Fields of the Lord
In 1909, A.W.F. Idenburg, the Governor General of the Netherlands East Indies, awarded the Salvation Army, an offshoot of English methodism created in the 1860s, the Kulawi District of Central Sulawesi as a mission field. The Salvation Army was then already active in Java and Idenburg contacted Gerrit Govaars, the Army's territorial commander for the Netherlands East Indies, asking him to explore the possibility of opening a Sulawesi mission field. In 1984, the American anthropologist Lorraine Aragon began documenting and reconstructing the conversion process initiated in 1913 when the first Army officers, Captains Jensen and Loois, reached the area. Aragon focuses on the Tobaku, one of the ethnic groups of the Central Sulawesi Highlands. Her book is a fascinating and important tale of the intense interaction between Christian soldiers and Tobaku farmers in the colonial and post-colonial contexts of Dutch and Indonesian rule. - Aragon, Lorraine V., Fields of the Lord: Animism, Christian minorities, and state development in Indonesia, Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press: (2000), 383 pp, ISBN 0-8248-2171-8.
* By LOURENS DE VRIES
After
an introductory chapter presenting the research design, the book sketches
the ethnography of the Tobaku, pre-colonial Tobaku history, the history
of the Salvation Army's approach to the Highlanders, the European comprehension
of Tobaku cosmology, and the way the Tobaku have managed to retain some
continuity with their pre-colonial cosmology by inserting the performative
force of ancestral sacrifices into Protestant forms. A whole chapter is
devoted to genres of ritual speech through which the Tobaku seek to persuade
the unseen forces, most of them mission-inspired genres such as church
testimonials and hymns. One specific ritual genre, called raego', dating
back to pre-colonial times, survived mission opposition, because, according
to Aragon, it served the New Order's political interests in 'regional
arts'.
Aragon pays considerable attention to Dutch and Indonesian rule since her main conclusion is that the Tobaku conversion to the Army's version of Christianity occurred through a process of political marginalization that, among other features, redefined the criteria of valid religion, indexed religious change to an idealized vision of economic development or 'modernization,' and legally subverted religious doctrines to political ones (p. 322). Aragon stresses the continuity between Dutch colonial and Indonesian neo-colonial policies that used missionization as an instrument to 'pacify' and integrate peripheral 'tribal' groups in the State, the mission as a tool to make 'civilized', 'hygienic', 'modern' citizens out of unruly 'animistic' primitives.
In the context of the New Order agama ideology, by law state-recognized forms of religion had to replace indigenous forms of communicating with the unseen and of maintaining the cosmological balance. The chapter 'Constructing a Godly New Order' is devoted entirely to the interaction between contemporary Central Sulawesi Christianity and the New Order ideology of economic development (pembangunan) and progress (kemajuan).
One of the dangers of social and historical research in Indonesia, especially in 'outlying' provinces, is that the very strong centre-periphery perspective associated with the Java-dominated centralist state may distort the analysis. As I read this well-written book, I wondered to what extent Aragon's picture of the conversion process shows that centre-periphery bias. In Aragon's interpretation of Tobaku conversion, the State is the controlling party, the Mission is both controlled and controlling ('partial agents of states', p.322) and the Tobaku are the controlled party. What is left to the Tobaku is some continuity with their pre-colonial religious ideologies and practices that are maintained unnoticed under the veil of agama (state recognized religion) and adat ('ancestral custom'). Some examples of this are when deities with new Christian names retain ancient personas or when Christian vows and sacrifices continue to be viewed as efficacious magic rather than as symbolic representations of Christian doctrine. Most of the time Aragon shows us the conversion process from the perspective of the centre in which the peripheral Tobaku appear to be powerless, and their conversion unavoidable, given the pressures from the centre as mediated by the Mission. The book tells us little about how Tobaku people perceive their conversion to Christianity or actively use notions from Christianity and the State to defend their own interests instead of being manipulated by missionaries and state officials through these notions. Do the Tobaku reverse the centre-periphery perspective as the Islamic Kokoda Papuans from Irian Jaya do when they point to the hill in their area from which the Prophet ascended to Heaven or their Christian neigbours of Inanwatan who expect Jesus' Second Coming to focus on Inanwatan?
The fact that this book triggers off a barrage of questions is just another sign of its high quality. Aragon's book is an important contribution to the religious anthropology of Indonesia. *
Professor
Lourens de Vries is affiliated to the Linguistics Department
of the free University Amsterdam.
E-mail: lj.de.vries@let.leidenuniv.nl