The PoeTic Power of Place comparative perspectives on austronesian ideas of locality The PoeTic Power of Place comparative perspectives on austronesian ideas of locality edited by James J. fox a publication of the department of anthropology as part of the comparative austronesian project, research school of pacific studies the australian national university canberra ACT australia Published by ANU E Press The Australian National University Canberra ACT 0200, Australia Email: [email protected] Web: http://epress.anu.edu.au Previously published in Australia by the Department of Anthropology in association with the Comparative Austronesian Project, Research School of Pacific Studies, The Australian National University, Canberra 1997. National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry The poetic power of place: comparative perspectives on Austronesian ideas of locality. Bibliography. ISBN 0 7315 3281 7 (print) ISBN 1 920942 86 6 (online) 1. Place (Philosophy). 2. Sacredspace - Madagascar. 3. Sacred space - Indonesia. 4. Sacred space - Papua New Guinea. I. Fox, James J., 1940-. II. Australian National University. Dept. of Anthropology. III. Comparative Austronesian Project. 291.35 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. Typesetting by Margaret Tyrie/Norma Chin, maps and drawings by Keith Mitchell/Kay Dancey Cover design by Griffiths and Young Design/Bronwyn Dillon Printed at National Capital Printing, Canberra © The several authors, each in respect of the paper presented, 1997 This edition © 2006 ANU E Press Inside Austronesian Houses Table of Contents Acknowledgements ix Chapter 1. Place and Landscape in Comparative Austronesian Perspective James J. Fox 1 Introduction 1 Current Interest in Place and Landscape 2 Distinguishing and Valorizing Austronesian Spaces 4 Situating Place in a Narrated Landscape 6 Topogeny: Social Knowledge in an Ordering of Places 8 Varieties, Forms and Functions of Topogeny 12 Ambiguities and Indeterminacy of Place 15 References 17 Chapter 2. The Water That Blesses, The River That Flows: Place And The Ritual Imagination Among The Temanambondro Of Southeast Madagascar Philip Thomas 23 The Place-Ness of Water 23 Temanambondro: A Riverain People 26 Life, Death and the River 29 The River and the Polity 32 The “Roots” of Place 35 References 37 Chapter 3. Remembering Origins: Ancestors And Places In The Gumai Society Of South Sumatra Minako Sakai 43 Introduction 43 The Ethnographic Setting 44 The Generation of Origin Points 46 Genealogical Idioms by Which Relationships to Places are Expressed 50 Origin Rituals, Ritual Specialists and Ritual Places 51 Conclusion 56 References 56 Chapter 4. The Contested Landscapes of Myth and History in Tana Toraja Roxana Waterson 63 Houses, Myths and Genealogies in the Toraja Landscape 64 Inside Austronesian Houses Houses and Their Myths: Connections With Lowland Kingdoms 67 Sky Men and Water Women: The to Manurun Ancestors 70 The “Ancestors of the Same Dream”: Memories of Bugis Incursions 73 Conclusion: Ancestors, Precedence and the Division of Meat 78 References 83 Chapter 5. Genealogy and Topogeny: Towards an ethnography of Rotinese ritual place names James J. Fox 89 Introduction 89 The Rotinese Context 90 Names and the Cosmology of Place 90 The Names of Roti and the Symbolic Co-ordinates of Place 91 The Ritual Names of the Domain of Termanu 92 Narrative Topogeny: The Chant of the Origin of Rice and Millet 93 Mapping the Path of Rice and Millet onto the Body of the Island 97 The Creation of Ritual Space 99 References 100 Chapter 6. Mapping With Metaphor: Cultural topographies in West Timor Andrew McWilliam 101 Introduction 101 Named Place 101 Agnatic Paths 103 Affinal Paths 109 References 112 Chapter 7. Knowing Your Place: Representing relations of precedence and origin on the Buru landscape Barbara Dix Grimes 115 Origin Places 116 Taboo Places 124 Conclusion 128 References 128 Chapter 8. Speaking of Places: Spatial poesis and localized identity in Buli Nils Bubandt 131 Introduction 131 The Spatial Conditions of Subjectivity in Buli 133 Basic Orientation in Buli 135 Relative Distance and Movement in Deixis 137 i Placing Things and Using Space 138 Space, Subject, Body 141 Seeing the World From Buli 144 The Political History of Moral Space 147 Tradition, Modernity and Spatial Involutions 151 Conclusion 154 References 155 Chapter 9. From the Poetics of Place to the Politics of Space: Redefining Cultural Landscapes on Damer, Maluku Tenggara Sandra Pannell 163 Introduction 163 The Poetics of Place: Constructing Maps 164 The Politics of Space 165 Conclusion 170 References 171 Chapter 10. Seating the Place: Tropes of body, movement and space for the people of Lelet Plateau, New Ireland (Papua New Guinea) Richard Eves 173 Beyond Cartesian Dichotomies: Conceptualizing Space and Body 174 Larada: Delineating and Demarcating Space 177 Larada Spirits: The Attachment of People to Their Place 179 Seating the Place 181 The Mobile Body and Place 184 Conclusion 188 References 189 Contributors 195 ii Acknowledgements This volume, like others in this series, has taken a long time to make its appearance. Several of the papers Ð those by Eves, Fox, McWilliam and Pannell Ð were originally presented on 30 September 1992 at a panel of the Annual Conference of the Australian Anthropological Society held at The Australian National University. It is around these core papers that the rest of the volume has slowly taken shape. Dr Katy Bellingham, Margaret Tyrie, Norma Chin and Dr Barbara Holloway have all carried out careful editorial work on this volume at different stages in its production. Special thanks are due for all of their labours in producing this volume, especially since the task has had to be passed through a succession of editors. The photograph on the cover, set against the background of a Toraja textile, shows an old Toraja man and his dog standing beside a deata offering-pole erected as part of a medatu ritual held when rice is ripening in a field. The rice field for which the pole was erected is called Rattang Sura' and belongs to the old tongkonan of Tumakke. The photograph was taken by Roxana Waterson. The design of the cover was created by Bronwyn Dillon of Griffiths and Young; maps and figures were produced by Keith Mitchell and Kay Dancey of the Cartography Unit, RSPAS; and the index was compiled by Norma Chin and Barbara Holloway. ix Chapter 1. Place and Landscape in Comparative Austronesian Perspective James J. Fox Introduction The papers that comprise this volume examine ways in which social knowledge is framed and vested in particular landscapes. Each paper describes a specific Austronesian locality and considers both the cultural creation of this setting and the ways in which knowledge is maintained, transformed and remembered in relation to it. Each account is focused on a separate Austronesian-speaking population. These populations are located over a wide area stretching from Madagascar to Melanesia with languages representative of currently recognized major subgroups of the Austronesian language family: West Malayo-Polynesian, Central Malayo-Polynesian and Eastern Malayo-Polynesian, including speakers of both the Southwest Halmahera-West New Guinea and the Oceanic subgroups. The strategic purpose of this collection is to carry forward the comparative enterprise begun under the auspices of the Comparative Austronesian Project of the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies. As such, this volume forms part of a series that has explored various comparative topics and each has featured a different array of Austronesian-speaking groups. The intention is to give impetus to a comparative perspective that takes into account the whole of the Austronesian-speaking world. Identifying what may be common to all of the Austronesian peoples and what are critical cultural innovations in different regions is an essential part of this effort. The differentiation of Austronesian languages among and within regions is as fundamental as is a general perspective on the language family as a whole. Among linguists, a great deal of work on the subgrouping of Austronesian languages remains to be done, especially within the large provisionally-constructed subgroup known as Central Malayo-Polynesian which covers a considerable area of eastern Indonesia and provides linkages from west to east. In many cases, in eastern Indonesia, given the time depth for the Austronesian penetration of the area and the possibilities of movement among numerous islands, speakers of languages who are now contiguous may represent different migratory movements. Recognition of these historical differences among Austronesian populations is as important as is the recognition of broadly shared commonalities. 1 The Poetic Power of Place Equally important to this comparative effort, especially for anthropologists, is the task of creating a mode of analysis that will establish the basis of a comparative discourse appropriate to examination of the whole range of Austronesian societies. Such a discourse is needed to provide theoretical linkages between specific regional concerns (with societies such as those of Madagascar, or Borneo, or Oceania, or Micronesia) and the more general comparative concerns of anthropology that focus on the nature of society and of the human endeavour. All of these efforts are in an early