Heidelberg Ethnology

Beyond the Whorfs of Dover: A Study of Balinese Interpretive Practices

Mark Hobart

Scholars generally assume that current Euro-American theory is both necessary and sufficient to understand other societies. Analyzing the presuppositions of linguistic and anthropological models indicates however that they are fatally flawed. Examining Balinese practices of speaking and understanding others shows they work with a consistently pragmatic approach with coherent modes of interrogating situated utterances. Close study of examples highlights how far existing theories from truth-conditional semantics to speech act theory not only fail to appreciate what is said and done, but insulate themselves from realizing this. So the many studies of Balinese ‘symbolism’ are only possible by failing to listen to what people say. According to Balinese, speech is inseparable from other acts, so meaning can only be judged from its consequences. If other people have diverse ways of speaking, acting and understanding, should we not finally lay aside our comfortable hegemony and inquire critically what is going on?

Optical Allusions: Looking at Looking, in Balinese and Dutch Encounters

Margaret Wiener

This article revisits vision’s relation to power and knowledge through a symmetrical discussion of Balinese and Dutch ideologies and practices of seeing. Juxtaposing Balinese and Dutch allusions to matters optical in anecdotes about meetings between envoys of the Netherlands Indies state and members of pre- colonial Bali’s ruling classes invites a consideration of the role optical technologies play in assembling (partially connected) worlds. Highlighting the mediators that visual practices require, it argues that familiar claims about vision rest on hegemonic ontologies. Looking back at colonial encounters from Bali shows that what eyes see and do goes beyond observation.

Islam and the Perception of Islam in Contemporary Indonesia

Vincent Houben

Islam in post-reformasi Indonesia is covered by a wide multi-disciplinary literature, in which ‘Islamization’ has gained acceptance as the predominant frame for understanding contemporary developments. Here Islamization is taken to be a move away from an Indonesian Islam that was highly localized and mystical in nature. Adopting an area studies approach, this paper reviews the literature on contemporary Islam in Indonesia and challenges this understanding of Islamization. It is argued that older cultural styles and variations within local Islam have not disappeared, and that, more generally, characterizing the development of Indonesian Islam by using a single label is misleading.

The Other Side of the Gift: Soliciting in Java – A Discussion

Konstantinos Retsikas

This paper inquires into some of the hidden dimensions of anthropological thought about the gift and giving, making the case for a new approach to value transfers. Such an approach is delineated through critical engagement with both Mauss’s original work on the subject and the work of other scholars, in particular Strathern’s new Melanesian ethnography and Derrida’s deconstructive readings. In addition, by means of drawing upon ethnographic research on Muslim practices in Java, Indonesia, the paper highlights the importance of soliciting as an alternative concept for thinking about value transfers, stressing, in particular, the significance of activities of taking for a new and different perspective on the complexities that permeate the social. The main article is followed by commentaries from Carla Jones, Daromir Rudnyckyj and Guido Sprenger, as well as a reply from the author.

Studying Sites of Buddhist Leisure: A Discussion of Justin Thomas McDaniel’s Architects of Buddhist Leisure

Thomas N. Patton

Justin McDaniel’s most recent book theorizes ‘Buddhist leisure’ through a critical comparison of public Buddhist sites in several countries. He aims to show how the people who create and visit these places see them as transcending the boundaries often thought to separate secular and religious spheres of life. Grounded in closely observed studies of sites in Japan, India, Singapore and elsewhere, McDaniel argues that these practices of leisure reflect a growing Buddhist ecumenism that is at least partially the result of new technologies of construction and global communication. The discussion, organized by Thomas N. Patton, brings together a group of scholars with differing disciplinary and regional areas of expertise to reflect on the claims and implications of the book.

Goods and Ethnicity: Trade and Bazaars in Laos from a Gift Perspective; A Discussion

Guido Sprenger — 2017-10-20

Drawing on ethnographic observations in Lao markets and bazaars, this article proposes a new and experimental framework for the analysis of multi-ethnic trading. It explores bazaars and trade as sites of the (re-)production of ethnicity through the perspective of gift exchange theory. On markets, transcultural differences can be identified and stabilized through the exchange of goods and money. This draws attention to the role of trade items as foci – and perhaps even as non-human agents – in the emergence of ethnicity and other forms of local identity. The value of items’ specific origins is thus linked to social structure. This helps us to see how the shaping of group identity can be better understood by considering how the goods they bring to market carry with them some features of the gift.