Everyone searches, everyone finds: moral discourse and resource use in an Indonesian Muslim Community

Abstract

In the Banda Islands, understandings of tanah (land/earth) draw on a vision of emplaced moral order linked to idealised forms of sociality. Islam provides a fundamental idiom through which these are envisaged by local Muslims. The everyday rigours seen as a concomitant with being Muslim provide a means through which a population of in-migrants is able to actively engage the spirits of autochthonous founder-figures as the ontological 'source' of locality. This has implications for conceiving the legitimate terms of sovereignty which may compete, but are not necessarily always at odds, with those disseminated by government authorities. Though examining the activities of residents in respect to key resources, particularly ideas if theft, generosity and equality of access, local conceptions of moral community and its relation to diverse sources of governmentality are explored. A critical aspect of local subjectivity emerges as the operation of moral governmentality which involves the management of the subject through its constitution as an agent in relation to others (Foucault 1997:300).