Stuart Kirsch
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780520297944
- eISBN:
- 9780520970090
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520297944.003.0003
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Anthropology, Theory and Practice
This chapter examines the West Papuan independence movement. It describes long-term research with West Papuan refugees living in Papua New Guinea and exiled political leaders. It discusses a shift in ...
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This chapter examines the West Papuan independence movement. It describes long-term research with West Papuan refugees living in Papua New Guinea and exiled political leaders. It discusses a shift in the late 1990s from paramilitary opposition to Indonesian violence to human rights activism. It also describes how negative representations of West Papuans, including claims about lost tribes, undermine their pursuit of sovereignty. The author discusses his participation in various forms of solidarity politics. Less
This chapter examines the West Papuan independence movement. It describes long-term research with West Papuan refugees living in Papua New Guinea and exiled political leaders. It discusses a shift in the late 1990s from paramilitary opposition to Indonesian violence to human rights activism. It also describes how negative representations of West Papuans, including claims about lost tribes, undermine their pursuit of sovereignty. The author discusses his participation in various forms of solidarity politics.
Rupert Stasch
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195324983
- eISBN:
- 9780199869398
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195324983.003.0005
- Subject:
- Linguistics, Sociolinguistics / Anthropological Linguistics
This chapter charts an ideology of linguistic difference, shaping how Korowai of West Papua have evaluated Indonesian over the first quarter-century of their contact with it. Their naming of this ...
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This chapter charts an ideology of linguistic difference, shaping how Korowai of West Papua have evaluated Indonesian over the first quarter-century of their contact with it. Their naming of this intrusive lingua franca as “demon language” (where “demon” contrasts paradigmatically with “human”) is one of many practices by which Korowai emphasize that the new language is simultaneously strange and parallel to their own language. After describing the social history of Indonesian, in Papua and locally, the chapter examines speech practices in which Korowai associate Indonesian with a perspective on the world that is alien to their own geographic and cultural position, but that is a deformed counterpart to their position. The chapter discusses how bilingual Korowai increasingly use Indonesian in conversation with each other, drawing on the language's artful potential for indexing strangeness and parallelism at the same time.Less
This chapter charts an ideology of linguistic difference, shaping how Korowai of West Papua have evaluated Indonesian over the first quarter-century of their contact with it. Their naming of this intrusive lingua franca as “demon language” (where “demon” contrasts paradigmatically with “human”) is one of many practices by which Korowai emphasize that the new language is simultaneously strange and parallel to their own language. After describing the social history of Indonesian, in Papua and locally, the chapter examines speech practices in which Korowai associate Indonesian with a perspective on the world that is alien to their own geographic and cultural position, but that is a deformed counterpart to their position. The chapter discusses how bilingual Korowai increasingly use Indonesian in conversation with each other, drawing on the language's artful potential for indexing strangeness and parallelism at the same time.
Miki Makihara and Bambi B. Schieffelin
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195324983
- eISBN:
- 9780199869398
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195324983.003.0001
- Subject:
- Linguistics, Sociolinguistics / Anthropological Linguistics
This chapter argues that language ideologies and practices mediate consequences of cultural contact over time. Focusing on the Pacific, from Rapa Nui to West Papua, it highlights complex histories ...
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This chapter argues that language ideologies and practices mediate consequences of cultural contact over time. Focusing on the Pacific, from Rapa Nui to West Papua, it highlights complex histories and variation of cultural encounters, crossings and re-crossings; cultural and political conditions of linguistic research across different colonial and postcolonial phases; the linguistic diversity of Pacific Island societies, and the social centrality of talk and other verbal practices such as literacy, in them. The chapter emphasizes variation in linguistic and cultural change, debates about modernization, missionization, and language endangerment and revitalization, and suggests strategies for understanding the dynamics of such changes by identifying key agents, institutional sites, and linguistic forms, within a wider historical and global conjuncture.Less
This chapter argues that language ideologies and practices mediate consequences of cultural contact over time. Focusing on the Pacific, from Rapa Nui to West Papua, it highlights complex histories and variation of cultural encounters, crossings and re-crossings; cultural and political conditions of linguistic research across different colonial and postcolonial phases; the linguistic diversity of Pacific Island societies, and the social centrality of talk and other verbal practices such as literacy, in them. The chapter emphasizes variation in linguistic and cultural change, debates about modernization, missionization, and language endangerment and revitalization, and suggests strategies for understanding the dynamics of such changes by identifying key agents, institutional sites, and linguistic forms, within a wider historical and global conjuncture.
Danilyn Rutherford
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780226570105
- eISBN:
- 9780226570389
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226570389.003.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Anthropology, Theory and Practice
The introduction lays out the problematic explored in the book. It takes as its starting point a 1961 quote from Robert F. Kennedy, the US Secretary of State: in the midst of a dispute between the ...
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The introduction lays out the problematic explored in the book. It takes as its starting point a 1961 quote from Robert F. Kennedy, the US Secretary of State: in the midst of a dispute between the Netherlands and Indonesia on West Papua’s future, Kennedy observed that the Papuans were “still, as it were, living in the Stone Age,” and thus had no ability to decide their own fate. The chapter examines the contemporary problems caused by this assumption, and then offers a brief history of the idea of the Stone Age. Then it introduces the book’s argument on how a particular experience of colonial state building fed the notion that western New Guinea was a Stone Age land. It goes on to provide an overview of the colonial conditions that gave rise to the mission of establishing a Dutch presence in the highlands, before introducing the various chapters and the characters featured in them. The introduction ends with a reflection on the importance of the history described in the book in shaping the fortunes of West Papuans today.Less
The introduction lays out the problematic explored in the book. It takes as its starting point a 1961 quote from Robert F. Kennedy, the US Secretary of State: in the midst of a dispute between the Netherlands and Indonesia on West Papua’s future, Kennedy observed that the Papuans were “still, as it were, living in the Stone Age,” and thus had no ability to decide their own fate. The chapter examines the contemporary problems caused by this assumption, and then offers a brief history of the idea of the Stone Age. Then it introduces the book’s argument on how a particular experience of colonial state building fed the notion that western New Guinea was a Stone Age land. It goes on to provide an overview of the colonial conditions that gave rise to the mission of establishing a Dutch presence in the highlands, before introducing the various chapters and the characters featured in them. The introduction ends with a reflection on the importance of the history described in the book in shaping the fortunes of West Papuans today.
Danilyn Rutherford
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780226570105
- eISBN:
- 9780226570389
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226570389.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Anthropology, Theory and Practice
Living in the Stone Age scrutinizes a stubborn colonial fantasy: one that has trapped the people of the troubled Indonesian territory of West Papua in the past. The book focuses on the experiences of ...
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Living in the Stone Age scrutinizes a stubborn colonial fantasy: one that has trapped the people of the troubled Indonesian territory of West Papua in the past. The book focuses on the experiences of a handful of Dutch officials tasked with establishing a post in the Wissel Lakes region of the highlands when the territory was still part of the Netherlands Indies. Two of these officials played a key role in the campaign to retain western New Guinea as a separate Dutch colony after the Indies gained independence; they saw the Stone Age Papuans as too primitive to rule themselves. The book explores how these officials relied on the hospitality and expertise of local people and how they used sympathy as a means of colonial state building. It examines the dreams of mastery and vulnerability that their dependence on technology inspired. In doing so, it advances a surprising argument: to account for the historical production of this fantasy, and the historical work it has done, we have to tell the story of colonialism as a tale that begins with weakness, not strength. The book ends with a reflection on the ethical and epistemological implications of cultural anthropologists’ own deployment of sympathy as a method. Living in the Stone Age uses a minor episode in colonial history to ask some big questions: on the origins of colonial ideology, the impassioned nature of colonial practices, and what it takes for cultural anthropologists to make claims about such things.Less
Living in the Stone Age scrutinizes a stubborn colonial fantasy: one that has trapped the people of the troubled Indonesian territory of West Papua in the past. The book focuses on the experiences of a handful of Dutch officials tasked with establishing a post in the Wissel Lakes region of the highlands when the territory was still part of the Netherlands Indies. Two of these officials played a key role in the campaign to retain western New Guinea as a separate Dutch colony after the Indies gained independence; they saw the Stone Age Papuans as too primitive to rule themselves. The book explores how these officials relied on the hospitality and expertise of local people and how they used sympathy as a means of colonial state building. It examines the dreams of mastery and vulnerability that their dependence on technology inspired. In doing so, it advances a surprising argument: to account for the historical production of this fantasy, and the historical work it has done, we have to tell the story of colonialism as a tale that begins with weakness, not strength. The book ends with a reflection on the ethical and epistemological implications of cultural anthropologists’ own deployment of sympathy as a method. Living in the Stone Age uses a minor episode in colonial history to ask some big questions: on the origins of colonial ideology, the impassioned nature of colonial practices, and what it takes for cultural anthropologists to make claims about such things.
Rupert Stasch
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520256859
- eISBN:
- 9780520943322
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520256859.003.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Asian Cultural Anthropology
This book explores the ways in which Korowai people of West Papua, Indonesia make qualities of otherness the central focus of their social relations. Otherness is a main category by which Korowai ...
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This book explores the ways in which Korowai people of West Papua, Indonesia make qualities of otherness the central focus of their social relations. Otherness is a main category by which Korowai themselves talk about social relations. It argues that Korowai define their social engagements around ways in which they are strange to each other. The main finding developed is that a social bond conjoins qualities of otherness and involvement in Korowai people's reflexive sensibilities about social relations. Korowai places and social relations are not even isomorphic with themselves and this nonisomorphism is of foundational importance to the shape of Korowai social experience. The vision of Orientalism consensus offers only occasional insights for the Korowai cultural practices. Furthermore, it emphasizes how patterns of the temporality of social relations are a major concern. An overview of the chapters included in this book is given.Less
This book explores the ways in which Korowai people of West Papua, Indonesia make qualities of otherness the central focus of their social relations. Otherness is a main category by which Korowai themselves talk about social relations. It argues that Korowai define their social engagements around ways in which they are strange to each other. The main finding developed is that a social bond conjoins qualities of otherness and involvement in Korowai people's reflexive sensibilities about social relations. Korowai places and social relations are not even isomorphic with themselves and this nonisomorphism is of foundational importance to the shape of Korowai social experience. The vision of Orientalism consensus offers only occasional insights for the Korowai cultural practices. Furthermore, it emphasizes how patterns of the temporality of social relations are a major concern. An overview of the chapters included in this book is given.
Rupert Stasch
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520256859
- eISBN:
- 9780520943322
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520256859.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Asian Cultural Anthropology
This study upsets the popular assumption that human relations in small-scale societies are based on shared experience. In a theoretically innovative account of the lives of the Korowai of West Papua, ...
More
This study upsets the popular assumption that human relations in small-scale societies are based on shared experience. In a theoretically innovative account of the lives of the Korowai of West Papua, Indonesia, this book shows that in this society, people organize their connections to each other around otherness. Analyzing the Korowai people's famous “tree house” dwellings, their patterns of living far apart, and their practices of kinship, marriage, and childbearing and rearing, the book argues that the Korowai actively make relations not out of what they have in common, but out of what divides them. The book offers a picture of Korowai lives sharply at odds with stereotypes of “tribal” societies.Less
This study upsets the popular assumption that human relations in small-scale societies are based on shared experience. In a theoretically innovative account of the lives of the Korowai of West Papua, Indonesia, this book shows that in this society, people organize their connections to each other around otherness. Analyzing the Korowai people's famous “tree house” dwellings, their patterns of living far apart, and their practices of kinship, marriage, and childbearing and rearing, the book argues that the Korowai actively make relations not out of what they have in common, but out of what divides them. The book offers a picture of Korowai lives sharply at odds with stereotypes of “tribal” societies.
