Searching for good fortune : the making of a Bugis shore community at Lake Lindu, Central Sulawesi

Abstract

The Bugis of South Sulawesi have long been renowned for their exploits in trading and settling throughout the Indonesian archipelago. This thesis examines the movement of Bugis settlers to the upland plain surrounding Lake Lindu in Central Sulawesi and the nature of the community they have established in this region. In trying to explain the conceptions and behaviour of Bugis encountered both within and outside their homeland, Western observers have constructed a number of images of this group that contain contradictory elements. These contradictions arise largely from the conflict of notions of ascribed and achieved status and the divergent modes of behaviour of those with different places in the status system. Migration outside the homeland is in part a response to these contradictions impelling people into the periphery, but it is also conditioned by changing historical circumstances — internal wars, Dutch colonial impositions, climatic changes, varying demands and patterns of regional and world trade -- that regulate the volume of migration and its destinations, as well as the economic pursuits and social organization of the emigrant communities. In addition to overseas locations throughout the archipelago, areas of Sulawesi outside the Bugis homeland have provided a frontier for Bugis expansion. Bugis have been colonizing the coasts of the Kaili region of western Central Sulawesi for centuries, and in the period of Dutch rule acted as the primary intermediaries (i.e. cultural brokers) through whom the colonial overlords exercised their authority. Bugis penetration into Lindu in the Kaili hinterland began with the movement of refugees during the civil war (1950-1965) that racked the homeland after independence. However, this migration has been neither homogeneous nor continuous. Four contingents of migrants, each distinguished by its own network of kin ties, recognition of common origins within the homeland, and by allegiance to different pioneers, have settled as fishermen and farmers on the shores of Lake Lindu. Contemporary residential patterns preserve the disparate origins of these migrants at the subethnic level, as do the marketing networks established by competing fish entrepreneurs. Status in this nascent community depends largely on local economic achievement, but members of the different contingents recognize a variety of divergent status criteria. Economic enterprises retain aspects of traditional patronclient relations, but also are increasingly reliant on debt as a mechanism to maintain subordinates loyal to particular entrepreneurs. The Bugis have attained a position of economic control at Lindu by setting up enterprises to exploit the previously untapped resources of the lake. In addition, through assuming leadership in rituals orientated to the local spirit world and conceptually recasting this spiritual landscape, the Bugis have been able to exercise cultural hegemony as well as economic dominance. The situation at Lindu thus exemplifies Bugis settlement throughout the archipelago as a process involving economic, social, political and cultural mechanisms of penetration and domination.