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Sumatran Politics and Poetics John R. Bowen

Sumatran Politics and Poetics By John R. Bowen

Sumatran Politics and Poetics by John R. Bowen


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Summary

An analysis of political and cultural change among the Gayo, a Muslim people numbering about 200,000 who live in northern Sumatra. Bowen shows how their successive absorption into colonial and post-colonial states has led them to revise their ritual speaking, sung poetry and historical narrative.

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Sumatran Politics and Poetics Summary

Sumatran Politics and Poetics: Gayo History, 1900-89 by John R. Bowen

In this book, an anthropologist analyzes political and cultural change among the Gayo, a Muslim people numbering about 200,000 who live in the highlands of northern Sumatra. John R.Bowen, who has lived among the Gayo shows how their successive absorption into both colonial and post-colonial states has led them to revise their ritual speaking, sung poetry, and historical narrative. Bowen discusses the phases that have characterized Gayo political and cultural history since 1900: the centralization of political structures and political narratives under Dutch colonial rule, the attempt to implement radically new nationalist and Islamic images of social order in the early years of independence, and the increasingly hierarchcial forms of control and discourse in the post-1965 New Order. He then examines the effect of these changes on Gayo poetics, finding that there have been consistent shifts in the forms of narrative, rhyme, and dialogue. Each shift has brought greater continuity in poetic form and has increasingly represented power as centralized. This work contributes to the comparative study of Indonesian societies. As a study in poetics, it deals with the social context for changes in the form and context of several distinct expressive genres. And as a case study in historical anthropology, it examines the changing, open-ended relationship of political processes and cultural forms.

Table of Contents

Part 1 Contextualizations: overview of Gayo Society and culture. Part 2 History and its representations: political structure and historical narratives; the creation of colonial hierarchies; competing transcendencies - Islam and the Indonesian Nation-state. Part 3 Poetics and its history: authoritative maxims and ritual speaking; poetry and contest, 1900-1945; poetic transformations, 1945-1985; the history of Linge; Islamic reformulations of the past; conclusions - toward a sociohistorical poetics.

Additional information

CIN0300047088VG
9780300047080
0300047088
Sumatran Politics and Poetics: Gayo History, 1900-89 by John R. Bowen
Used - Very Good
Hardback
Yale University Press
19910306
314
N/A
Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
This is a used book - there is no escaping the fact it has been read by someone else and it will show signs of wear and previous use. Overall we expect it to be in very good condition, but if you are not entirely satisfied please get in touch with us

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