Remembering and Recreating Origins: The Transformation of a Tradition of Canonical Parallelism among the Rotenese of Eastern Indonesia

Abstract from website.This paper examines and illustrates key oral traditions of canonical parallelism among the Rotenese of eastern Indonesia. The Rotenese are concerned with maintaining a knowledge of origins and the poets who perpetuate this knowledge are known for their ability to recount long chants that reveal these origins. On Rote, a traditional ritual canon of origins that recounts relations between Sun and Moon and the Lords of the Sea has now been complemented by a Christian canon based on the appropriation of Biblical knowledge. This Christian canon strictly adheres to the paired lexicon and rules of composition of the traditional canon, but has developed its own appropriate lexicon of theological pairings. Another, lesser canon has also begun to emerge to recount the celebration of national origins. All of these canons now form part of a continuing body of creative traditions expressed in the paired language of parallelism

The Poetic Power of Place

This collection of papers is the fourth in a series of volumes on the work of the Comparative Austronesian Project. Each paper describes a specific Austronesian locality and offers an ethnographic account of the way in which social knowledge is vested, maintained and transformed in a particular landscape. The intention of the volume is to consider common patterns in the representation of place among Austronesian-speaking populations

Expressions of Austronesian Thought and Emotions

This collection of papers is the seventh volume in the Comparative Austronesian series. The papers in this volume focus on societies from Sumatra to Melanesia and examine the expression and patterning of Austronesian thought and emotions

Inside Austronesian Houses

Dwellings; Social life; Customs; Southeast asia; Oceani

Master poets, ritual masters: The art of oral composition among the Rotenese of Eastern Indonesia

This is a study in oral poetic composition. It examines how oral poets compose their recitations. Specifically, it is a study of the recitations of 17 separate master poets from the Island of Rote recorded over a period of 50 years. Each of these poets offers his version of what is culturally considered to be the ‘same’ ritual chant. These compositions are examined in detail and their oral formulae are carefully compared to one another. Professor James J. Fox is an anthropologist who carried out his doctoral field research on the Island of Rote in eastern Indonesia in 1965–66. In 1965, he began recording the oral traditions of the island and developed a close association with numerous oral poets on the island. After many subsequent visits, in 2006, he began a nine-year project that brought groups of oral poets to Bali for week-long recording sessions. Recitations gathered over a period of 50 years are the basis for this book

Expressions of Austronesian Thought and Emotions

This collection of papers is the seventh volume in the Comparative Austronesian series. The papers in this volume focus on societies from Sumatra to Melanesia and examine the expression and patterning of Austronesian thought and emotions

Property Rights in a Fishery: Regulatory Change and Firm Performance

A new method is introduced and applied to analyse changes in productivity of firms harvesting a natural capital stock. The index-number technique decomposes the contributions of output prices, variable input prices, fixed inputs and productivity to firm profits, adjusted for changes in the natural capital stock. An application of the method is given using micro-level data from a common-pool resource. The indexes provide a ready-made comparison of all firms to the most profitable firm per unit of resource stock. Benchmarking with the decompositions also allows firms and regulators to determine what components are contributing most to economic profits and improve overall industry performance.productivity,profits,natural capital,index numbers

Origins, Ancestry and Alliance

Ethnography; Kinship; Social life; Customs; Islands of the pacific; South east asi