Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1993

Publication Title

Southeast Asian Journal of Social Science/Asian Journal of Social Science

Volume

21

Issue

2

Pages

62-72

Publisher Name

Brill

Abstract

This essay is broadly concerned with this theme of discourse and religious practices among the Sa'dan Toraja people of upland Sulawesi. Specifically, I wish to explore some of the ways in which the Torajan mortuary complex of the 1980s and 1990s has been reconceptualized as Torajans' encounters with the wider world intensify. Outward migration (merantau) to urban centres in Indonesia, increased familiarity with the bureaucratic organization of the Indonesian government and the Church, the spread of television, and the ever-growing presence of tourists and anthropologists in Tana Toraja Regency have all fostered Torajans' rethinking of their "traditional" funeral rituals. In short, this article examines how the national media, the travel industry, and Indonesian civil religion have begun to reshape local ideas about what constitutes a "successful" Torajan funeral. As I will suggest, in the 1990s the Torajan funeral is a product of this discourse with the nation and the West.

Comments

Author Posting © 1993, Brill. This article is posted here by permission of Brill for personal use, not for redistribution. The article was published in Southeast Asian Journal of Social Science (now known as Asian Journal of Social Science), Volume 21, Issue 2, 1993, http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/030382493X00116

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

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