| Description |
vi, 296 pages : illustrations, maps ; 23 cm |
| Contents |
Introduction: Headhunting as Practice and as Trope /Janet Hoskins -- Lyric, History, and Allegory, or the End of Headhunting Ritual in Upland Sulawesi / Kenneth M. George -- Headtaking and the Consolidation of Political Power in the Early Brunei State / Allen R. Maxwell -- Severed Heads That Germinate the State: History, Politics, and Headhunting in Southwest Timor /Andrew McWilliam -- Buaya Headhunting and Its Ritual: Notes from a Headhunting Feast in Northern Luzon /Jules De Raedt -- Telling Violence in the Meratus Mountains / Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing -- The Heritage of Headhunting: History, Ideology, and Violence on Sumba, 1890-1990 / Janet Hoskins -- Images of Headhunting /Peter Metcalf |
| Summary |
This is the first book to bring together comparative material on headhunting in a number of Southeast Asian societies, to examine the cultural contexts in which such practices occurred, and to relate them to colonial history, violence, and ritual. This volume documents and analyzes headhunting practices and shows the persistence of headhunting as a symbol or trope. Ethnographers of seven regions (the Philippine highlands, Sarawak, Brunei, and South Borneo, and the Indonesian islands of Sulkawesi, Sumba, and Timor) share their experiences of living with former headhunters (including an eyewitness account of a headhunting feast), attending rituals, and collecting oral histories to understand the heritage of headhunting in context. In asking what meaning taking heads has assumed in the postcolonial era, they report on contemporary people who reenact headhunts, often with effigies or surrogates for the head itself. The essays trace the changes in the imagery of headhunting, explaining why contemporary indigenous peoples fear new predators in the form of government officials, Western missionaries, Japanese businessmen, and tourists. This inversion of traditional terrorism reimagines the violence of colonial conquest and postcolonial control as a new form of predation against those who were once headhunters themselves |
| Analysis |
Asia, Southeastern Economic conditions |
|
Body, Human Symbolic aspects Asia, Southeastern |
|
Headhunters Asia, Southeastern History Sources |
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Rites and ceremonies Asia, Southeastern |
|
Violence Asia, Southeastern |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references and index |
| Subject |
Human body -- Symbolic aspects -- Southeast Asia.
|
|
Headhunters -- Southeast Asia -- History -- Sources
|
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Rites and ceremonies -- Southeast Asia.
|
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Violence -- Southeast Asia.
|
| SUBJECT |
Asia, Southeastern -- Economic conditions.
http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh2008116978
|
|
Asia, Southeastern -- Social life and customs. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh2008117018
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| Author |
Hoskins, Janet.
|
|
Raedt, Jules de.
|
| LC no. |
95023128 |
| ISBN |
0804725748 (cloth : alk. paper) |
|
0804725756 (paperback: alk. paper) |
|
