1,721,003 research outputs found
Maya (image) in indigenous Riau world-view: a forgotten concept of Malayan animist thought and ritual practice
No full textThe early literature on Malay animism and magic includes a passing reference to a concept called maya. This reference is hardly noticeable in the literature, and when Kirk Endicott wrote his Malay Magic, he omitted the word altogether. In this article the author uses ethnographic material from the Malayan-speaking Orang Sakai of Riau to examine the concept of maya (image) as it relates to a ‘lifeless soul’ inherent in material objects, giving physical objects vitality of form, appearance and use
Muslim Schools (pondok) in the South of Thailand: balancing piety on a tight-rope of national civility, prejudice and violence
No full textThis paper focuses on the ponoh/pondok Muslim schools of the south of Thailand. These schools, which are traditional institutions of religious learning and places of religious piety, have experienced conflict and contestations throughout the twentieth century. Pondok have been pulled by different modernizing forces including separatist violence. The paper concludes that the contestations and negotiations with the Thai government are about the development of the local Malay people's modern civic identity within Thailand. It suggests that the introduction of a secular curriculum has had (and still has) its benefits for empowering the Malay-speaking population by supplying them with the cultural tools to contest and civically negotiate their position, culture and heritage within the Kingdom. The paper also provides a history of these schools and their political relationship to the Thai government's policies and to separatist organizations, as well as an update of events relating to the schools during the recent period of separatist and counter-separatist activities
Seeing sound: consciousness and therapeutic acoustics in the inter-sensory shamanic epistemology of the Orang Sakai of Riau
No full textThis article explores therapeutic shamanic sounds in relation to Orang Sakai ideas of (altered) consciousness. The argument given is that within a shamanic epistemology the very idea of producing sound involves an assumption of the material existence of non‐physical beings as sound‐makers. Such sounds are conceived to be as materially real as are ordinary physical sounds. The article argues further that sound is not only experienced through hearing but can also be inter‐sensorially experienced through the perception of sight. Moreover, ocular perception can refer to both seeing with the eyes and seeing with the ‘inner eye’, which for Sakais is an organ and not a mental function. Finally, given that sound can be inter‐sensorially experienced, this article questions the validity of the oral/aural concept for non‐literate societies
“Not to be aware anymore”: indigenous Sumatran ideas and shamanic experiences of changed states of awareness/consciousness
No full textAnthropologists working on altered states of consciousness (ASC) have suggested that we should do away with psychologizing concepts and use people's own terms for these experiences. With material drawn from the Orang Sakai of Sumatra this paper shows that practitioners who utilize ASC do recognize the alteration of states of awareness as preconditions for numinous interactions. Also critically discussed is the term ASC
The terrorist insurgency in the South of Thailand
No full textReviewed Works: Conspiracy of silence: The insurgency in Southern Thailand by Zachary Abuza; Rethinking Thailand's southern violence by Duncan McCarg
'They have not progressed enough': Development's negated identities among two indigenous peoples (orang asli) in Indonesia and Thailand
No full textThis paper is ethnographically concerned with two different orang asli communities: the Meniq living in Southern Thailand and the Orang Sakai in Riau, Indonesia. The focus is on the different discursive rhetorics of development in the two nation-states. These rhetorics have been absorbed by the two indigenous groups to form part of their own modern cultural discourses within their respective countries. These rhetorics of development define the indigenous groups as somewhat lacking in culture and provide them with new understandings of themselves that devalue their customary way of life. The post-development indigenous identity work (such as the development of an ethnocultural identity) will therefore usually be constructed through these negated developmental foundations
The "Hikayat Patani": the kingdom of Patani in the Malay and Thai political world
No full textThis paper looks at the Hikayat Patani as a mimetic text. It tries to capture Patani's power relations with neighbouring kingdoms. From the perspective of mimesis the text expresses similarity with Ayutthaya even as it describes the Patani sultan and sultana's rebellions against Ayutthaya. In relation to the surrounding Malay kingdoms and fiefdoms the text expresses Patani's superiority. In relation to Johor it fractures mimetic similarity Building upon previous works on the Hikayat Patani, this paper offers some interpretations of the text that have been overlooked by previous scholars
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