Can Animals Break Taboos?: Applications of ‘Taboo’ Among the Nage of Eastern Indonesia

ABSTRACT Like several other Malayo‐Polynesian speaking peoples, the Nage of central Flores apply a word meaning ‘taboo’ to certain undesirable behaviours by animals. Since ‘taboo’ is usually understood to incorporate the idea of prohibition and thus to refer specifically to human action, this application might appear to reflect either a polysemous usage, such that with reference to animals, ‘taboo’ does not really mean ‘taboo’, or a cosmology in which humans and animals are ultimately not distinct. An analysis of Nage ‘animal taboos’, however, demonstrates that the idea of breaching a prohibition is not necessarily absent from these applications of ‘taboo’, and that in this context ‘taboo’ cannot simply be understood as ‘omen’ or a reference to inauspiciousness. Rather than Nage ‘animal taboos’ implying an equivalence or identity of humans and animals, they express their crucial opposition and a disapprobation of anything that compromises their conceptual separation.     

The Gender of the Cosmos: Totemism,Society and Embodiment in the Sepik River

This article contributes to recent research on the foundations of society in Melanesia, both in terms of local representation and actual social practice, as well as body imagery and gender. I have three interrelated objectives. First, I present new data on the symbolism and politics of Eastern Iatmul cosmology and totemism (Sepik River, Papua New Guinea). Second, I engage Harrison's distinction between magical and material, or realist and nominalist, polities in Melanesia. Eastern Iatmul society is represented by totemic names and categories. Yet society also requires human agents to embody named entities: men rarely assert the existence of cosmological categories that are divorced entirely from the realm of human action. This is a key difference between Eastern Iatmul and other Sepik societies such as Manambu. Finally, I argue that there is a symbolic homology between the gendered human body, the body politic and the cosmos, an important perspective that has been lacking in Melanesian comparative studies. Totemism for Eastern Iatmul is largely a realm of male ritual-politics. Nevertheless, an idiom of maternal fertility and reproduction is salient in the local cosmology. For this reason, the gender of the cosmos, to invoke Marilyn Strathern, is androgynous.     

《嘉禾吏民田家莂》中的田家姓名问题

“田家莂”简共计田家人名近2000个,且全是单名,其中有很多同姓同名者。田家单名问题实际上涉及两汉三国时期起名趣向的演变,而与书写便利与否无关。简中的同丘、同姓同名、同性别者,无论其身份是否相同.都存在属于不同人物的情况。此外,当时长沙郡民有一些反映历史时代特征、社会生活状况以及周围生态环境的起名趣向.还有一些田家人名则蕴含着有关道教、避讳等方面的某些信息。     

Community Conservation and the (Mis)appropriation of Taboo

Community conservation initiatives have long struggled to forge productive relationships with the people living in and around protected areas. Currently, there is enthusiasm among conservation researchers and practitioners regarding local cultural taboos, which often appear to conserve species and landscapes of ecological importance. However, in incorporating local taboos into conservation programmes, there is the risk that these culturally sophisticated institutions are used in a highly reductionist manner. Drawing from ethnographic work in Madagascar, this article highlights how the simplification of cultural taboos can exasperate already fraught relationships between communities and conservation organizations, and undermine the very environmental outcomes that groups seek to promote. This reductionist approach can also lead to the harmful appropriation of local meanings and resources. Overall, while working with local taboos may potentially offer an alternative to neoliberal models of conservation, scholars and practitioners should recognize the dynamic and interconnected processes connected with taboos, instead of regarding them as static and interchangeable products.     

‘Living’ in Nage,or the Meaning of ‘Life’ in an Eastern Indonesian Society

Originating in 19th century cultural evolutionary theory, a revised concept of ‘animism’ has in recent years found new life in anthropology in the writings of ontological relativists. Continuity is found in the reputed attribution of life by members of small‐scale non‐western societies to inanimate objects as well as to organisms. This new animism is typically contrasted with western or modern scientific thought, either exclusively or primarily. Concerning the Nage of the Indonesian island of Flores, this paper analyzes results of research into what things people regard as being alive (muzi). While the majority of Nage deem only animals, plants, and humans to be living, differences appear among informants distinguished by age and gender. As well as the overall finding, this variation and cultural usages contextually depicting certain inanimate objects as being alive raise questions about animism as a unitary way of knowing the world characteristic of single societies.     

MYTH,TOTEMISM AND THE CREATION OF CLANS

This paper considers the relationship between two component types or categories of myth from the Yirrkala region of north-eastern Arnhem Land, which I define respectively as those of inheritance and creation. I argue that the existence of the two components of myth reflects conceptual problems associated with the transfer of power from the ancestral past to the present, in these clan-based societies in which the structure of the clan system is believed to be ancestrally preordained, yet the creation of clans is part of a continuing political process. The paper places Yolngu totemism in the context of the politics of group relations, and focuses on the tension between autonomy and exchange which provides much of the underlying dynamic to Yolngu social organisation. The totemic/mythological system has the flexibility to enable ancestral precedence to apparently underlie group organisation despite the latter's inherently imminent and contextual nature. The structure of the mythological system, and the particular way in which it articulates with the politics of group organisation, enables the network of ancestral tracks associated with the myths of creation to be perpetuated in a way that makes them both distal and protected from the disorderly changes of the present, yet an integral part of the process of social reproduction.     

Western Arrernte Pmere Kwetethe Spirits

This article explores the difference between the meaning and use of TGH Strehlow's term pmara kutata (his spelling) and of pmere kwetethe (modern spelling) in contemporary Western Arrernte society. The expression pmara kutata features prominently in TGH Strehlow's oeuvre. He defined pmara kutata, as the ‘centre of a local totemic clan’, ‘sacred site’ and the ‘everlasting home’ where an important local totemic ancestor originated and /or passed to his last rest. Interestingly enough the term pmara kutata or pmere kwetethe seems to have undergone a semantic shift. In contemporary Western Arrernte society pmere kwetethe is used to denote a range of spirit beings with different characters that dwell on and in the landscape. In English the expression pmere kwetethe is sometimes glossed as ‘the spirits of the land’ or ‘the invisible people‘.     

On Deer and Dolphins: Nage Ideas Regarding Animal Transformation

According to the Nage of eastern Indonesia, certain animals regularly transform into animals of another kind. Similar beliefs—specified here as notions of ‘contemporary zoological transformation’—have been documented for Malays and at least one other Indonesian society, as well as for the Kalam and Rofaifo of New Guinea. Referring to interpretations by ethnographers of these other societies, the paper analyses the Nage beliefs in regard to their connection with observation of zoological kinds. Attention is also given to their possible utilitarian value, connection with ethnozoological classification, and relation to similar yet distinct transformations encountered in myth and spiritual representations. Drawing on Atran's thesis (1990), it is concluded that Nage beliefs in contemporary animal transformation posit changes of essence and are in this sense counter-intuitive. At the same time, certain ontological features demonstrate that the beliefs cannot be accommodated to a category of mythological or religious representations, and that in several respects they share more in common with modern scientific thought.     

浅论盘古文化与盘瓠文化关系及其在岭南融合

论文通过对盘古、盘瓠神话及其文化对比 ,认为盘古是汉族一种自然神图腾崇拜 ,反映农耕文化特质 ;而源于人与犬婚配的盘瓠 ,是瑶、畲等少数民族祖先神图腾崇拜 ,反映狩猎和游耕文化特质。随着民族杂居往来和道教兴起 ,两种文化在岭南交流、融合 ,最终发展为岭南文化一部分 ,也体现了中华民族多元一体文化格局艰辛凝聚过程。     

HUMAN SPACE, TERRITORIALITY, AND CONFLICT: AN EXPLORATORY STUDY WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO ISRAEL AND THE WEST BANK

This brief and speculative paper focuses direct attention on Totem, in particular certain totemic concerns with space as place. Through adopting an overall structuralist perspective, Eretz Yisrael, the land of Israel, is considered as a totemic space. This is developed against the broader backcloth of Jewish societal development and advanced through a brief study of the continuing Jewish settlement of Samaria. It is suggested that no deeper comprehension of the proceeding settlement initiatives is attainable unless the importance of such a perspective is realized. The brief review, short case study, and pointers to proceeding work provide crucial subjects for further attention. The contentious, indeed emotive, nature of the paper is to be emphasized     

Taboo and Descent in the Articulation of Gender Relations: An Eastern Indonesian Case

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.     

CONSTRUCTION SACRIFICE AND HEAD-HUNTING RUMOURS IN CENTRAL FLORES (EASTERN INDONESIA): A COMPARATIVE NOTE

In a recent contribution to Oceania (59:269–79, 1989), R.A. Drake analyses a kidnapping rumour that has regularly appeared in Borneo during the last 90 or more years. According to the rumour, agents of the state require a human sacrifice, and especially a human head, to place beneath the foundation of a bridge or other modern structure that is being erected, in order to lend it durability. This rumour, Drake argues, draws crucially upon the widespread notion or practice of construction sacrifice, in combination with a tradition of head-hunting as an aspect of inter-ethnic relations which was prevalent in Borneo before the colonial era. The present paper questions aspects of Drake's thesis by discussing the occurrence of precisely the same rumour among the Nage of central Flores, a people who do not know head-hunting of the Bornean variety and who have no tradition of human sacrifice in connection with indigenous construction.     

AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL TOTEMIC SYSTEMS: STRUCTURES OF POWER

Aboriginal totemic systems - sections, subsections and to some extent moieties are not only intricate systems of ordering the universe, but also magical devices designed to harness cosmic power, as similar systems in other cultures were evidently meant to do. Comparisons with East Asia and European magico-philosophical systems (especially the hermetic traditions, alchemy etc.) reveal striking similarities in the manner in which the universe is ordered by such systems. A major code of ordering is provided by the doctrine of affinities (sympathies and correspondences to which are attached notions of causality. Such similarities in structure and form allow the inference that totemic systems, too, are informed by universal maxims of ‘power through order’ and ‘like affects like‘.     

单名与双名:汉晋南方人名的变迁及其意义

东汉人名呈现出明显的分层,上层人名是单名,底层人名单名、双名并存。这种情况亦存在于南方的巴蜀、吴越地区。在这种背景下观察,长沙走马楼吴简整齐的单名引人瞩目。楚秦至西汉前期,楚地编户民同样单名、双名并存,且具有显著的俚俗色彩。走马楼吴简整齐单名的形成,应是东汉时期长沙等郡大规模编户化过程中新附人口户籍登录整齐化的结果。东晋以后,受到民间口语习惯和信仰心理的影响,南方上层带有"之"、"道"等虚字的双名逐渐兴起。单名惯例一旦突破,双名命名方式会进一步发展,最显著的是双名的"字化"。在此过程中,一些体现上层理念的双名用字反过来又影响到底层人名。汉晋时期南方人名中单名、双名变化的背后,是华夏文化对南方社会的持续影响。     

傅维鳞《明书》史事缺略与回避考

《明书》是第一部明代全史,但于晚明史事多有缺略,于明清关系亦有所回避。本文对《明书》具体缺略情况和回避情形进行了考述、分析,希望能为明史研究者更好地利用《明书》提供参考。     

NEW BOOKS

Dictionary of Common Tibetan Personal and Place Names As editors-in-chief of this dictionary, Cheng Guansheng and An Caidan systematically provides readers the translated names of Tibetan people and places in Tibetan inhabited areas from Chinese into English.Having selected totally 10470 names of people and places, the dictionary also has attached an index     

《明孝宗实录》编纂思想探析

《明孝宗实录》是明朝中期纂修的一部重要官修史书,其编纂方式带有资料汇编的性质。该书在诏令、奏疏的收录和人物传记的撰写及评论等方面都体现了直书实录的编纂思想,而且还首次专设"稽考参对"官以保证纂修质量。孝宗皇帝被誉为"中兴圣主",后人对其虚怀纳谏、勤于召对等事迹的传播,以及对其施政措施的借鉴主要来源于《明孝宗实录》的记载,反衬了实录纂修中垂训后世、以史资治的思想。《明孝宗实录》还是一部以帝王为中心的编年史,纂修官出于君臣之义以及现实考量,又要塑造出高大丰满的贤君形象,体现了为尊者讳的编纂思想。     

战国楚简公文书人名记写形式论议——兼与秦简记名的比较

战国楚、秦简公文书在人名记写上都表现出某些一般性的规律。《包山楚简》公文书人名记写包括某地之人+姓名、某人之人+姓名、某官+姓名、某族+名、某人之子+名、某人之奴、某王之+名、某客+姓名、单称官职、单称封号诸种形式。不同的记名方式区分了个体,同时进行了社会分类。楚简公文人名记写有省略情形,包括省略属地信息、省略姓氏、案件审理者自署名的省略和无规律省略。楚简中还有提示人名的符号。楚简公文记名对多数人都记姓和名,秦简则多记名而不称姓,只在特殊情况下另外加姓作为补充。楚简人名记写习惯可能承自周人制度,与秦简相比,更有利于达到识别个体的目的,以及保证公文作为行政工具的效率。