You are cordially invited to a CSEAS Tonan Talk, a Brown Bag lecture series. The talk is open to the public, and you can bring your lunch bag to the place. The details are as follows.

Title: Heirlooms and marriage payments: transmission and circulation of prestige jars in Borneo.
Speaker: Dr. Nicolas Césard
Date: February 20 (Thursday), 12.00-13.30, 2014
Place: Small Meeting Room II (Room 331), Inamori Foundation Memorial Building, Kyoto University

Abstract:
Drawing from literature and ethnography, I will try to distinguish the origin, social implications and main uses of prestige jars in Borneo. In an earlier work, I suggest that to understand these differences in the societies of Borneo requires an understanding of how these objects are acquired and transmitted between families (Césard 2013).
In this talk, I will briefly present the processes by which an object can become, with time, something other than what it had previously been. The term *pusaka *commonly used to describe these jars does not encompass other significant uses of jars as it is often used narrowly to refer to heirlooms jars, and broadly, to heirloom jars and sacred heirloom jars. These jars are also and without being pusaka, ordinary jars of economic value, given and exchanged especially as marriage payments.
I will take the example of the former Punan nomads of the Tubu river (East Kalimantan, Indonesia) to illustrate the manner in which jars can change in nature and its roles over time. Based on this, I would like to discuss from an agency theory perspective how these jars are bought and transmitted – not for what they ‘are’, but for what they ‘do’.

About the speaker:
Dr. Nicolas Césard is currently a JSPS postdoc fellow at ASAFAS, Kyoto University. He is a social anthropologist and a research associate at the Centre Asie du Sud-Est (CNRS-EHESS) and at the Laboratoire d’Ecoanthropologie et ethnobiologie (CNRS-MNHN), both in Paris, France.

Moderator: Jafar Suryomenggolo, CSEAS, Kyoto University

This Tonan Talk is supported by “Southeast Asian Studies for Sustainable Humanosphere” Research Program, the Center for Southeast Asian Studies (CSEAS), Kyoto University

 

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