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Becoming Complete among the Rembong: This Life and the Next

Becoming Complete among the Rembong: This Life and the Next 10 Becoming Complete among the Rembong: This Life and the Next* Maribeth Erb Department of Sociology, National University of Singapore "Death is not originally conceived as a unique event without any analogue," argued Robert Hertz in 1907 (1960:81), and a number of anthropologists have shown this to be so in several societies around the world (Barley, 1981; Strathern, 1982:120; Parry, 1982:80-81; Forth, 1981; Hoskins, 1988). The similarity between marriage and death has been noted by anthropologists on Sumba, where people say that the dead are like brides, in that they must transfer their allegiance from one community to another (Forth, 1981:205-207; Hoskins, 1988:176-177,185; see also Hertz, 1960:150, fn. 317). This association between marriage and death is also made by the Rembong of western Flores in eastern Indonesia. However they use a somewhat different metaphor which necessitates an examination of what the processes of "marriage" and "death" are for the Rembong. Both of these ritual processes are seen by the Rembong to be the "creation" of a person, the making of them into "complete" beings. This process involves an "extraction" of a person from a particular social group into which he had been "encompassed" and a process of differentiating http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Asian Journal of Social Science Brill

Becoming Complete among the Rembong: This Life and the Next

Asian Journal of Social Science , Volume 21 (2): 10 – Jan 1, 1993

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Publisher
Brill
Copyright
© 1993 Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands
ISSN
1568-4849
eISSN
1568-5314
DOI
10.1163/030382493X00099
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

10 Becoming Complete among the Rembong: This Life and the Next* Maribeth Erb Department of Sociology, National University of Singapore "Death is not originally conceived as a unique event without any analogue," argued Robert Hertz in 1907 (1960:81), and a number of anthropologists have shown this to be so in several societies around the world (Barley, 1981; Strathern, 1982:120; Parry, 1982:80-81; Forth, 1981; Hoskins, 1988). The similarity between marriage and death has been noted by anthropologists on Sumba, where people say that the dead are like brides, in that they must transfer their allegiance from one community to another (Forth, 1981:205-207; Hoskins, 1988:176-177,185; see also Hertz, 1960:150, fn. 317). This association between marriage and death is also made by the Rembong of western Flores in eastern Indonesia. However they use a somewhat different metaphor which necessitates an examination of what the processes of "marriage" and "death" are for the Rembong. Both of these ritual processes are seen by the Rembong to be the "creation" of a person, the making of them into "complete" beings. This process involves an "extraction" of a person from a particular social group into which he had been "encompassed" and a process of differentiating

Journal

Asian Journal of Social ScienceBrill

Published: Jan 1, 1993

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