Suchergebnisse

Indonesia has long been struggling with ways to conceptualise the 'parts' of the nation in relation to the whole. The nationalist movement took this as a serious challenge and devised a new political vocabulary for the task of building the diverse nation. Their program was challenged by the political vocabulary deployed by Suharto's New Order, but the leaders of Reformasi and now the newly-elected President Joko Widodo are revisiting political language to develop the sense of belonging to the nation and respect for its diverse parts.

During the Vietnam War, the US government funded anthropological research in South Vietnam that was charged by critics as supporting counterinsurgency measures. My 1973 BA Hons thesis addressed theoretical debates about the nature of political power in post-colonial peasant societies using ethnographic reports of the research group at Michigan State University Vietnam Advisory Group. In recent years, anthropology has returned to ethical debates in the discipline brought on in the context of US actions as one of the Superpowers during the Cold War and has examined these debates in terms of different contemporary research values in the discipline, as well as changed global politics. From the distance of almost half a century, I wish to re-examine these ethnographic texts in a critical reading of the nature of power in the villages studied.

Indonesia has long been struggling with ways to conceptualise the 'parts' of the nation in relation to the whole. The nationalist movement took this as a serious challenge and devised a new political vocabulary for the task of building the diverse nation. Their program was challenged by the political vocabulary deployed by Suharto's New Order, but the leaders of Reformasi and now the newly-elected President Joko Widodo are revisiting political language to develop the sense of belonging to the nation and respect for its diverse parts.

The Sri Lankan-born anthropologist, the late Chandra Jayawardena, was a pivotal figure in the development of Australian anthropology. He arrived at the University of Sydney in the late 1960s, a period of dramatic intellectual and political change. In the

Indonesia has long been struggling with ways to conceptualise the 'parts' of the nation in relation to the whole. The nationalist movement took this as a serious challenge and devised a new political vocabulary for the task of building the diverse nation. Their program was challenged by the political vocabulary deployed by Suharto's New Order, but the leaders of Reformasi and now the newly-elected President Joko Widodo are revisiting political language to develop the sense of belonging to the nation and respect for its diverse parts.

Islamist groups are attempting to shape Indonesia's political landscape post-New Order through advocating local regulations based on sharia in districts newly empowered by regional autonomy. In the province of South Sulawesi, which was gripped by a separatist Islamic rebellion in the 1950s and 1960s, the former rebel leader, Kahar Muzakkar, is invoked in a movement to implement sharia-based local regulations. However, the politics of decentralisation are also associated with a resurgence of local cultural identities, which embrace non-Islamic traditions. In Muslim South Sulawesi, these claims have been expressed through the ceremonial re-installation of local traditional rulers and performance of public ceremonies to care for the sacred regalia that legitimate authority, but also through government-funded seminars that explore distinctive Bugis and Makassarese cultural traditions. These claims to power can be understood as a reaction to the taming of cultural difference by the Suharto regime, but they also represent vehicles for local elites to assume power. Based on an analysis of one of the district cultural seminars and accompanying cultural festival, this paper examines the manner in which cultural traditions are strategically mobilised in South Sulawesi, in a rival movement to the Islamist claims to implement sharia.

Indonesia has long been struggling with ways to conceptualise the 'parts' of the nation in relation to the whole. The nationalist movement took this as a serious challenge and devised a new political vocabulary for the task of building the diverse nation. Their program was challenged by the political vocabulary deployed by Suharto's New Order, but the leaders of Reformasi and now the newly-elected President Joko Widodo are revisiting political language to develop the sense of belonging to the nation and respect for its diverse parts.

The Sri Lankan-born anthropologist, the late Chandra Jayawardena, was a pivotal figure in the development of Australian anthropology. He arrived at the University of Sydney in the late 1960s, a period of dramatic intellectual and political change. In the

During the Vietnam War, the US government funded anthropological research in South Vietnam that was charged by critics as supporting counterinsurgency measures. My 1973 BA Hons thesis addressed theoretical debates about the nature of political power in post-colonial peasant societies using ethnographic reports of the research group at Michigan State University Vietnam Advisory Group. In recent years, anthropology has returned to ethical debates in the discipline brought on in the context of US actions as one of the Superpowers during the Cold War and has examined these debates in terms of different contemporary research values in the discipline, as well as changed global politics. From the distance of almost half a century, I wish to re-examine these ethnographic texts in a critical reading of the nature of power in the villages studied.

Islamist groups are attempting to shape Indonesia's political landscape post-New Order through advocating local regulations based on sharia in districts newly empowered by regional autonomy. In the province of South Sulawesi, which was gripped by a separatist Islamic rebellion in the 1950s and 1960s, the former rebel leader, Kahar Muzakkar, is invoked in a movement to implement sharia-based local regulations. However, the politics of decentralisation are also associated with a resurgence of local cultural identities, which embrace non-Islamic traditions. In Muslim South Sulawesi, these claims have been expressed through the ceremonial re-installation of local traditional rulers and performance of public ceremonies to care for the sacred regalia that legitimate authority, but also through government-funded seminars that explore distinctive Bugis and Makassarese cultural traditions. These claims to power can be understood as a reaction to the taming of cultural difference by the Suharto regime, but they also represent vehicles for local elites to assume power. Based on an analysis of one of the district cultural seminars and accompanying cultural festival, this paper examines the manner in which cultural traditions are strategically mobilised in South Sulawesi, in a rival movement to the Islamist claims to implement sharia.