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This article describes how the dominant order of precedence in Seram, eastern Indonesia is challenged by the suspicion of the existence of a secret history. In a context where being the original founder is of importance and the sequence of predecessors' arrival is the basis of orders of precedence, such a suspicion evokes a hopeful possibility for marginal communities that the present social order is false and vulnerable to the abrupt revelation of the true past. Although generally inclined toward the founders, there are overlapping orders of precedence at work in Seram. Each order of precedence conjures up a different image of the marginal community, which, despite each placing them as the lesser group, induces a sense of contradiction and that the widely recounted history is problematic. In this respect, this article offers a contribution to the field of Austronesian studies, which has long been concerned with how orders of precedence emerge and are at play among the historically mobile Austronesian societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tidal energy is a new renewable energy source that can be used to provide electricity to remote islands, while contributing to climate change mitigation. Like all renewable energy projects, public awareness and support are not only crucial for the successful development of marine renewable energy projects too, but also aid the private sector project developers in making long‐term plans. As information about tidal energy is not easily available, public views toward it are not well known, making it challenging for the project developers to strategize implementation strategies. Moreover, the limited studies focusing on such social aspects of tidal energy come from advanced countries, highlighting the lack of focus on cases from developing countries. Our study fulfills this gap by providing a case study focusing on the social aspects of tidal energy in a developing country, which can be utilized by developers for designing their public engagement strategies. We estimate the public support for tidal energy in eastern Indonesia using two methods: (a) stages of development and (b) information provision. Using the first method, we found that support for tidal energy is lower in the initial stages, but it keeps rising once the public can realize the benefits. The second method shows that though people tend to support tidal energy, the role of information provision is dissimilar compared with western cases. Additionally, Probit modeling shows that Age, Education, Collective Outcome Favorability, and especially, Individual Outcome Favorability are the key factors that positively impact the support for tidal energy in eastern Indonesia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the Lio region of Flores Island patrilineal groups coexist with taboos on animals and plants inherited through females, a combination previously interpreted as reflecting a system of double unilineal descent. Drawing on ethnography from the Lio district of Mego, maternal taboos are shown to accompany similar prohibitions conceived as a property of patriclans, most of which, however, are incumbent not on male clansmen but on their wives. As is further demonstrated, both sorts of taboo reflect ideas about female bodies and blood, particularly as women and their children are transformed through marriage into members of patrilineal groups dominated by men. Also discussed is whether variability in the way taboos are currently inherited in Mego may reflect recent social change, and how matrilineally inherited Lio prohibitions can be seen as an instance of complementary female and male principles equally operative in the social life of other eastern Indonesian societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on an analysis of in-depth interviews with returned migrant women from East Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia, this paper considers the links between migration, religious beliefs and subjectivity. Low-skilled migrant women, including domestic workers, have often been represented as marginalised. This paper argues that in the context of migration, women constantly move through trajectories of power using religion as a spiritual resource. Against the commonly patriarchal characteristics of their religion and community, the women employ cognitive strategies to face challenges in migration. In each stage of their transnational migration, the women's experiences reveal the multitude of ways in which they continue to invest in their beliefs through everyday practices, rituals and networking. These experiences highlight the women's strategies in accessing different forms of power. This study demonstrates the significance of focusing on these women's experiences, including their everyday religious practices and their shifting sense of self, as a way of broadening the conceptual basis of our understanding of female migration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the effects of different representations of informal economies in Third World settings. Both the neoclassical and political economy approaches have represented the informal economy as a transient entity, and the non-capitalist practices it comprises as being remnant economic forms, or as already capitalist. Mainstream development discourse (that reflects the neoliberal paradigm) continues to ignore the value and potential of non-capitalist practices and to represent them as inconsequential to development outcomes. Meanwhile contemporary livelihood studies across the social sciences have documented the continuing vibrancy of different and hybrid economic forms in the Asia Pacific. In this paper, I use a diverse-economies approach to explore the complexities of the village economy of Oelua in Rote, in the so-called lagging region of Eastern Indonesia. Drawing on anti-essentialist Marxist theory in economic geography, I describe the multiple, locally specific and coexisting practices that comprise Oelua's diverse economy, which include distributions of surplus labour to promote social and economic well-being. I argue that recognising informal village economies as an important development resource could begin a process of building diverse development trajectories in Eastern Indonesia, complementing mainstream development proposals to attract foreign direct investment, shore up development assistance and source out-migration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the subsistence records from cave sites with Pleistocene-aged deposits in East Tanor and the Aru Islands during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), and discusses these records within the context of the limited archaeological evidence for LGM occupation from elsewhere in the Indonesian Archipelago. Although Timor and the Am Islands are at similar latitudes, the onset of aridity had markedly different impacts on the settlement and subsistence choices available to hunter-gatherers in these two regions. We suggest that the different occupation trajectories seen in Timor and Am during the LGM are related, at least in part, to biogeographic contrasts across the Indonesian Archipelago. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]