Paths and Rivers

This book, the product of anthropological fieldwork over a thirty-year period, provides a deep and broad picture of the Sa'dan Toraja as a society in dynamic transition to modernity over the course of the twentieth century. The analysis, firstly, sets Toraja society in the context of the Austronesian world, tracing some widely shared themes of culture, kinship and cosmology. Secondly, the author evokes a historical context within which she examines Toraja social memory and the uses of the past, as a source of social identity, a resource for claims of precedence, or a template for action in the present. Toraja are famous for the dramatic architecture of their 'tongkonan' or houses of origin; here the house is shown to be the true focus of the bilateral kinship system, making this an emblematic example of the type of social organisation that Claude Levi-Strauss termed a 'house society'. The structure and ethos of the indigenous religion, 'Aluk to Dolo' or Way of the Ancestors, with its complex cycle of rituals, is clearly presented, while the author traces the continuing decline of this religion in the face of accelerating conversion to Christianity. The book concludes with an analysis of the ceremonial economy associated with mortuary ritual, whose continued inflation, even as rites are performed in Christianized forms, puts increasingly severe strains on household economies. Toraja ethnic identity is shown to have emerged over the course of the past century as an active response to far-reaching political and social changes, from Dutch colonial takeover in 1905, through the struggle for Indonesian Independence and the Soeharto era of 'Development', to the effervescent mood of 'Reformation' following Soeharto's fall from power in 1998, and entry into the 21st century. In tracing these transformations, the book charts the story of one society's journey into modernity.