Tana Wai Brama : a study of the social organization of an eastern Florenese domain

Abstract

Tana Ai is the mountainous border region between the culture areas of Sikka and East Flores in the eastern part of Flores, one of the Lesser Sunda Islands of Indonesia. The Ata Tana Ai , "People of the Forest Land", speak a dialect of the Sikkanese language but possess forms of social organization, economy and religion that set them apart from the peoples of central Sikka. Tana Ai is divided into seven ceremonial domains, each with a "source of the domain" in whom is vested ritual authority over the earth. Tana Wai Brama is the largest of these domains. The people of Tana Wai Brama are divided into one "source" and four "core" clans. Clans are composed of "houses" (maternal descent groups). Houses are exogamous and are the units of the alliance systems of the domain. It is argued that the society of Tana Wai Brama is characterized by two complementary systems of alliance. The first is the system of ceremonial relations of the clans that comprise the domain. The ceremonial system is founded in myths of the origins of the clans with respect to the ancestral founders of the domain. The ceremonial system is enacted in rituals of the domain which are the responsibility of male ritual specialists and provide an arena for political discourse within the domain. The second system of alliance is found in the affinal relationships that bind together the houses of the domain. Houses consist of consanguineally related women and their brothers. Jural authority within the houses and clans of the domain is vested in headwomen who decide matters pertaining to land and gardens, the principal economic resources of the Ata Tana Ai. The description of the arrangements by which ritual authority and jural authority are apportioned between men and women of the community informs the argument of the thesis. The ideological foundations of the social order are sought in the analysis of classifications expressed in myth and ritual. The ideology of the Ata Tana Ai is found both to account for the origins of the system of dual classifications that are expressed in ritual and social relations and to provide a means for reducing the divisions of the culture to a monadic unity. The Ata Tana Ai express this reduction in social transactions and in metaphor as the "return to the source" by which things and persons separated in accordance with social classifications are reunited. Show more