Title: ‘Living’ in Nage: An exploration of the concept of ‘life’ in an eastern Indonesian society
Speaker: Prof. Gregory Forth (Visiting Professor, ASAFAS / Professor, University of Alberta, Canada)

Date: April 17th (Fri.), 2015, 16:00 – 18:15
Place: AA401, Research Building No.2, Kyoto University (Main Campus)
http://www.kyoto-u.ac.jp/en/access/yoshida/main.html

Abstract:
Recent writing in anthropology, and especially prominent attempts to revive the nineteenth century notion of ‘animism’, tends to depict small-scale, non-western societies as drawing distinctions between ‘living’ and ‘non-living’ things, as well as between humans and non-human animals, in ways very different from members of modern or ‘western’ societies. More specifically, ethno-linguistic groups falling in the first category have been described as maintaining an ‘animist’ or ‘animic’ cosmology or ‘ontology’. Drawing on ethnographic materials collected among the Nage people of Flores island, a group of highland cultivators and occasional hunters and fishers, the present paper questions this view. In particular, it analyses partly quantitative evidence which shows that the majority of Nage people distinguish living from non-living things in much the same way as do, for example, scientifically-educated westerners—a view which Descola (2013 [2005]) has called ‘naturalist’ and defined as the very opposite of his ‘animism’. Since differences appear among informants distinguished by age and gender, it is further shown, how older men—the very group one might expect to maintain an ‘animistic’ perspective—are in fact the least likely to do so, hence countering any suggestion that Nage ‘naturalism’ reflects factors of social change including modern education, literacy, or conversion to Christianity. In addition to providing negative evidence countering the new ‘animism’, the paper discusses other features of Nage cosmology which are consistent with their views on living and non-living things. These include Nage ideas concerning the ‘soul’ (mae) and spiritual beings called nitu; a pervasive empiricism and skepticism that pervades Nage folk zoology; and the strong ontological distinctions they recognize between humans, non-human animals, and spirits. Finally, attention is given to several methodological issues, including factors possibly explaining internal variation in Nage representations and factors that may have contributed to an anthropological view of small-scale societies as ‘animist’.

Takahiro Kojima
kojima[at]cseas.kyoto-u.ac.jp

Yumi Kato
kato[at]cseas.kyoto-u.ac.jp

Seminar Information (Japanese)
http://www.chiiki.asafas.kyoto-u.ac.jp/syakai-bunka/