Search

Presents a study on the changes in Euro-American society between the ethnic of work and the aesthetic of consumption. Analysis of the difference reactions of the Manggarai people in Flores Island, Indonesia to the Indonesian crises; Key philosophical attitude towards work developed in the industrial era; Goals of the reformers of the modern era.

Introduces a series of articles on the changes in Indonesia brought about by the fall in power of former Indonesian President Makam Suharto.

This article focuses on matters related to this life and the life after death. The similarity between marriage and death has been noted by anthropologists on Sumba, where people say that the dead are like brides, in that they must transfer their allegiance from one community to another. This association between marriage and death is also made by the Rembong of western Flores in eastern Indonesia. However they use a somewhat different metaphor which necessitates an examination of what the processes of "marriage" and "death" are for the Rembong. Both of these ritual processes are seen by the Rembong to be the "creation" of a person, the making of them into "complete" beings. This process involves an "extraction" of a person from a particular social group into which he had been "encompassed" and a process of differentiating him through exchange into a distinctive individual. The Rembong are a population of about 3000 people living in the northeastern corner of kabupa ten Manggarai. They speak a language that is distinct from the other languages in Manggarai which contributes to the sense they have of themselves as a separate people.