Table of Contents
This paper forms part of an extended argument that is concerned with ideas of origin and precedence among Austronesian-speaking populations (Fox 1988a, 1989, 1990, 1994, 1995). It examines the way in which culturally specific ideas of origin give rise to different forms of social precedence in a number of societies in eastern Indonesia. As such, the paper is also concerned with comparison. It explores, within a particular region, the possibilities of comparison among societies that share a common heritage of ideas — in this case, expressed in terms of related concepts of origin.
The context for this argument was set forth in the paper, “Models and Metaphors: Comparative Research in Eastern Indonesia”, which constituted my concluding comments to The Flow of Life. In that paper, I argued for a wider Austronesian framework for the comparative consideration of the societies of eastern Indonesia. Although eastern Indonesia may contribute a great deal toward the reconstruction of a model of a proto-Austronesian social world, nevertheless the region represents only one area of a vast Austronesian world. On methodological grounds, sound lexical construction must be based on a whole range of evidence from the entire Austronesian language area (Fox 1980:328-329). Thus F.A.E. van Wouden’s inspired attempt (1935, 1968) to give a privileged position to the evidence from the societies of eastern Indonesia for the construction of a model of ancient Indonesian society was inevitably suspect because of the regional limits he himself set for his particular attention. Moreover, by concentrating on a particular “model” based on a structural core of formal constructs, van Wouden focused attention on certain characteristics of marriage alliance that have since become an emblem for distinguishing eastern Indonesia from the rest of the Austronesian world. As a result, eastern Indonesia may appear to stand apart from the rest of the Austronesian world.
In the paper on “Models and Metaphors”, I went on to argue that the tendency of recent ethnographic research in eastern Indonesia was to study each society from within and in terms of its own social categories:
Research on the social categories of particular societies has not tended to dispel the notion of a structural core but rather to reinterpret it. Instead of relying on a formal model consisting of predefined elements, researchers have begun gradually to redefine a structural core in terms of a common set of shared social categories (1980:330-331).
This shift from a study of models to a study of social metaphors provides a better linguistic basis for comparative analysis. Without diminishing the distinctiveness of the region it may also allow the means of interpreting the evidence of the region within a wider framework. The task is to reinterpret this regional evidence systematically but in such a way as to permit comparison with other Austronesian societies.
Finally, in the same paper, I argued specifically that adopting an analysis of the distinctive social categories that constitute the “idiom of alliance” in eastern Indonesia would “eventually alter the conceptual status and relevance of van Wouden’s most important analytic categories — those of wife-giver and wife-taker” (1980:332). To this end, I provided several examples of the distinct social categories from different societies in eastern Indonesia that were glossed by different ethnographers as “wife-giver” or “wife-taker”. I also pointed to the recurrent use of a botanic idiom and of particular cognates of the Austronesian term for “trunk”, “root”, “base” or “origin” in the metaphoric conceptualization of alliance relations.
It is to these issues that I wish to return in this present paper. However, I want to attempt to do more than offer a linguistic exegesis of a set of related social categories. Rather I would like to advance a corresponding sociological analysis based on the concept of precedence.