James Fox | SOAS GLOCAL

abstract = {his chapter examines the language of thinking and feeling among the Rotenese of eastern Indonesia. It is divided into two complementary parts. Initially, I focus on the specific terms, idioms and ritual expressions that constitute the linguistic basis for the articulation of thinking and for the social expression of emotions. Among the Rotenese, thinking and the emotions are intimately located within an ‘inner person’. This ‘inner person’ is distinguished from the social semblance that the person presents to the world. Both the inner self and the semblance it presents are associated with specific parts of the body. One of the chief purposes in this section of the chapter is to explore, in some detail, the use of bodily metaphors in the expression of emotions and of thinking. In this analysis, I combine an examination of ordinary language usage with ritual language usage. Ritual language as a formal register highlights key modes of thought and emotion. Although these thoughts and emotions are those spoken of in ordinary language, ritual language gives emphasis to their particular qualities and, because of its formal dyadic structure, it pairs specific forms of thinking and feeling, often grounding them in metaphoric imagery. This is particularly the case in the ritual admonitions that encourage moral behaviour and insist on proper modes of action. In the second part of this chapter, I endeavour to locate the use of such metaphors in their social context. Social context is essential to understanding such linguistic usage. This discussion requires the grounding of thought and emotions in notions of the person and in the ideals and values that are given emphasis in Rotenese society. It also requires consideration of the historical development of Rotenese society, where such ideals and values have served as a motivating force for action.

Underlying the expression of the emotions and of thinking among the Rotenese is a specific cultural conception of the person. This conception credits maternal relatives with responsibility for a person’s physical being. Through the gift of a woman, wife-givers become life-givers. In the Rotenese botanic idiom, they are regarded as ‘planting’ (sele) progeny among their wife-takers. These children are explicitly described as ‘plants’ (sele-dadi). A specific ritual relationship is established between the ‘mother’s brother of origin’ (or ‘trunk mother’s brother’: to’o-huk) and the ‘plants’, his sister’s children, whom he tends throughout their life. All the rituals of the life cycle, which he directs, are concerned with promoting the vitality of the physical person and eventually conclude with the rituals of burial and the dispatch of that person. The mother’s brother of origin is duly acknowledged and compensated for his ministration to the physical person to the extent that, were a person to accidentally injure himself by drawing blood, the ‘mother’s brother of origin’ would demand compensation for the injury. This relationship continues for another generation. The ‘grandfather of origin’ (ba’i-huk) retains specific ritual rights over the children of his sister’s children.},

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pubstate = {published},

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his chapter examines the language of thinking and feeling among the Rotenese of eastern Indonesia. It is divided into two complementary parts. Initially, I focus on the specific terms, idioms and ritual expressions that constitute the linguistic basis for the articulation of thinking and for the social expression of emotions. Among the Rotenese, thinking and the emotions are intimately located within an ‘inner person’. This ‘inner person’ is distinguished from the social semblance that the person presents to the world. Both the inner self and the semblance it presents are associated with specific parts of the body. One of the chief purposes in this section of the chapter is to explore, in some detail, the use of bodily metaphors in the expression of emotions and of thinking. In this analysis, I combine an examination of ordinary language usage with ritual language usage. Ritual language as a formal register highlights key modes of thought and emotion. Although these thoughts and emotions are those spoken of in ordinary language, ritual language gives emphasis to their particular qualities and, because of its formal dyadic structure, it pairs specific forms of thinking and feeling, often grounding them in metaphoric imagery. This is particularly the case in the ritual admonitions that encourage moral behaviour and insist on proper modes of action. In the second part of this chapter, I endeavour to locate the use of such metaphors in their social context. Social context is essential to understanding such linguistic usage. This discussion requires the grounding of thought and emotions in notions of the person and in the ideals and values that are given emphasis in Rotenese society. It also requires consideration of the historical development of Rotenese society, where such ideals and values have served as a motivating force for action.

Underlying the expression of the emotions and of thinking among the Rotenese is a specific cultural conception of the person. This conception credits maternal relatives with responsibility for a person’s physical being. Through the gift of a woman, wife-givers become life-givers. In the Rotenese botanic idiom, they are regarded as ‘planting’ (sele) progeny among their wife-takers. These children are explicitly described as ‘plants’ (sele-dadi). A specific ritual relationship is established between the ‘mother’s brother of origin’ (or ‘trunk mother’s brother’: to’o-huk) and the ‘plants’, his sister’s children, whom he tends throughout their life. All the rituals of the life cycle, which he directs, are concerned with promoting the vitality of the physical person and eventually conclude with the rituals of burial and the dispatch of that person. The mother’s brother of origin is duly acknowledged and compensated for his ministration to the physical person to the extent that, were a person to accidentally injure himself by drawing blood, the ‘mother’s brother of origin’ would demand compensation for the injury. This relationship continues for another generation. The ‘grandfather of origin’ (ba’i-huk) retains specific ritual rights over the children of his sister’s children.

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Fox, James

Remembering and Recreating Origins: The Transformation of a Tradition of Canonical Parallelism among the Rotenese of Eastern Indonesia Bachelor Thesis

2017.

Abstract | Links | BibTeX

@bachelorthesis{Fox2017,

title = {Remembering and Recreating Origins: The Transformation of a Tradition of Canonical Parallelism among the Rotenese of Eastern Indonesia},

author = {James Fox},

doi = {10.1353/ort.2017.0009},

year  = {2017},

date = {2017-05-01},

urldate = {2017-05-01},

journal = {Oral Tradition},

volume = {31},

issue = {2},

abstract = {I have been studying an oral tradition of strict canonical parallelism intermittently for nearly half a century. I began my research on this oral tradition based on the island of Rote in eastern Indonesia in 1965, and have continued these efforts, now with greater urgency, to the present. I have also been investigating issues in comparative parallelism for roughly the same period of time. In 2014 I published Explorations in Semantic Parallelism, which marked an important stage in this research. This volume is a collection of papers both new and old. For example, I reprinted my first survey of the field in 1977 published in honor of Roman Jakobson together with a longer paper on the "trajectory" of subsequent and continuing developments in the study of parallelism.



Explorations in Semantic Parallelism also reprints several of my papers on the study of the Rotenese tradition of canonical parallelism together with various papers that continue to extend my study of this tradition. My personal understanding of the Rotenese tradition of canonical composition has grown over several decades, while the tradition itself has been undergoing change. My perceptions of this change are intimately linked to my increasing comprehension of the tradition as a whole.



In this paper I take stock of the work on that tradition to date and to put it into perspective. I also describe the changes that have occurred in the tradition over the course of my research as I gradually gained new perceptions of its fundamental underpinnings. Much of my general research on Rote has been historically oriented. The island has its own extensive oral historical traditions as well as Dutch archival records that date to the mid-seventeenth century. Some of the changes in Rote's traditions of parallelism that I perceive as most significant were, on good historical evidence, begun a century earlier and have now taken over as ever more influential.},

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pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {bachelorthesis}

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Fox, James; Winarto, Yunita Triwardani

Fox Farmers' Use of Pesticides in Indramayu Book Chapter

In: pp. 63-97, 2016.

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Fox, James

Eastern Indonesia in Austronesian Perspective: The Evidence of Relational Terminologies Journal Article

In: Archipel, vol. 90, iss. 90, pp. 189-216, 2015.

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Fox, James

Explorations in Semantic Parallelism Book

Australian National University Press, 2014, ISBN: 9781925021066.

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Fox, James

Tracing Genealogies: Toward an International Multicultural Anthropology 1 Journal Article

In: Antropologi Indonesia, 2014.

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Fox, James

Sister's child as plant: Metaphors in an idiom of consanguinity Journal Article

In: Rethinking Kinship and Marriage, pp. 219 - 252, 2013, ISBN: 9781315017501.

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Fox, James; Adams, Marie Jeanne; Barnes, Robert H.; Clamagirand, Brigitte; Forman, Shepard; Francillon, Gérard; Friedberg, Claudine; Gordon, John L.; de Josselin de Jong, P. E.; Kana, N. L.; Needham, Rodney; Onvlee, L.; Nordholt, H. G. Schulte; Traube, Elizabeth; Valeri, Valerio

The Flow of Life: Essays on Eastern Indonesia Book

Harvard University Press, 2013, ISBN: 9780674331907.

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Fox, James

The Articulation of Tradition in Timor-Leste Book Chapter

In: pp. 241 - 257, 2011, ISBN: 9781921862595.

Abstract | Links | BibTeX

@inbook{Fox2011,

title = {The Articulation of Tradition in Timor-Leste},

author = {James Fox},

doi = {10.22459/LLTL.12.2011.11},

isbn = {9781921862595},

year = {2011},

date = {2011-12-01},

urldate = {2011-12-01},

pages = {241 - 257},

abstract = {When The Flow of Life was published in 1980, it was intended to identify some of the distinctive features of eastern Indonesia and to shift perspectives on how the region was viewed. In that volume, Timor figured prominently. Six out of 14 comparative essays—seven, if one counts Rote within this area—were focused on Timor. Previous comparative efforts had been limited and were largely confined to the influential study by the Dutch anthropologist F. A. E. van Wouden. His work, Sociale Structuurtypen in de Groote Oost, in 1935—translated as Types of Social Structure in Eastern Indonesia in 1968—was based largely on fragmentary materials reported by travellers, missionaries and government officers. While certainly perceptive in many of its particular analyses, the work advanced a single formal model that purported to provide the original underlying basis for

societies in eastern Indonesia.

The Flow of Life challenged this model by presenting a diversity of social forms in eastern Indonesia and by convincingly representing the diverse conceptual bases of societies of the region. The Flow of Life was the first study of its kind to be based on substantial fieldwork. As the book claimed, it shifted focus from the study of models to the study of metaphors—the often highly poetic articulation of metaphors of life.

This book, Life and Land in Timor-Leste, follows a trajectory set out in The Flow of Life. Like The Flow of Life, all the papers in this volume are based on considerable fieldwork. This work is, however, more specifically focused and critically formulated to consider local polities in Timor-Leste and the way in which they have survived and adapted to the Indonesian occupation, the United Nations’ presence and the present-day national development demands of an independent Timor-Leste.

Despite the great attention given to Timor-Leste over the past decade, few studies have sought to examine traditional social life as framed within particular traditional polities and in different rural areas. This book should therefore have

a double impact—both theoretical and practical. It opens a new window on what is occurring in Timor-Leste. The initial question to ask of this volume is what comparative insights it provides and where do these insights lead. },

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {inbook}

}

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When The Flow of Life was published in 1980, it was intended to identify some of the distinctive features of eastern Indonesia and to shift perspectives on how the region was viewed. In that volume, Timor figured prominently. Six out of 14 comparative essays—seven, if one counts Rote within this area—were focused on Timor. Previous comparative efforts had been limited and were largely confined to the influential study by the Dutch anthropologist F. A. E. van Wouden. His work, Sociale Structuurtypen in de Groote Oost, in 1935—translated as Types of Social Structure in Eastern Indonesia in 1968—was based largely on fragmentary materials reported by travellers, missionaries and government officers. While certainly perceptive in many of its particular analyses, the work advanced a single formal model that purported to provide the original underlying basis for
societies in eastern Indonesia.

The Flow of Life challenged this model by presenting a diversity of social forms in eastern Indonesia and by convincingly representing the diverse conceptual bases of societies of the region. The Flow of Life was the first study of its kind to be based on substantial fieldwork. As the book claimed, it shifted focus from the study of models to the study of metaphors—the often highly poetic articulation of metaphors of life.

This book, Life and Land in Timor-Leste, follows a trajectory set out in The Flow of Life. Like The Flow of Life, all the papers in this volume are based on considerable fieldwork. This work is, however, more specifically focused and critically formulated to consider local polities in Timor-Leste and the way in which they have survived and adapted to the Indonesian occupation, the United Nations’ presence and the present-day national development demands of an independent Timor-Leste.

Despite the great attention given to Timor-Leste over the past decade, few studies have sought to examine traditional social life as framed within particular traditional polities and in different rural areas. This book should therefore have
a double impact—both theoretical and practical. It opens a new window on what is occurring in Timor-Leste. The initial question to ask of this volume is what comparative insights it provides and where do these insights lead.

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Fox, James

Meaning and Power in a Southeast Asian Realm. By Shelly Errington. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. 1989. xvi, 322 pp. $35.00. Journal Article

In: The Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 50, iss. 04, pp. 988-989, 2011.

Abstract | Links | BibTeX

@article{Fox2011b,

title = {Meaning and Power in a Southeast Asian Realm. By Shelly Errington. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. 1989. xvi, 322 pp. $35.00.},

author = {James Fox},

doi = {10.1017/S0021911800044296},

year = {2011},

date = {2011-11-01},

urldate = {2011-11-01},

journal = {The Journal of Asian Studies},

volume = {50},

issue = {04},

pages = {988-989},

abstract = {This is an extraordinary book. It is, first of all, a study of and commentary on traditional concepts of Luwu Buginese as expounded by members of a high-ranking core group. In this regard, the book constitutes a clearly situated ethnography with a finely focused concentration on the ideas and social practices of a single extended family. At the same time, the book is a personal account of the process by which Errington came to understand these concepts. Errington is injured, and she is given comfort by the reading of a sacred text; she is confused and provided illumination; insects plop from the ceiling to her journal pages as she tries to write her notes. Thus, the narrative has all the flavor of "being there" which Clifford Geertz has characterized as a stylistic device of anthropological persuasion. Finally, and perhaps most difficult to characterize, the book consists of a series of shifting comparisons. Frequently, in her exegesis of Luwu concepts, Errington interrupts her discussion to point to the ideas of other populations she regards as similar. Often, she simply expands her focus to include all the various populations of South Sulawesi. Her most frequent comparisons, however, are to Java and Bali, both of which she characterizes as "hierarchical centralist states," like Luwu. Occasionally, her comparisons are to other centralist states in Southeast Asia, such as Thailand or Burma, or, for other purposes, to the specific nonhierarchical populations such as the Iban of Sarawak or the Ilongot of the Philippines. Errington uses this device of selective comparative exemplification with considerable skill; indeed, with as much literary skill as Sir James Frazer, who pioneered this methodology.

All of these forms of argument are sec within a central thesis that argues that the Luwu of Sulawesi constitute a centralist state of Indic origin whose closest congenitors are Bali and Java. The "parent" of this remarkable perception and of the book itself is, as Errington readily acknowledges, Benedict Anderson's essay, "The Idea of Power in Javanese Society." On this perception, Errington builds an even more remarkable dichotomy that divides most of island Southeast Asia between a "Centrist Archipelago" that extends from Java to Luzon, embracing the Malay Peninsula in the west and Halmahera in the east, and "Eastern Indonesia," which stretches from Lombok to Aru.

It is difficult to relate this division to any other categorization of the region. It ignores the comparative linguistic research of the past twenty years that has endeavored to develop systematic subgroupings among Austronesian languages; it leaves out Sumatra, which was the center of some of the earliest Hindu-Buddhist kingdoms; and it curiously separates related societies on adjacent islands: thus Lombok belongs to eastern Indonesia while Bali is in the centralist archipelago; the island of Buru is included in the centrist archipelago, whereas the neighboring island of Scram is part of Eastern Indonesia. All of the Philippines, Borneo, and Sulawesi are within the centrist archipelago.

},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

Close

This is an extraordinary book. It is, first of all, a study of and commentary on traditional concepts of Luwu Buginese as expounded by members of a high-ranking core group. In this regard, the book constitutes a clearly situated ethnography with a finely focused concentration on the ideas and social practices of a single extended family. At the same time, the book is a personal account of the process by which Errington came to understand these concepts. Errington is injured, and she is given comfort by the reading of a sacred text; she is confused and provided illumination; insects plop from the ceiling to her journal pages as she tries to write her notes. Thus, the narrative has all the flavor of "being there" which Clifford Geertz has characterized as a stylistic device of anthropological persuasion. Finally, and perhaps most difficult to characterize, the book consists of a series of shifting comparisons. Frequently, in her exegesis of Luwu concepts, Errington interrupts her discussion to point to the ideas of other populations she regards as similar. Often, she simply expands her focus to include all the various populations of South Sulawesi. Her most frequent comparisons, however, are to Java and Bali, both of which she characterizes as "hierarchical centralist states," like Luwu. Occasionally, her comparisons are to other centralist states in Southeast Asia, such as Thailand or Burma, or, for other purposes, to the specific nonhierarchical populations such as the Iban of Sarawak or the Ilongot of the Philippines. Errington uses this device of selective comparative exemplification with considerable skill; indeed, with as much literary skill as Sir James Frazer, who pioneered this methodology.

All of these forms of argument are sec within a central thesis that argues that the Luwu of Sulawesi constitute a centralist state of Indic origin whose closest congenitors are Bali and Java. The "parent" of this remarkable perception and of the book itself is, as Errington readily acknowledges, Benedict Anderson's essay, "The Idea of Power in Javanese Society." On this perception, Errington builds an even more remarkable dichotomy that divides most of island Southeast Asia between a "Centrist Archipelago" that extends from Java to Luzon, embracing the Malay Peninsula in the west and Halmahera in the east, and "Eastern Indonesia," which stretches from Lombok to Aru.

It is difficult to relate this division to any other categorization of the region. It ignores the comparative linguistic research of the past twenty years that has endeavored to develop systematic subgroupings among Austronesian languages; it leaves out Sumatra, which was the center of some of the earliest Hindu-Buddhist kingdoms; and it curiously separates related societies on adjacent islands: thus Lombok belongs to eastern Indonesia while Bali is in the centralist archipelago; the island of Buru is included in the centrist archipelago, whereas the neighboring island of Scram is part of Eastern Indonesia. All of the Philippines, Borneo, and Sulawesi are within the centrist archipelago.

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Fox, James

Re-Considering Eastern Indonesia Bachelor Thesis

2011.

Abstract | Links | BibTeX