From A Shattered Sun: Hierarchy, Gender and Alliance in the Tanimbar Islands by Susan McKinnon
Among a growing number of ethnographies of eastern Indonesia that deal with the cosmology, exchange and kinship of those far flung islands, From a Shattered Sun is the first to address squarely issues originally broached by the famous ethnologists Edmund Leach and Claude Lévi-Strauss concerning the relation between hierarchy and equality in asymmetric systems of marriage.
Does this material sound dry? Well, in a word, it is. Penned by an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Virginia, this at times turgid scholarly work, though carefully written and well-researched, is not an easy Sunday afternoon read, particularly for the lay person. However, the book represents a significant contribution to Indonesian literature in that it covers various modern forms of social organizations, relations and division of labor between the sexes and marriage practices of an obscure society living in the remote Tanimbar Island group in Southeast Maluku in the far eastern corner of the archipelago.
No group of islands exemplifies the extreme isolation of the Moluccas than the unusual and enigmatic Tanimbars. Located in the middle of the Banda Sea, this faraway group is composed of low-lying non-volcanic limestone formations. Lying southeast of Ambon and only several hundred kilometers from the western coast of New Guinea, the Tanimbars probably once formed part of that giant island. Essentially an unknown region, the Tanimbars offer endless empty beaches, pristine coral refs and sealife, unique flora, superb scenery and a strong traditional culture.
It was in this region that the great naturalist Sir Russell Wallace wrote down for the first time his thoughts on the faunal differences he’d observed during seven years of travel through the Indonesian islands. He and Darwin jointly announced to the world their Theory of Evolution in London in 1858, but because Darwin had laid more emphasis on human evolution he received the lion's share of credit/blame.
In outlying areas, travelers must avail themselves of the camat and village heads for assistance and guides. Accommodations and transportation are expensive or nonexistent. Yet travel here is ultimately rewarding, because, as a direct result of their inaccessibility, native customs, crafts, and dress are still very much alive.
Isolated from the main currents of Indonesian culture and economy, the whole of Maluku Tenggara is a forgotten place: difficult to get to, difficult to travel in. Tourism is nil with no hotels worthy of the name. It’s easy to understand that the author could never have collected this very difficult to find and hard fought information without the help “as the author admits in her acknowledgements” of local pastors and a high ranking bishop.
On the basis of extensive fieldwork in the Tamimbar islands, Susan McKinnon brilliantly analyzes the simultaneous presence of both closed, asymmetric cycles and open, asymmetric pathways of alliance-of both egalitarian and hierarchical configurations. In addition, Tamimbarese society is marked by the existence of multiple, differentially valued forms of marriage, affiliation, and residence. Rather than seeing these various forms as analytically separable types, McKinnon demonstrates that it is only by viewing them as integrally related-in terms of culturally specific understandings of "houses" gender, and exchange-that one can perceive the processes through which hierarchy and equality are created.
As the noted anthropologist David M. Schneider wrote, McKinnon has “...confronted a central problem: how to understand a structure which is at once hierarchical and egalitarian. This book may change the face of anthropology."
From A Shattered Sun by Susan McKinnon, University of Wisconsin Press 2001 (www.wisc.edu/wisconsinpress), ISBN 0-299-13154-8, paperback 6 X 9 inches, 352 pages, 28 halftones, 24 line illustrations, 2 maps, appendices, glossary, references, index.
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