Colonial 'Reformation' in the Highlands of Central Sulawesi, Indonesia, 1892-1995

Book Review by by Roxana Waterson; Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Vol. 33, 2002. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000. Pp. xii, 279. Maps, Photographs, Notes, Bibliography, Index

Albert Schrauwers. Colonial 'Reformation' in the Highlands of Central Sulawesi, Indonesia 1892-1995

Central Sulawesi for a long time remained peripheral to Dutch interests in the Netherlands East Indies; little was known about the peoples living there, who were left to their own devices. The close of the nineteenth century, however, brought a sudden change in this state of affairs. In the 1890s, a gold rush in Northern Sulawesi prompted widespread prospecting in parts of Central Sulawesi not yet under Dutch control, and Dutch concerns mounted about the possibility of other colonial claims being made in the area. By 1895, a con troleur and ten-man garrison had been established at Poso -- a tenuous and ineffective beginning to Dutch administrative control. Subsequently, in 1905, the Dutch found sufficient reason to mount military expeditions against the South Sulawesi kingdoms of Bone and Luwu,' and after this the whole of Sulawesi was soon incorporated under their control.

Central Sulawesi occupies a somewhat unusual position in Indonesian ethnography. In 1892 the Netherlands Missionary Society appointed two men, Albert C. Kruyt and Nicholaus Adriani, to open a mission post at Poso. Kruyt and Adriani, both notable scholars, exemplified a radically new approach to missionisation, one that relied heavily on the ethnographic study of the society to be converted. Although they failed to make a single convert for fifteen years, they compiled some of the most massive ethnographies ever written, as well as dictionaries and grammars. It was they who classified the peoples of Central Sulawesi as 'Toraja (a label that was later to be rejected by all except the Sa'dan Toraja of South Sulawesi). Their three volumes about the 'East (or Bare'e) Toraja who today call themselves To Pamona, form the subject of Albert Schrauwers' book, while four volumes on the 'West Toraja' (comprising a number of groups who now prefer to be separately named, principally the To Kaili, To Kulawi, and To Lore) ma de these two of the most thoroughly documented areas of the outer islands at the time.

Ironically, after this initial explosion of ethnographic inquiry almost the entire century was to elapse before any new studies appeared to document the enormous transformations that Central Sulawesi societies had by that time undergone. Schrauwers' work is based on thorough archival research in the Netherlands, as well as two years of fieldwork with the To Pamona -- much of it inescapably spent in attendance at church services and prayer meetings. This book is thus to be welcomed warmly as one of the most detailed analyses so far, both of how these transformations were wrought, and of the sometimes surprising continuities of social organisation and values that, in spite of such radical change, can still be discerned in To Pamona society today. Schrauwers begins with an examination of the Dutch 'tribe' at the close of the nineteenth century, which sheds light on the very particular combination of political and religious ideas that the missionaries brought with them to Central Sulawesi. He then goes on to prov ide a close analysis of the colonial incorporation of the region, the problems experienced by the mission, and the pressures to which local 'culture' and 'religion' have more recently been obliged to conform under the politics of Suharto's New Order era.

Kruyt and Adriani's aim was to find a way of integrating Christianity into local social structures, in order eventually to transform them. The influence of the new colonial administration was to aid them considerably in this endeavour. Several features of indigenous social arrangements -- notably, longhouse residence, headhunting, and the exhumation of the bones of the dead for the celebration of secondary funerals -- appeared especially objectionable to the colonial authorities, and their prohibition by the Dutch government was bound to lead to profound social dislocation. As in many other parts of the archipelago, the inhabitants were quickly obliged to move from their original villages, located on defensible mountain tops, to more easily supervised sites on the valley floor, where they were at the same time made to give up swidden farming and receive instruction in wet rice agriculture. Furthermore, a vital feature of the To Pamona's indigenous religion, one which was hardly likely to find favour with the patriarchal outlook of their Dutch Calvinist mentors, was the importance of female shamans, who undertook soul journeys in trance in order to cure illness. Within Kruyt's evolutionist theories of religion, this aspect of To Pamona practice was condemned as its most 'primitive' and superstitious manifestation, and women were to be systematically excluded by him from positions of authority in the church.

The central section of the book gives an ethnographically rich picture of contemporary kinship relations within and between households, the distribution of land, and patterns of 'shared poverty'. These, Schrauwers argues -- far from being evidence of a residual 'peasant' mentality standing in the way of capitalist penetration -- have evolved in conjunction with economic transformations, specifically the Dutch engineered switch from swidden to wet rice cultivation. Nor does shared poverty preclude the creation and maintenance of hierarchical relations between elder and younger kin. A wide variety of strategies are used to move members of the extended kin group between households in a way that creates patron-client relations between wealthier senior members and the children of more marginal households, who are frequently taken in as dependants. The persistence of tradition is partly revealed in the continued importance of exchange networks based upon the extended kin group.

One major context for the functioning of these networks is in the arrangement of marriage ceremonies, which become a means by which older and wealthier 'patrons' demonstrate generosity while 'investing' in their younger dependants, over whose loyalties they can then claim greater control. Whereas in precolonial society secondary funerals were the most important rituals, weddings have now taken their place as the most spectacular social occasions, as among the Bugis of South Sulawesi. They provide key opportunities for sponsors to build their social reputations as feast-givers. Within the overarching ideology of generosity, which prohibits any appearance of calculation, the actual necessity for a judicious balancing of one's giving and receiving is nicely revealed through the book's case studies. At the same time, Schrauwers shows how the system tends toward inflation over time -- much like the feasting economy of the Sa'dan Toraja, which has retained its original focus on funerals. The embedding of individual s in these exchange networks remains as inescapable for the To Pamona as it is for the Toraja, even though their social duties may be felt as burdensome. Rather than defining these relations as wholly traditional, however, Schrauwers points out the extent to which in fact they represent a commodification of relationships, as well as a form of 'insurance' of subsistence needs.

The final section of the book describes the ritual and religious transformations of To Pamona society. Kruyt, having realised the hopelessless of waiting for individual religious conversions, increasingly sought ways to involve the society as a whole. A major means of imposing church discipline (as happened over a long period in the history of the early church in Europe) was to lay claim to the authorisation of marriages. No marriages were to be recognised as valid unless they took place in church. An important means by which the superior status of elders was inscribed in traditional To Pamona society was their right to give 'advice' to the rest of the community, in many contexts including something as ordinary as the daily conclusion of the family mealtime. This fitted well with the importance ascribed to the 'Word' in Calvinist doctrine; the preaching of ministers and church elders has in a sense been grafted on to this already existing pattern, but in a way that has rendered the authority relationships inv olved more one-sided than they used to be.

Finally, the incorporation of feasting as an integral feature of numerous religious rituals today stands as one of the most intriguing aspects of social continuity in To Pamona society. Feasting, as Schrauwers points out, does not in itself carry a religious meaning, but its attachment to any occasion privileges that occasion as important, while requiring an acting-out of social relationships of hierarchy and cooperation. 'The church has grown and prospered', he concludes, 'because its incorporation of To Pamona "religion" simultaneously captured a kin-ordered social process' (p.187). As a result, To Pamona ethnic identity, as well as images of 'tradition', have been reconstrued in a distinctly modernist idiom -- a process which Schrauwers rightly suggests has parallels in other regions and religions of Indonesia. The book thus makes an important contribution not only to Sulawesi studies, but to our understandings of colonial and post-colonial social and religious transformations generally.

A concluding chapter points out the violent ups and downs of historical events over the past century that belie the idea of Central Sulawesi as an isolated backwater; as the author points out, 'almost every adult in Tentena had experienced personal loss through the ongoing eruptions of larger social movements into the highlands' (p. 227). The author had time, before the book went to press, to comment on the closure of the Suharto era, but not on the recent disastrous eruption of ethnic violence in and around Poso. Tentena, the focus of Schrauwers' fieldwork, is the origin-village of the now overwhelmingly Protestant To Pamona. This no doubt explains the ethnically unitary picture presented in the book. The author also discusses the troubled times of the 1950s when guerrillas of first the Darul Islam movement and then Permesta invaded the area. The newly independent Christian Church of Central Sulawesi consolidated itself, being the only organisation capable of fulfilling many administrative, political and soc ial functions in this chaotic period. Arguably, we could still use a fuller exploration of historical relations with nearby Muslim populations. As Schrauwers points out, an explicit aim of Dutch policy in encouraging missionisation, here as in other highland areas of the archipelago, was to provide a bulwark against the spread of Islamic influence. But to what extent have To Pamona themselves constructed an identity in opposition to a neighbouring Islamic Other? Brief mention is also made of the expropriation of To Pamona lands for New Order transmigration projects; in neighbouring areas of Central Sulawesi (perhaps here also?) voluntary migrations, too, have contributed to the development of a complex and fragmented ethnic distribution, leading to heightened competition over land and resources. Perhaps in future work the author will extend his insightful analyses to contribute to our understanding of recent ethnic polarisation in the Poso region.