Histories and the Practice of Precedence
This article outlines a programme of ethnographic enquiry and writing on the ethnography of West Timor in eastern Indonesia. Informed by the analytical concept of precedence, the study presents new perspectives on Timorese social practice and the role of historical narratives and heritage in the constitution of social status in local contexts.
By ANDREW MCWILLIAM
The recent extraordinary events unfolding in East Timor with Indonesia threatening to abandon their decades long attempts to integrate the former Portuguese colony within the nation state, have once again brought Timor to the worlds attention. As in the past, little mention is made of the western half of the island which remains in shadow, an obscure, materially impoverished but seemingly loyal region of the Indonesian eastern islands Province. West Timor was once one of the richest sources of high grade white sandalwood in the known world and for centuries formed an integral part of the export trading network in Asia. But years of exploitative extraction severely diminished the resource and the fortunes of west Timor have long been in decline. For the indigenous Meto speaking communities of this region, who once benefitted and fought over control of this trade, the legacy of sandalwood politics is a mixed one. Much of the wealth generated by the trade has dissipated and with it political autonomy, but in other ways sandalwood history is a vital element in contemporary life. It forms part of the rich narrative history of Meto political communities and the reproduction of cultural identity in local places. Political alliance, land tenure and settlement origins, tend to reflect something of the former influence of the scented wood.The present study is the culmination of an extended period of ethnographic fieldwork in West Timor exploring the cultural and historical dimensions of Meto social practice in the mountainous hinterland of south west Timor. Drawing upon selected narrative representations of the past the study seeks to interpret the dynamics of contemporary social practice and alliance in terms of an analytical framework informed by the concept of precedence.
Precedence and the set of ideas which have since been developed around the concept have provided a range of productive insights into the comparative ethnography of eastern Indonesia and among Austronesian speaking societies more generally. As an interpretive concept, it is concerned with the study of asymmetric social relationships and the observed propensity in eastern Indonesia for assertions of difference based on notions of contested temporal precedence. Among the cluster of thematic elements which serve to articulate the precedence approach are those of category asymmetry recursive complementarity by which orders of precedence are constructed and contested. At the same time, there is an abiding concern with social origins and origin structures as points of differentiation and assertions of priority. The recitation of topogenies, and the narrative account of the history of the clan through recourse to multiple sequences of place names is one important expression of these concerns. The focal importance of the House as a physical form and a social structure is another.
As a theory of social practice, the 'language of precedence' derives much of its comparative insight from a detailed examination of shared indigenous social categories and the contextual thematic analysis of local metaphors. This orientation is based in part on the legacy and critical reappraisal of pioneering Dutch scholarship in eastern Indonesia and the FAS (Field of Anthropological Study) approach in Indonesia. Ideas associated with precedence have since been developed more fully through the Comparative Austronesian Project at the Australian National University (1989-1992) and at a recent conference hosted by HAS in 1996 (Processes of Social Differentiation in the Austronesian World). Over the last 20 years there has been a dramatic increase in field based ethnographic explorations of eastern Indonesian societies. Numerous detailed and long term studies have been initiated across the region covering the core area of Nusa Tenggara Timur and the Moluccas. These studies have confirmed the rich comparative diversity of cultural practice among the multiple language communities of the region while at the same time reflecting the common thematic concerns arising from a shared cultural heritage. Although ethnographic studies from Timor have contributed to this growing comparative anthropological understanding, there have been relatively few detailed ethnographic studies published in recent years. This is particularly the case for Meto society in west Timor where significant local variation in social and cultural practice between Meto domains remains undocumented. The purpose of the current study is to address some these issues from the hinterland and mountains of southwest Timor using the analytical concept of precedence as a thematic guide. *
Dr Andrew McWilliam was a senior visiting fellow at the IIAS from October 1998 to January 1999.