’ as the basic units of analysis, instead of the more usual individual actors, economic classes and cultural wholes. I will show, first, that ritual complexes are a source of ideal models for political action; second, that they are formed over the course of centuries, and so can be explained neither in terms of particular conjunctures nor in terms of the strategies of individual actors; third, that they pertain to a realm of experience distinct from that of everyday economic activities, and cannot be construed as the direct expression of class interests; and finally, that the models of political order they generate contradict one another, so that no one of them can be taken as reflecting the essence of the cultural whole.
In order to understand this history, I shall employ the concepts of ‘ritual practices’ and ‘ritual complexes’ as the basic units of analysis, instead of the more usual individual actors, economic classes and cultural wholes. I will show, first, that ritual complexes are a source of ideal models for political action; second, that they are formed over the course of centuries, and so can be explained neither in terms of particular conjunctures nor in terms of the strategies of individual actors; third, that they pertain to a realm of experience distinct from that of everyday economic activities, and cannot be construed as the direct expression of class interests; and finally, that the models of political order they generate contradict one another, so that no one of them can be taken as reflecting the essence of the cultural whole.
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In this paper, warfare in insular Southeast Asia is examined through the comparison of three groups of highland shifting cultivators. The thesis is that the current social evaluation of violence and aggression within each group is the... more
In this paper, warfare in insular Southeast Asia is examined through the comparison of three groups of highland shifting cultivators. The thesis is that the current social evaluation of violence and aggression within each group is the result of differing historical experiences within a loosely integrated regional political economy dominated by the institutions of slave raiding and coerced trade. Those groups positively disposed toward bellicosity are those which played a predominantly predatory role in the region, while those which are negatively disposed toward violence in any form were primarily prey. There is, however, nothing deterministic about the argument, for each concrete example represents only one of a number of logically possible responses to a given sequence of historical events. All three groups still retain a significant degree of autonomy over their internal political and ideological systems, and each must be seen as creatively responding to a changing set of external political and economic forces.
In the first part of the paper, a brief outline is provided of the general historical context in which these three societies have developed. In the second part, an overview of each society is given. In the third part, their respective attitudes toward violence, social ranking and indebtedness are compared and contrasted. The paper concludes with a look at some of the implications of asking questions about human violence in the contexts of exploitation and of ritual attitudes, as opposed to those of aggression and competition for scarce natural resources.
In the first part of the paper, a brief outline is provided of the general historical context in which these three societies have developed. In the second part, an overview of each society is given. In the third part, their respective attitudes toward violence, social ranking and indebtedness are compared and contrasted. The paper concludes with a look at some of the implications of asking questions about human violence in the contexts of exploitation and of ritual attitudes, as opposed to those of aggression and competition for scarce natural resources.
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In this paper I outline a theoretical model that will help explain certain aspects of the social history of the maritime peoples of Southeast Asia. I begin by discussing the applicability in the Southeast Asian context of concepts such... more
In this paper I outline a theoretical model that will help explain certain aspects of the social history of the maritime peoples of Southeast Asia. I begin by discussing the applicability in the Southeast Asian context of concepts such as 'mode of production', 'social formation', 'articulation', 'regional system', 'core', 'semiperiphery' and 'periphery'. In the second part, with the help of these concepts, a model is constructed of the political, economic and ideological foundations of what I call 'predatory coastal states' in insular Southeast Asia. In the third part, I illustrate the utility of this model in analysing the history of certain Malay, Bugis and Tausug polities as they waxed and waned between about 1600 and 1900.
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In “Theory in Anthropology since the Sixties,” Sherry Ortner provides an account “from the actor’s point of view” of what other schools of thought look like from a "Geertzo-Weberian" perspective (Ortner’s phrase, not mine; 130). As she... more
In “Theory in Anthropology since the Sixties,” Sherry Ortner provides an account “from the actor’s point of view” of what other schools of thought look like from a "Geertzo-Weberian" perspective (Ortner’s phrase, not mine; 130). As she foresaw, I find my favourite school of anthropology, a variant of structural Marxism, “oversimplified, if not outright distorted” (127). She justifies her biased account by claiming that she is interested not in particular approaches themselves, but “in the relations between various theoretical schools.” Not surprisingly, however, she is at her best when relating different approaches to her own approach, and at her worst when attempting to relate different approaches to one another. In particular, she misses out the most important interactions between French and British anthropology over the past three decades, and most of this commentary will be taken up with correcting these omissions. I have not been able to resist the temptation, however, of giving an equally biased and oversimplified account of American cultural anthropology from a European perspective in the latter part of the paper. I conclude with a few remarks on what I see as the main theoretical tasks of the coming decade.
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Some recent discussions of ritual in Southeast Asia focus almost entirely on “symbols” and “meanings”, leaving the definitions of both terms extremely vague and approaching interpretation in an impressionistic manner (cf. Geertz 1980:... more
Some recent discussions of ritual in Southeast Asia focus almost entirely on “symbols” and “meanings”, leaving the definitions of both terms extremely vague and approaching interpretation in an impressionistic manner (cf. Geertz 1980: 135). This sort of approach neglects the point made long ago by writers such as Robertson-Smith (1894) and Durkheim (1912) that rituals are above all stable forms of collective social action to which ever-changing meanings and uses are attached over the course of history. And while meanings may be peculiar to individuals, or classes of individuals, correct ritual procedure is a matter of concern to the group as a whole. From a political and economic point of view, what is interesting about rituals is the way they constrain individual action and thought through submission to their formal stability, not their “meaning” as such. Other writers adopting the general approach advanced here have, however, tended to view this formalism and co nstraint as leading inevitably to the legitimation of instituted hierarchy in social life (cf. Bloch 1986). In this paper I will argue on the contrary that the current, albeit fragile, economic success of one group of autonomous highlanders in the Philippines, the Buid, can be attributed in part to a pre-existing set of egalitarian ritual practices.
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This chapter describes the symbolic representations of away (“tranquility”), isug (“aggression”), and related moral concepts among the Buid, a group of shifting cultivators inhabiting the highlands of Mindoro, Philippines). In my view,... more
This chapter describes the symbolic representations of away (“tranquility”), isug (“aggression”), and related moral concepts among the Buid, a group of shifting cultivators inhabiting the highlands of Mindoro, Philippines). In my view, the Buid may be fairly described as a society “at peace” because of the extremely low value they attach to “aggression” and the extremely high value they attach to “tranquility”.
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In this chapter, I discuss certain social mechanisms which achieve the same disengagement of people from property among one group of shifting cultivators, the Buid of Mindoro, Philippines (Gibson 1986). The Buid possess a political... more
In this chapter, I discuss certain social mechanisms which achieve the same disengagement of people from property among one group of shifting cultivators, the Buid of Mindoro, Philippines (Gibson 1986). The Buid possess a political ideology of ascribed equality every bit as rigorous as that possessed by African and Asian hunter-gatherers. Indeed, in many ways Buid egalitarianism is more consistent and pervasive than that of these hunter-gatherers.
I examine material transactions in these societies as a guide to their underlying political values. I make a distinction between the form and content of a material transaction.
While the content of material transactions is crucial to a society’s mode of subsistence, the forms these transactions take are indicative not of the economic but of the political system. The form taken by the most ritualized transactions is often a key to the dominant political values of a society. In the case of hunters and gatherers, this is usually the sharing of the meat of large game animals. Among the Buid, it is the sharing of sacrificed domesticated animals. The principles observed in animal sacrifice may, however, be found to operate throughout Buid social life.
I examine material transactions in these societies as a guide to their underlying political values. I make a distinction between the form and content of a material transaction.
While the content of material transactions is crucial to a society’s mode of subsistence, the forms these transactions take are indicative not of the economic but of the political system. The form taken by the most ritualized transactions is often a key to the dominant political values of a society. In the case of hunters and gatherers, this is usually the sharing of the meat of large game animals. Among the Buid, it is the sharing of sacrificed domesticated animals. The principles observed in animal sacrifice may, however, be found to operate throughout Buid social life.
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Two cultural constructs pervade the social life of the Buid of Mindoro, Philippines. The first, which I label 'companionship', is based on the sharing of food, labour and sex, and is associated with the dominant values of equality and... more
Two cultural constructs pervade the social life of the Buid of Mindoro, Philippines. The first, which I label 'companionship', is based on the sharing of food, labour and sex, and is associated with the dominant values of equality and autonomy. The second, which I label 'kinship', is based on shared physical and spiritual substance, and is associated with negatively valued tendencies towards domination and dependency. I investigate the symbolism surrounding these two constructs, and its articulation with gender and mortuary symbolism, before turning, in the conclusion, to the implications of this ethnography for the cross-cultural comparison of kinship as a symbol of moral values.
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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 conscious manipulation... more
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 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.
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 of the source of ilmu,... more
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 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.
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 which the leader of the... more
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 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.
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.
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 understand this history,... more
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 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).
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 birth, initiation,... more
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 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.
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.
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. Second, it subjects... more
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. 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.
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Research Interests: Islamic Studies and Islam
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