A01=Danilyn Rutherford
Ambonese
Anecdote
Anthropologist
Author_Danilyn Rutherford
Biak
Bird's Head Peninsula
Bracelet
Bride price
Cambridge University Press
Cargo cult
Category=JBCC
Category=JHM
Category=JMS
Christian mission
Christianity
Colonialism
Commodity
Dichotomy
Dutch East India Company
Dutch East Indies
Embarrassment
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Ethnic group
Exploration
Fetishism
Hegemony
His Family
Hongi
Household
Ideology
Indigenous peoples
Indonesia
Indonesians
Informant
Institution
Jacques Derrida
Jakarta
Kamma (caste)
Kinship
Maluku Islands
Manokwari
Melanesia
Millenarianism
Missionary
Modernity
Mr.
Narration
Narrative
Nation state
National identity
National language
Netherlands New Guinea
New Guinea
Newspaper
Numfor
Origin story
Palm wine
Porcelain
Raja Ampat Islands
Residence
Separatism
Sibling
Sorong (city)
Southeast Asia
Sovereignty
Suharto
Sumatra
The Other Hand
Tidore
Tourism
Warfare
Wealth
Western New Guinea
World War II
Writing
Product details
- ISBN 9780691095912
- Weight: 454g
- Dimensions: 152 x 235mm
- Publication Date: 03 Nov 2002
- Publisher: Princeton University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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What are the limits of national belonging? Focusing on Biak--a set of islands off the coast of western New Guinea, in the Indonesian province of Irian Jaya--Danilyn Rutherford's analysis calls for a rethinking of the nature of national identity. With the resurgence of separatism in the province, Irian Jaya has become the focus of fears that the Indonesian nation is falling apart. Yet in the early 1990s, the fieldwork for this book was made possible by the government's belief that Biaks were finally beginning to see themselves as Indonesians. Taking in the dynamics of Biak social life and the islands' long history of millennial unrest, Rutherford shows how practices that indicated Biaks' submission to national authority actually reproduced antinational understandings of space, time, and self. Approaching the foreign as a focus of longing in cultural arenas ranging from kinship to Christianity, Biaks participated in Indonesian national institutions without accepting the identities they promoted. Their remarkable response to the Indonesian government (and earlier polities laying claim to western New Guinea) suggests the limits of national identity and modernity, writ large.
This is one of the few books reporting on the volatile province of Irian Jaya. It offers a new way of thinking about the nation and its limits--one that moves beyond the conventions of both scholarship and recent journalism. It shows how people can "belong" to a nation yet maintain commitments that fall both short of and beyond the nation state.
Danilyn Rutherford is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Chicago.
