This thesis is an ethnography of the indigenous religion, education system and social organization of the community living in the central mountains of Sikka Regency on the island of Flores in Indonesia. The question that has motivated my research is ‘how are the ideas and practices of this community’s indigenous cosmology taught and learned so to persist with continuity through generations?’ In answer I explore the ways in which cosmological ideas and practices are taught to be valued as truth as they are embodied during the practical activity of ritual. This study advances a performative theory of ritual education through a combination of Gregory Bateson’s theory of the ecology of mind and Roy Rappaport’s theory of ritual and sanctification / I begin with a critical examination of the representations of the community in question that have been made by scholars and neighboring populations. I argue that these representations wrongly imply a static and bounded community. Instead, I contend that the community is constituted by dynamic village and clan relationships anchored on sentimental and structural forms of individual belonging to particular villages and clans. This belonging is principally developed through individuals’ adherence to the indigenous cosmology, locally called Adat. I continue by discussing the educational methods by which this cosmology is perpetuated. Ritual language lessons concerning education insist that from an early age community members participate fully in daily religious life (particularly in the practice of ritual) under the guidance of close family. I then describe the learning environments found in childhood, marriage and mortuary rites. Following Bateson, I argue that during ritual contexts participants ‘deutero-learn’ embodied skills that are patterned by previous experiences, and generate the future conditions, of these same ritual contexts. / In addition to traditional educational settings, the Adat cosmology is now taught in Indonesian primary and high schools in ‘local content curriculum’ classes. I compare Adat education based on participation in ritual with that of modern schools, and I argue that in the classroom the indigenous cosmology is abstracted from its performative underpinnings. Adat is embodied differently in ritual and school contexts, and the tensions caused by these differences lead to transformations in Adat knowledge. I end this thesis by contextualizing my findings with national discourses of indigeneity and intercultural education.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/245531 |
| Date | January 2008 |
| Creators | Butterworth, D. J. |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
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