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Tradition, Christianity, and the State in Understandings of Sickness and Healing in South Nias, Indonesia

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Tradition, Christianity, and the State in Understandings of Sickness and Healing in South Nias, Indonesia TRADITION, CHRISTIANITY, AND THE STATE IN UNDERSTANDINGS OF SICKNESS AND HEALING IN SOUTH NIAS, INDONESIA by Edward Peake Thesis submitted for degree of PhD Department of Anthropology London School of Economics University of London September 2000 UMI Number: U126970 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Dissertation Publishing UMI U126970 Published by ProQuest LLC 2014. Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 F 7202 7 3 8 3 9 % ABSTRACT TRADITION, CHRISTIANITY, AND THE STATE: UNDERSTANDINGS OF SICKNESS AND HEALING IN SOUTH NIAS, INDONESIA The thesis describes the range of south Nias villagers' understandings of sickness and healing, and investigates how and why they draw on various cultural spheres in the interpretation and management of sickness events. Traditional notions of sickness etiology are set in the context of both Christian beliefs and the state's efforts to promulgate modem, 'scientific' understandings, in order to show how sociologically distinguished individuals draw variously at different times and contexts on all three fields of sickness interpretation and management. The thesis begins with a history of Nias relations with the outside world, in order to delineate the genealogy of modem Indonesian attitudes to local culture. A brief medical history of Nias from precolonial times to the present completes the introductory material. Traditional beliefs surrounding sickness and healing are introduced in the context of other traditional social, political and religious institutions. The process of conversion to Christianity is described, paying particular attention to the Christian construction of traditional religion and culture and the translation into the vernacular of Christian concepts. Contemporary village Christianity is described, and an attempt is made to characterise private religiosity and the range of Christian ideas on sin, sickness, and medicine. The contemporary classification of illness into ordinary, spirit-caused, and witchcraft-caused diseases is discussed, together with the explanatory models involved. The various traditions of village healing are described. Finally, the various institutions of modem state medicine are described, along with the aims and local reception of government programmes aimed at social transformation. A concluding statement sums up the cultural dynamics described surrounding the interpretation and management of sickness in south Nias villages, showing how it is that notions of 'sin' have come to hold such a central position in the explanation of sickness on contemporary Nias. 2 LIST OF CONTENTS Map of the region and fieldwork sites 6 Photographs 7 Acknowledgements 15 Ch. I INTRODUCTION 16 1.1 Prologue: 'Ama Wita, the village nurse' 16 1.2 Research aims and objectives 20 1.3 Description of fieldwork site and research 30 1.4 Introductory description of Nias 34 Ch. II HISTORY OF NIAS RELATIONS WITH THE OUTSIDE WORLD AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF NIAS CULTURE 40 Ch. Ill THE CONTEMPORARY PREDICAMENT OF TRADITIONAL CULTURE: "PRIMmVENESS" AND DEVELOPMENT 52 Ch. IV A BRIEF MEDICAL HISTORY 61 Ch. V TRADITIONAL CONTEXTS OF ILLNESS-BELIEFS 66 5.1 From Tradition to traditions 66 5.2 The social context 69 5.3 The religious context 73 Ch. VI CONVERSION TO CHRISTIANITY 78 6.1 Prologue: Ama Wati on Christianity 78 6.2 Before the missions 81 6.3 RMG - the early years 84 6.4 Christian construction of traditional religion and culture 86 6.5 Romantic criticism of the missionaries 91 6.6 Translation of Christian concepts 92 6.7 The Great Repentance 98 3 Ch. VII CHRISTIANITY TODAY 103 7.1 The proliferation of sects 103 7.2 Centres and margins of orthodoxy 108 7.3 Akadira goes to Theology College 110 7.4 Church services, celebrations of life cycle and calendrical feasts 112 17.5 Consecration and fund-raising for new church 114 17.6 Prayer groups and trance healing 117 17.7 Private religiosity and the range of Christian ideas on sin, sickness and medicine 120 17.8 Case studies 123 Ch. VIII CLASSIFICATION AND EXPLANATORY MODELS OF DISEASE 129 8.1 Ordinary diseases 129 8.2 Witchcraft diseases 131 83 Diseases caused by spirits 135 8.4 Distant causes: guilt; sin, taboos, and cursing 141 8.5 Contemporary dynamics of sickness understandings 145 8.6 Chains of diagnosis 147 8.7 Case histories 148 Ch. IX CONTEMPORARY VILLAGE HEALING 156 9.1 Preventative measures and health maintenance 156 9.2 Responses to sickness and home healing 158 9.3 Herbal medicine and herbalists 159 9.4 Healers 161 9.5 Massage 165 9.6 Midwives 167 9.7 Extraction 168 9.8 Prophets, seers, exorcists and repentance specialists 169 9.9 Magicians 171 9.10 Transmission of healing knowledge and sources of power 175 9.11 The power of words and names 180 9.12 Assessment of village medicine 182 4 Ch. X COSMOPOLITAN MEDICINE AND THE STATE 187 10.1 Hospitals and doctors 187 10.2 Chemists 188 10.3 Midwives 189 10.4 Village clinics 189 10.5 The Official View of Village Health Problems 191 10.6 Schools and health education 193 10.7 Family Health and Prosperity Programmes (PKK) 204 10.8 The Family Planning Programme (KB) 211 10.9 Patients' accounts of treatment 215 Ch. XI CONCLUSION: THE MORALISING OF SICKNESS 219 APPENDICES 231 Appendix I: Glossary of diseases and their remedies as recognised in the villages of Maenamolo 231 Appendix II: Uses of medicinal herbs in the villages of Maenamolo 241 BIBLIOGRAPHY 252 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS (Between pages 7 and 14) 1 Mother and children 2 Village street 3 Division of meat 4 Elders singinghoho 5 Folk song and dance troupe performing at wedding 6 Woodcarving for international art market 7 Hunting trophies 8 Patchouli still 9 South Nias river 10 Grating coconut 11 Market town of Teluk Dalam 12 Orahili village 5 5An m © AtCHf ACCH ItOUrJ SinwvPone % 8ATvT\ 0 ISLANDS 'O X*® <»o© #*| S/<J£iWi TvH€nse<o\ 'MHCWA H/NUAI6- X I Tot I ACA5A frUAfu*(r \ . A/.bc'6flAT^A A//AS HirJAKO 0 p I/9 ISLAND /SCANfcS £> ^AHWA HJUWAl^CO I .OA/OHoj ^AO jJAWo&oSAci -OAAH/CI H»CIS»PIAGTAA»0 •flAKWATATAA^O >o «c^1 £c>< OAuVI BOTOHlUTV**? HIC iAMA£TA aJ<HA ZAWWWU PHOTOGRAPHS I Mother and children II Village street 7 The division of meat - » IV Elders singinghoho V Folk song and dance troupe performing at wedding 9 VI Woodcarving for the international art market 10 VII Hunting trophies VIII Patchouli still 11 IX South Nias river 12 X Grating coconut XI The market town of Teluk Dalam 13 XII Orahili village 14 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This research was made possible by a generous grant from the Economic and Social Research Council, the permission of the Indonesian Academy of Sciences (LIPI), and the support of the University of North Sumatra (USU) in Medan. My thanks go to all these institutions, and in particular to my counterpart at USU, Drs Hamdani Harahap. The Department of Social Anthroplogy at LSE was an immensely inspiring and supportive study environment; my heartfelt thanks go to all the staff and my fellow students, but especially to my supervisors, Dr Fenella Cannell and Professor Maurice Bloch. On Nias my work would have been impossible without the hospitality and friendship of many people. In particular I would like to thank Julius, Emanuele, Ama Winner and all his family, Akadira, Komelius, Ama Yanty and all his family, Ama and Ina Liber, Fadoma, Ama Rina, Ama Siti, Ama Wita, Ama Japer, Ama and Ina Rahmat, Ina Asa, and all the people of Hiliamaeta, Orahili, Hilinawalo, and Lagundri. May God bless you all. I have benefitted from comments and conversations with Pastor Johannes Hammerle, Andrew Beatty and Henrikje Klasen, as well as my contemporaries at LSE, and help with German texts from Jessica Civiero. My thanks to all of you; all errors, however, are my own! Finally, let me take this opportunity to thank my parents for their love and support, and my wife Mitzi and son Oscar for allowing me to be away for so long. 15 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION I begin this thesis on south Nias villagers' understandings of sickness and healing, and shall continue intermittently to illustrate it, with a substantial (and only lightly revised) quotation from my fieldnotes. The purpose of this quotation, as of the others with which I illustrate successive chapters, is to counterpose my analysis with a more descriptive presentation of the ethnographic material. It is my hope that these passages will convey the atmosphere of village society and culture in south Nias at the end of the twentieth century, during the last years of the Soeharto regime, and in particular the tone in which villagers relate to the spheres of Tradition, Church, and State. Further, it is my intention in presenting these quotations from my fieldnotes to reproduce - or at least draw attention to - the process of fieldwork, and to suggest the highly complex and open-ended ethnographic reality to which my analysis is only one of several possible approaches. The first such quotation consists of a description of Ama Wita of Hilinawalo. A local man, he is responsible to the state for running the recently-opened village clinic, and is thus a pivotal character amidst the various ways that exist in the villages of understanding and managing sickness.
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