One or Two Words
Language and Politics in the Toraja Highlands of Indonesia
Seiten
2020
Nus Press (Verlag)
978-981-325-114-4 (ISBN)
Nus Press (Verlag)
978-981-325-114-4 (ISBN)
Offers an analysis of the power relations between centres and peripheries in one of the world's most linguistically diverse countries. The book explores how people forge forms of collective belonging to a distinctive locality through the exchange of spoken words, WhatsApp messages, ritual gifts, and elaborate political speeches and ritual chants.
The expression "one or two words" is used by the Toraja highlanders of Indonesia to refer euphemistically to their highly elaborate form of political speechmaking. Moving from this understatement, which denotes the meaningfulness of transient acts of speech, One or Two Words offers an analysis of the shifting power relations between centers and peripheries in one of the world's most linguistically diverse countries. Drawing on long-term fieldwork, this book explores how people forge forms of collective belonging to a distinctive locality through the exchange of spoken words, WhatsApp messages, ritual gifts of pigs and buffaloes, and the performance of elaborate political speeches and ritual chants. Aurora Donzelli describes the complex forms of cosmopolitan indigeneity that have emerged in the Toraja highlands during several decades of encounters with a variety of local and international interlocutors. By engaging wider debates on the dynamics of cultural and linguistic change vis-à-vis globalizing influences, the book sheds light onto a hitherto neglected dimension of post-Suharto Indonesia: the recalibration of power relations between national and local languages prompted by recent institutional transformations and the re-articulation of the relations between the central state and its peripheries through acts of speech.
The expression "one or two words" is used by the Toraja highlanders of Indonesia to refer euphemistically to their highly elaborate form of political speechmaking. Moving from this understatement, which denotes the meaningfulness of transient acts of speech, One or Two Words offers an analysis of the shifting power relations between centers and peripheries in one of the world's most linguistically diverse countries. Drawing on long-term fieldwork, this book explores how people forge forms of collective belonging to a distinctive locality through the exchange of spoken words, WhatsApp messages, ritual gifts of pigs and buffaloes, and the performance of elaborate political speeches and ritual chants. Aurora Donzelli describes the complex forms of cosmopolitan indigeneity that have emerged in the Toraja highlands during several decades of encounters with a variety of local and international interlocutors. By engaging wider debates on the dynamics of cultural and linguistic change vis-à-vis globalizing influences, the book sheds light onto a hitherto neglected dimension of post-Suharto Indonesia: the recalibration of power relations between national and local languages prompted by recent institutional transformations and the re-articulation of the relations between the central state and its peripheries through acts of speech.
Aurora Donzelli is a linguistic and sociocultural anthropologist with an expertise in Southeast Asia, she teaches at Sarah Lawrence College in New York.
List of Maps
List of Photographs
List of Tables
Acknowledgements
A Note on Orthography and Transcriptions
Introduction
Part I: The Politics of Language
1. Subjects of Discourse
2. Narratives of Distinction
3. Grammars of Exchange
Part II: The Language of Politics
4. Hierarchies of Language
5. Modes of Power
6. Global Frictions and Local Crossovers
Bibliography
Index
Erscheinungsdatum | 02.07.2020 |
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Zusatzinfo | 30 halftones, 2 tables |
Verlagsort | Singapore |
Sprache | englisch |
Maße | 152 x 229 mm |
Themenwelt | Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Sprachwissenschaft |
Sozialwissenschaften ► Ethnologie | |
Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie | |
ISBN-10 | 981-325-114-X / 981325114X |
ISBN-13 | 978-981-325-114-4 / 9789813251144 |
Zustand | Neuware |
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