Ritual and Ontogeny: Life Cycle Rites in an Eastern Indonesian Society (Ritual Studies Monograph Series)

By Gregory Forth

Like many people, the Nagé of Flores Island recognize "humans,"' "animals," and "spirits" as distinct kinds of being. The book explores how, in performing and interpreting life-cycle rituals, Nagé use these three categories in conceptualizing different stages in a person's coming into being--beginning with fetal existence through entry into adulthood, marriage, and extending to death and beyond. Special attention is given to two unusual, now defunct, and previously non-obligatory ceremonies and how they relate to other life-cycle rites and enduring features of Nagé society, including marriage alliance and treatment of the dead. All these rituals reveal that, for Nagé, an unborn child exists in a largely animal state, becoming fully human only after birth. Funeral rites, by contrast, turn on a belief that the deceased becomes a malevolent spirit before transforming into a disembodied soul. Nevertheless, before this transformation is complete, Nagé also conceive of a person as participating in an animal-like condition. Based on 34 years of anthropological fieldwork (1984-2018), this book is the first general account of Nagé culture and indigenous ritual. Engaging with anthropology's "ontological turn"-- a theoretical approach grounded in the idea that different societies differ fundamentally in the way they understand humans in relation to other beings--it is also the first to explore a society's worldview by focusing on the life cycle and particularly how component rituals express beliefs about the course of a human life. As such, the book will attract anyone interested in how a traditional non-Western community continues to view human existence.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1531027296
• ISBN13: 9781531027292
• Release Date: September 2024
• Publisher: Carolina Academic Press
• Length: 274 Pages