Chapter XVIII: Dynamics of the ceremonial economy

chapter xviii Dynamics of the ceremonial economy In this final chapter, I trace some of the changes that have transformed the Toraja economy over the course of the twentieth century. But, in spite of all the change, perhaps more of a puzzle is the striking continuities in ritual life. No visitor to Tana Toraja can fail to observe the impressive amount of energy and resources that are poured in to ceremonial exchange. Indeed, it is assumed if you are a foreigner that your main purpose in coming there is to witness a funeral ceremony, and suitable destinations will immediately be proposed to you. It seems that neither Christianization, with its attendant alterations of cosmology, nor the demands of educational expenses, nor monetary crisis have been enough to dampen Toraja commitment to the ceremonial economy. Is it possible to discern to what degree, as many people acknowledge to be the case, the system is undergoing inflation?1 Comparative ethnography reveals how far economic systems are culturally constituted, shaped by metaphors of human relations: relations with the cosmos, with animals, or with the land, relations between kin, between men and women, between the living and the ancestors, and so on. In this sense, far from being an isolable sphere, as neoclassical economic theory tells us, economies are embedded and implicated in every other sphere of social life. The economic models and metaphors of non-industrialised societies, Gudeman (1986:147) proposes, are as much integral to the constitution of the ‘social self’, as they are to the webs of exchanges between the self and others. I have talked to many people who, if asked what they see as the enduring elements of Toraja culture, will mention sacrifice at funerals as the quintessential social obligation. One might go so far as to say that the structure of the economy also involves a structuring of the emotions, which find their expression, and confirmation, in socially approved patterns of activity. Viewed in the light of the traditional cosmology, emotional energies were bound up in the efforts put into ritual in order to maintain relations with the deities and the 1 I am grateful to Chris Gregory for his comments on an earlier draft of this chapter and his suggestions for tabulating exchange values in the Toraja economy (see Appendix E). Roxana Waterson - 9789004253858 Downloaded from Brill.com05/28/2020 02:39:59PM via free access 396 Paths and rivers ancestors. The flow of accumulation and distribution of resources, of ritual prestation and counter-prestation, was not just a question of exchange taking place horizontally, between the living (reaffirming or pushing the boundaries of the status hierarchy in the process). It also bore the character of what Gregory (1980) has termed ‘gifts to God(s)’, an exchange with the unseen. As humans accumulated resources in order to stage celebrations, whether for ancestors or deities, they were at the same time living in ‘expectation’ (the recurrently expressed theme of the ma’bua’, and of house rituals, for instance) of the supernatural benefits, blessings, and prosperity which the successful performance of these rites would accomplish. Tato’ Dena’ cited the words of the ancestors, to the effect that buffalo sacrifice at funerals would bring blessing to the sacrifier: Sibu’tu kamarendengan Sia kamassakkeran, Naden matua-tua induk Banu’-banu’ karurungan. It will bring us long life Together with good health, And we’ll live to be as old as the sugar palm [Endure] like hardwoods and sugar palms.2 In considering these relations with the unseen, it is striking how frequently they are characterised as economic transactions. The ceremonial ground itself is symbolically likened, in ritual verse, to a marketplace crowded with people. The moment at which, in the climax of the funeral ceremony, the buffaloes are all tethered on the ceremonial ground prior to being made to fight each other, and then sacrificed, is sometimes called ‘attending the buffalo market’ (ma’pasa’ tedong); people will then walk around and admire them all, appraising their qualities, just as they would in the marketplace. This is also referred to, significantly, as a contest between origin houses (dipasiadu tongkonan) – a phrase which reminds us that individual reputations built on the funeral ground also attach to their houses. Not only this, but all sorts of transactions with the deities are referred to in the idiom of purchase. Whatever humans desire from the deities must be paid for. Hence, before building a house on a new site, one must ask permission from the ampu padang, the spirit ‘owner of the land’, and this ritual is called ‘buying the land’ (unnalli padang). If a couple have been childless for many years, they may enlist the help of a to minaa to perform the ritual called ‘buying a child’ (mangalli anak), summoning the deata to receive offerings at a sacred spot, and requesting their blessing. In case of drought, one may climb the mountainsides to perform the ritual of ‘buying rain’ (mangalli uran). If people want to draw water from a new spring, they 2 Banu’-banu’ is a hardwood tree, and the trunk of the sugar palm is also very dense and hard; both provide timbers useful for house building. Roxana Waterson - 9789004253858 Downloaded from Brill.com05/28/2020 02:39:59PM via free access XVIII Dynamics of the ceremonial economy 397 must first perform the rite of ‘buying the spring’ (unnalli kalimbuang). Even the observation of mourning prohibitions (marau’) is said to serve the purpose of ‘buying health and good fortune’ (unnalli kamarendengan sia kamassakkeran). Ancestors and deities are not expected to yield their blessings without an appropriate material exchange, and it is noteworthy that this is referred to as a payment, rather than by the terms used to talk about gifts or the ceremonial prestations between the living. The latter thus appear to stand apart within the transactional order, in their special role of expressing the binding (and essentially egalitarian) relations between affines. Still, it might be wrong to think that the imagery of ‘buying’ something refers to a commercial transaction as such, especially if we bear in mind the extremely limited use of money in the Toraja economy until very recent times. What characterises all these instances is that the payment is a form of respect, implying a hierarchical relationship; what is ‘bought’ in exchange is not necessarily an object, but rights of use (or, in the case of a child, not an actual child but the ability to conceive one). A parallel example among the living reinforces this interpretation. Commoners, who strictly speaking are entitled only to a one-night funeral, can buy the right to hold a three-night funeral by ‘purchasing the drum’ (unnalli gandang) and ‘purchasing the bamboo’ (unnalli ao’), with the presentation of one quarter buffalo for each item to the nobles of the community (or formerly, in the case of a slave, his master). This mark of respect to those of superior status entitles them to have the drum beaten and to build a meat distribution platform (bala’ kayan), metaphorically referred to as ‘bamboo’. The remaining half of the buffalo is eaten by the guests. At another level, a kind of emotional exchange is involved: people say that they must find buffaloes for sacrifice because that is the proper way to demonstrate support for one’s kin, or one’s affines, in their grief. Buffalo sacrifices ‘take the place of our pain/grief’ (sonda pa’di’ki). People were shocked when I was obliged to admit that westerners did not kill buffaloes for a person who dies; did we, then, feel no grief, they inquired? Individuals are at the same time using the web of paired exchanges as a way to build up their own reputations as people who dare to ‘sacrifice boldly’ (barani mantunu). Rank, reputation and politics combine with kinship obligation, and the delayed reciprocity and endebtedness which it demands, to bind individuals into a social network that to a large degree defines the self. The system of ceremonial credit and debt is thus itself thoroughly embedded in a number of crucial dimensions of Toraja social life. Emotional commitment also has to do with feelings of pride and family honour, which Toraja often express as longko’. Longko’ is sometimes compared to the Bugis concept of siri’, ‘honour/shame’, which in Chabot’s (1996) depiction of village life in the region of Gowa (Makassar), focuses on sexual segregation and the need for a man to avenge insults to his honour, or that Roxana Waterson - 9789004253858 Downloaded from Brill.com05/28/2020 02:39:59PM via free access 398 Paths and rivers of his female relatives, by stabbing. Millar’s more recent ethnography (1989) proposes that a more pervasively relevant concept in the constantly evolving status hierarchy between individuals in Bugis society is that expressed in the Indonesian term, harga diri or ‘self-worth’. The focus in this case is largely upon the individual, whereas when Toraja characterise their own distinctive longko’ Toraya, they are all in agreement that it is essentially a family matter. Ambe’ Kombong from Ullin put it this way: AK: If it’s just one person, what is there to be ashamed of? But if it is our relatives (kasiuluran) – supposing for example my relative (siulu’) is going to perform a ceremony, and I have no pig to bring, then I will feel shame. That is what creates kalongkoran. (RW: But isn’t it better just to go anyway, even without a pig, than to stay away?) AK: Well, yes, it’s better to go and just sit (no’ko’ bang) than not to go at all.3 (RW: Supposing you married someone from another place, say Tondon, and then didn’t have a pig?)4 AK: Oh, that would be worse. That would be even more deeply shaming (la’bi mendalan malongkoran te’e). This response shows both the need to maintain one’s reputation among one’s kin, and the still sharper need to do so in front of affines, if they are unrelated and come from another place. I have been told many stories of the intensified competition this can produce. Another acquaintance stressed that longko’ is a family concern, one that focuses most importantly on two things: the house, and treatment of the dead. Failure to rebuild or maintain the tongkonan is as much a source of shame as failing to repay a debt inherited from a grandparent. Above all, a person will take it very hard if his relatives criticise or reject him. Pride may also drive the aristocracy to keep up their ceremonial reputations, for it is a characteristic of this sort of economy that prestige will wither and be eclipsed if it is not continuously and actively upheld. Rich people, who have received and consumed many shares of meat, will feel ashamed if they fail to sacrifice a lot of pigs and buffaloes in return. In a more general way, people increasingly come to see the ceremonial system as an aspect of their distinctive and increasingly self-conscious identity as ‘Toraja’, within the multi-ethnic Indonesian state. It is said, in defence of continued funeral expenditure, ‘Toraja honour cannot be done away with’ (tae’ na bisa dipa’dei tu longko’ Toraya). 3 ‘Just sitting’ is a common way of describing attendance at a funeral, without having any pig to bring. ‘To clasp one’s armpits’ (ma’koko kalepak) (because one’s hands are empty) is another way of expressing both the shame of not having a pig, and the more over-riding moral necessity to show social solidarity by being present. 4 Tondon is an area known for the pride of its aristocracy, and the scale of its ceremonial expenditure. Roxana Waterson - 9789004253858 Downloaded from Brill.com05/28/2020 02:39:59PM via free access XVIII Dynamics of the ceremonial economy 399 Economic domains and their intersections in the Sa’dan highlands In the broadest sense, the Toraja economy may be described as consisting of three interpenetrating domains. First, there is the domestic, subsistence economy, within which new households are constantly being formed, branching out from older houses, as couples set up new hearths and make a living from the land. The inalienable, non-commoditised character of the land, the bonds of kinship, and the potential immortality of the house over time, all underpin this potentially highly self-sufficient economy.5 Still, it has for long also felt the influences of the market economy. Already in pre-colonial times, the trade links that brought valuable cloths and porcelain up into the highlands, the development in the later nineteenth century of the coffee trade, and the commoditization and export of humans as slaves, provide evidence of this. From Dutch times onward, throughout the twentieth century, the domestic economy has become more and more thoroughly linked into the wider, global commodity economy. Numerous factors are at work here: the inexorably increasing need for cash, the smallholder cultivation of cash crops alongside subsistence crops, the effects of education and the ever-increasing pressure of population on limited land, which draws young people out of the highlands to seek jobs elsewhere, and the development of tourism over the last three decades, have all played a part. In between these two spheres is embedded the ceremonial economy, drawing resources from both of them and defying all expectations of its demise. Traditionally, the most important products of the domestic economy have been rice, pigs, and buffaloes. Thrift in the domestic economy enables surplus rice to be invested annually in chickens or piglets for rearing; larger pigs can be traded for small buffaloes; or the herding of a buffalo might be undertaken in exchange for eventual payment in the form of a calf. In this way the domestic household builds up and converts its surplus into forms that will help it to meet its ritual obligations. Sooner or later, livestock will be fed into the ceremonial economy, for, outside of the towns, animals still are hardly ever slaughtered except in a ritual context. Shares of meat then return to the domestic economy for consumption by the household. The conjugal couple inherits land, as they also inherit unsettled debts from their parents. Family pride (longko’) encourages them to do their best to contribute to the maintenance of origin houses and to ceremonial gift-giving, at 5 Gregory (1982:192), in his analysis of the perpetuation of gift exchange economies in Papua New Guinea, repeatedly makes the point that their endurance and ‘efflorescence’ rests upon the continued non-commoditization of land, which remains under clan control, preventing its takeover by the commodity sector of the economy. On the concept of inalienable property, and its far-reaching importance in Oceanic societies, see Weiner (1992). Roxana Waterson - 9789004253858 Downloaded from Brill.com05/28/2020 02:39:59PM via free access House carvings depicting scenes of daily life and subsistence which underpin the ceremonial economy: a woman feeding a huge tusked boar (bai tora) of the sort much valued as a funeral sacrifice; feeding chickens; carrying home the harvested rice; a Roxana Waterson - 9789004253858 Downloaded from Brill.com05/28/2020 02:39:59PM via free access piebald buffalo (tedong bonga), worth ten times an ordinary black buffalo for sacrificial purposes, with a fine spread of horns and auspicious markings including some that look like heirloom daggers. From an origin house at Pa’gasingan, Menduruk, 1999. Roxana Waterson - 9789004253858 Downloaded from Brill.com05/28/2020 02:39:59PM via free access 402 Paths and rivers the same time as they attempt to make their own house a more solid structure over time. Fritz Basiang, recalling his childhood high on the slopes of Mount Ullin in the early decades of the twentieth century, described how as a small boy living with his grandfather, he had been given a puppy to tend. When the dog was grown up, he traded it to a man from Mamasa, receiving a small pig in exchange. He tended the pig until it was large enough to trade for a buffalo calf. He was in effect learning how to be an actor in the Toraja economy, as all the while, his grandfather kept a watchful eye on his progress. The extent to which the ceremonial economy has the power to siphon off domestic surplus was once brought home to me in a conversation with my friend Indo’ Rembon, who lives in Talion. She once confessed to me with some exasperation that, in a lifetime of effort put into pig-rearing, she had never once been able to sell a single pig for cash, to pay for her children’s education or other family needs; every time she had one big enough to sell, it would be needed to repay some ceremonial debt or other. At that time, she even said to me that, if she knew she were dying, she would prefer to go down to Makassar to stay with her daughter, because if she died away from home, her children would not be shamed into having an expensive funeral and possibly having to pawn the family rice fields to pay for it.6 It is easy to see, then, how tightly the domestic and ceremonial economies are interlocked. Even as late as the 1970s, the household economy of most villagers was largely self-sufficient, and only a limited range of goods (oil, salt, soap, kerosene, cigarettes, packets of instant noodles, biscuits, or monosodium glutamate) was available for purchase at tiny wayside stores. The weekly markets offered a wider range of goods, including kitchen ware, metal tools, clothing, sarongs, hats and sandals. Buttang villagers were usually short of cash for needed items, as well as to pay for school uniforms, school fees, taxes, bus fares and so on. Their main way of raising money was to sell surplus rice or coffee beans, or fish from ricefield ponds, or to bake cakes or collect tuak (palm wine) which could be sold on market days. All the same, some men seemed able to produce surprisingly large sums of money at the occasional illegal cockfight, held in inaccessible places in the hills. Cloves, although a valuable cash crop, were not so widely cultivated in Malimbong as in some other areas. By the 1990s, however, some noticeable changes had taken place in the village economy, which is not as self-sufficient as it looks. In fact land, rice, pigs and buffaloes are all in short supply in Tana Toraja. If standards of living have improved, this is due in large part to an increasing interconnec6 Fifteen years later, she had changed her mind; she had stayed for some time with her youngest, married daughter, a school teacher, in Makassar, but found the heat didn’t agree with her. Food lost its savour, she maintained: in the highlands, the cooler atmosphere improved one’s appetite, and everything seemed tastier. She had given up the thought of moving to the city. Roxana Waterson - 9789004253858 Downloaded from Brill.com05/28/2020 02:39:59PM via free access XVIII Dynamics of the ceremonial economy 403 tion with the commmodity economy. One source of new wealth from outside is remittances from migrant relatives working elsewhere. Population in the highlands has always been high relative to the rest of South Sulawesi, and as it grows it has brought increasing pressure to bear on land. A friend who has often taken tourists around commented how frequently outsiders remark on the beauty of the Toraja landscape and declare, ‘It’s a paradise!’ But he replies, ‘It’s only a paradise to the eyes; otherwise, why would so many people leave?’ In the 1970s, many young men went to Palu in Central Sulawesi, to work for logging companies; these days, a more popular destination is Kalimantan. Another development has been the growing importance of cocoa and, increasingly, vanilla, as new cash crops. Like other Indonesian farmers, Toraja had initially gained some benefit from the monetary crisis when, following Suharto’s fall in 1998, his son Tommy’s monopoly on chocolate prices had been lifted. This sent prices soaring from Rp. 2,400/kilo to Rp. 15-20,000/ kilo, though by 1999 they had levelled off again at Rp. 5,000/kilo, and in 2004 had dropped back to under Rp. 4,000. Vanilla is difficult to grow – the flowers must be fertilized by hand during the night – but prices have risen sharply over the last few years. By 2004 it was fetching a price of Rp. 200-300,000/kilo in its fresh state, double the price of five years before; dried pods had been selling for as much as Rp. 1 million/kilo. Toraja is not self-sufficient in rice – its own production would only be sufficient to last the population for four or five months of the year – so substantial imports from the lowlands make up the difference. When I lived in Buttang during the 1970s, most villagers had insufficient land to keep them in rice for a year, and made up the shortfall by eating large amounts of cassava. But now, cassava has almost dropped out of the diet, as chocolate and vanilla profits have enabled people to buy imported rice instead. Even coffee has been keeping up with the times. The best coffee in Toraja is grown on the slopes of Sesean, which offers favourably high altitudes exceeding 1000 metres above sea level. Here for many years a Japanese company, Toroako, enjoyed a virtual monopoly on contracts with smallholders. But Toroako now finds itself facing stiff competition from local buyers, sent up from Makassar by free-lance European and American coffee-buying businesses in order to buy direct from the farmers, offering slightly better prices. A similar company has been formed locally by Pak Ulia’s eldest daughter and her husband, who market high-quality Toraja Arabica beans as a ‘boutique’ speciality to companies like Starbucks and Specialty Coffees of America. They travel regularly to Brazil and Johannesburg to study cultivation methods there, though they still maintain that Toraja coffee is second to none in quality. Thus the history of the coffee trade from the Toraja highlands has entered a new chapter, though growers here are not much more likely than any others in the world to share much of the profit from soaring global consumption. Roxana Waterson - 9789004253858 Downloaded from Brill.com05/28/2020 02:39:59PM via free access 404 Paths and rivers Another noticeable change in the domestic economy is the value of work. It has become more difficult for the aristocracy to command the labour of others, and as the economy has become more monetized, cooperative work groups formed by village neighbours have ceased to be popular. There were no more saroan groups being formed by village men in Buttang by the 1990s, though women still sometimes worked garden land in groups. Mostly nowadays people prefer to work for themselves, and day wages have risen in line with inflation. By 2004, a day’s wage was Rp. 15-20,000, together with food and cigarettes. In the past, agricultural labour was customarily paid in kind at harvest time. Bigalke (1981:394-5) notes that the first signs of a breakdown in this system appeared in the early 1950s, when left-wing organizations, mostly in the regions around the towns, pressed for wage labour as an alternative to the payments in kind which until then had served to bind clients to their aristocratic patrons. But payment in kind was still widespread throughout Tana Toraja at the end of the 1970s, and if cash was paid, the amount was equivalent to the market value of the rice. A day’s ploughing was traditionally valued at ten bunches (kutu’) of rice, payment being deferred until harvest time.7 This would yield about 2 litres of rice, barely enough to feed a family for a day. In 1978, the cash wage was Rp. 260, the market price of 2 litres of rice. Women who worked at planting and harvesting received one bunch (kutu’) of rice in every ten that they cut, and could also earn about ten bunches a day. Balusu (to the northeast of Rantepao) and Malimbong were the two areas where payment in kind continued to endure the longest, but by the 1980s it was already losing popularity, and labour shortages in some areas had forced up the value of a day’s work. When staying in Talion in 1983 a young man there complained to me that he was sick of ploughing for a fee of rice, considering it far too much work for insufficient return. He had been to Palopo in search of paid work instead, and found a job on an agricultural development project. By that time, the daily wage if paid in cash was Rp. 1,250, enough to buy 5 litres of rice in the market, so the old forms of payment were falling behind in value, though they might still obtain among close relatives. Indo’ Rembon, for instance, had a large number of brothers and sisters living close by, and she still called on members of their families, as well as a few unrelated neighbours, to help plough her fields. Her husband was often absent, since he had a job as a long-distance lorry-driver. She explained that although the old rate of payment in kind was worth less than cash payment, being close family they would still accept it: “They help me out, because they know I haven’t got the cash.” Nowadays cash has become the norm, and there is sufficient 7 A kutu’ pare is a small sheaf of rice, big enough for the stalks to fill a ring made by the harvester’s thumb and index finger; the equivalent Indonesian expression is ikat padi). Roxana Waterson - 9789004253858 Downloaded from Brill.com05/28/2020 02:39:59PM via free access XVIII Dynamics of the ceremonial economy 405 A boy leads a prized black buffalo to graze in the early morning at Pokko’, Malimbong, 1979. Herding used to be the job of children, but now that they are all in school, fewer households are keeping buffaloes today. To keep up with ceremonial demand, many must be imported from other parts of Indonesia. shortage of willing labour for workers to be able to demand much better rates for jobs like harvesting. Sharecroppers, too, can now negotiate a much larger share of the crop for themselves. In 1978 the rate in Malimbong had risen to 1/2, from the previous 1/3, 3/8 or even as little as 1/4 in the more distant past. But by the early 1980s around Rantepao the sharecropper could demand 2/3 of the crop. That change took a little longer to spread to Malimbong. It has become harder, too, for nobles to compel village support when they are making up an entourage to accompany them to funerals; members of a rombongan nowadays expect to be paid a wage in exchange for their time. Another change in the subsistence economy is the decline of buffalo herding. These days in Malimbong, one sees fewer and fewer buffaloes; one of the reasons for this is that people find it troublesome to look after them. In the past, it was the job of children of both sexes, but especially boys, to tend the buffaloes. They would take them out onto the hillsides all day to graze them. The life of a herd boy was a phase of childhood which Hollan and Wellenkamp’s informants looked back on nostalgically as a bittersweet time of hardship (often being hungry and out in all weathers, having to cope with fractious buffaloes and prevent them from getting into other people’s Roxana Waterson - 9789004253858 Downloaded from Brill.com05/28/2020 02:39:59PM via free access 406 Paths and rivers rice fields and gardens), but also of great personal freedom (Hollan and Wellenkamp 1996:50-6). Fritz Basiang recalled how he would call and whoop to other boys so that they could gather to herd their animals together and keep each other company, how they would sometimes help themselves to small amounts of maize from people’s gardens (a legitimate practice), or bake buffalo milk for themselves inside a pumpkin coated with clay (Waterson 2007). In Buttang in the 1970s, buffaloes were an impressive, snorting presence within the village when brought in and tethered near the houses, and we occasionally would have cooked buffalo milk to put on our rice at breakfast. But now, children are in school all day and are not available for such labours; moreover, land use has intensified to the point where there is not enough grazing left for them. So buffalo-herding has virtually stopped being part of the household economy. Shifting measures of value: buffaloes and money In the commodity economy, money is the medium of exchange. But in the indigenous economy of the Toraja highlands, the buffalo was the essential reference point and standard of value. In the Toraja cosmology, older people explained, buffaloes, rice and humans stood in a special, triangular relationship to each other. If the emphasis in Rites of the East was upon rice, the highlight of Rites of the West was buffalo sacrifice. Both were essential to the completion of the ritual cycle. Buffaloes could be valued in rice, and the exchange of one for the other was highly ritualised. Within the local system, the tracing of equivalences is complicated by the fact that in the past, relatively few transactions had the character of a sale. Land, for instance, although valued in terms of buffalo, was an inalienable form of property that was almost never sold. Over the course of the twentieth century, the local economy, with its all-important ceremonial dimensions, has been thrown more and more into contact with a global, monetary economy, causing dramatic shifts in the relationship between these two measures of value, buffaloes and money. At the same time, more and more of life’s daily economic transactions have assumed a commercial character. What has happened as these competing standards of value have been drawn into contact with each other? Buffaloes are seldom used for ploughing in Tana Toraja. In many places the land is too steep, and the rice terraces too narrow, for anything but hand ploughing with an iron-bladed hoe; and in the past few years, the hire of small paddy-field tractors has become common. Instead of being made to work, buffaloes are cossetted and carefully tended until the day of their eventual sacrifice. The display of buffaloes at mortuary ceremonies fundamentally affects the way their value is calculated. Each animal chosen for a funeral is Roxana Waterson - 9789004253858 Downloaded from Brill.com05/28/2020 02:39:59PM via free access XVIII Dynamics of the ceremonial economy 407 still carefully assessed and appreciated in terms of individual features such as its colour and size, the length and shape of its horns, and the distribution of palisu (the whorls of hair such as humans have on the crown of the head) in favourable or unfavourable locations on its body.8 Asymmetrical or downward-pointing horns diminish an animal’s value. A complicated vocabulary exists for naming the different shapes and curves of the horns, and also their length. Measurements are based upon the human arm, starting with one joint of the finger progressing to the length from the fingertips to the centre of the palm, one palm’s length and so on. A standard size by which the value of other buffaloes is measured is called sangpala’ (literally, ‘one palm’), meaning that the horns measure from the tip of one’s fingers to a distance of one palm’s breadth up the arm from the wrist. An animal of this size is usually about two years old. A length half way up the forearm is called alla’ tarin, also often used as a standard. Black buffaloes are favoured, while grey or white ones have little value. According to myth, a white buffalo helped the wandering hero Laki Padada to ford a river, in return for a promise that his descendants would never eat the meat of white buffaloes, and the Toraja will not eat them to this day. ‘Grey buffalo’ (tedong sambau’) is a term sometimes used metaphorically to refer to a low-status person; at high-ranking funerals, the sacrifice of grey animals will be avoided. Buffaloes bred in the South Sulawesi lowlands have a pinkish colour; although plentiful there, they are never imported to Tana Toraja, where they are considered worthless as mortuary sacrifices. Most highly valued of all are piebald buffalo, the tedong bonga, a recessive variety found only in Toraja, which sell for ten to twelve times the value of a black animal of the standard sangpala’ size. The value of these is based on their rarity, for it is unpredictable whether any particular buffalo cow might give birth to one, and there is no other source of supply. Their value in relation to the black sangpala’ has held constant over time, in spite of the rapidity of inflation. As for pigs, they are also evaluated in terms of their size, by means of a girth measurement taken with a bamboo string around the stomach. The very largest pigs are equivalent in value to smaller buffaloes. As in other ceremonial economies, then, valuables are ranked in relation to each other, in this case principally in terms of meaningful differences such as size, colour, and other desirable personal physical features.9 The qualities that affect the ranking of things are essentially aesthetic qualities that appeal to the emotions. This ranking or exchange-order contrasts in a fundamental way with 8 See also Nooy-Palm (1979:184-9) for details on the measurement and shapes of horns. On the ranking of valuables in some Melanesian societies, compare Baric (1964) on Rossell Island, Campbell (1983) on the shell armbands and necklaces used in the famous Kula exchange system of the Massim region of southeastern Papua New Guinea, and Gregory (1982:47) for a general discussion of principles. 9 Roxana Waterson - 9789004253858 Downloaded from Brill.com05/28/2020 02:39:59PM via free access 408 Paths and rivers the monetary value or exchange-ratio of things in a commodity economy, which creates equivalences between things without affecting the status of the transactors. For rank order is of a qualitative rather than quantitative nature, and it will exercise an effect upon the ranking of the transactors themselves (compare Gregory 1983:109; Campbell 1983:246). When one incurs a debt, there is an obligation to repay with an animal of at least equal size to the one that was given. If a smaller one is offered, the recipient may decline to accept it as repayment of the original gift, allowing it instead to become the opening gift of a new exchange-pair. The original debt then remains to be settled.10 Dutch missionaries criticised the funeral sacrifices as wasteful, comparing them to the competitive destruction of wealth of the potlatch ceremonies of the Pacific Northwest Coast. The actual destruction of wealth was a rare and mostly late feature of the potlatch, but as I have discussed elsewhere (Waterson 1993), there are some interesting parallels between these societies. They both have rank systems, determining social positions, names, titles, ownership of property or ceremonial paraphernalia; in both, the ceremonies held at death (or on other occasions) involve large-scale distributions by which claims to rank are upheld and validated, while in both, prestige atrophies if it is not continually upheld; thirdly, one always potlatches to affines, with whom relationships are both reciprocal and competitive.11 On this point, however, the Toraja case represents an inversion of the potlatch pattern. At a potlatch, it is the hosts who give to their guests, thereby endebting them, whereas as we have seen, at a Toraja funeral it is the affines, arriving as guests, who place their hosts in debt by presenting them with buffaloes and pigs. Land has always been valued in buffaloes, but as we saw in Chapter XIII, although there were ways in which it could change hands, sale of land was almost unheard of. Traditionally the main way in which land has changed hands has been through pledging or pawning, in exchange for loans of buffalo. But in the past two decades, two new and partly connected factors have been significantly altering the value of land. These are the development of tourism, and the closeness of a plot to a main road. During this time many new buildings, including hotels, guest houses and restaurants, have appeared along the main road between Ma’kale and Rantepao. Land along this belt, as well as in and around the two towns, has shot up in value. The development of a commercial value for land and the increased possibilities for selling it 10 This feature also bears comparison with Kula and other Melanesian gift exchange sys- tems. 11 Rubel and Rosman (1971) draw attention to these features in another Austronesian society, the Maori, which they suggest can be characterised as a ‘potlatch society’; of particular interest to me is the fact that all three societies are also classic examples of ‘house societies’ in Lévi-Strauss’s sense. Roxana Waterson - 9789004253858 Downloaded from Brill.com05/28/2020 02:39:59PM via free access XVIII Dynamics of the ceremonial economy 409 have begun to pull apart the age-old equivalences between land and buffaloes. Land that was pawned long ago for a certain number of buffaloes may now be worth many times more in cash. For this reason, the owner may be reluctant to allow redemption of the original debt. Some people say that for this reason, and because of the potential for disputes, people are now more reluctant to pledge land than formerly, if they can raise funds in other ways. Conversely, others point out that there is still considerable advantage to be had from making loans of buffalo in exchange for land in pawn. As the cash value of buffaloes continues to inflate, one stands to gain very high interest on a loan, or else the original owner may find it difficult to redeem at all. If land has been repeatedly pawned, then its value in buffaloes may also have risen. A schoolteacher’s wife in Ma’kale described to me how she had recently sought to redeem a family rice field which had been pawned in exchange for two buffaloes in 1978. It had been pledged to a distant cousin, the wife of the Puang of Sangalla’, but her children had subsequently pawned it again to a third party as security for the loan of a spotted buffalo, worth 14 ordinary beasts, which they wanted to sacrifice at her funeral. The current holder therefore refused to accept the offer of redemption at the original value of two buffaloes, and she had had to pay 14 buffaloes to get it back. But, as she explained, that rice field bore the name of a family ancestor, and the family would have felt ashamed not to redeem it. Such examples indicate that, even though the value of land may be changing in some respects, older attachments do not necessarily die away. The land itself retains its personal name and the qualitative value of its historical link to an ancestor. Carpenters and stonemasons have traditionally been paid in buffaloes, and so the costs of building houses and barns, or hollowing out a stone tomb (liang), are customarily calculated in buffaloes. The carpenters’ fees for construction of a house are typically 8 buffaloes or more, though within the past ten years it has become more common for them to take payment in cash. They prefer to be paid in buffaloes ‘for fear of losing out’, since the value of buffaloes has continued to rise so rapidly. If paid in cash, the money still stands for a fixed number of buffaloes, the amount being calculated at the going market rate, so payment has not departed from the buffalo standard. Currently, for construction of a traditional tongkonan, complete with carving, carpenters may charge Rp. 90-120 million, or up to 20 buffaloes of the alla’ tarin size, worth Rp. 6 million each. In 2000, the cost of a liang was around 6 or 7 large buffaloes with horns as long as the distance from the tip of one’s fingers to the elbow (sangsiku), each of which was then worth around Rp. 7 million. In a divorce, if a couple have built a house on new land and are to divide it between them, the one remaining in the house must pay to the spouse who leaves half of its value in buffaloes. In the past, various other luxury items, the privilege of the aristocracy, were always paid for in this way – gold necklaces (rara’), and Roxana Waterson - 9789004253858 Downloaded from Brill.com05/28/2020 02:39:59PM via free access 410 Paths and rivers the long-stemmed wooden bowls (dulang) from which only the nobility used to eat, before the advent of cheap enamelware and china. Working through court records in Ma’kale, I even came across a case dated 1965, but referring back to a transaction made in 1947, which concerned a dispute over a sewing machine valued at four buffaloes. As a reflection of the sewing machine’s monetary value, we may take this as an indication of the high value of Dutch currency against buffaloes, even at the close of the colonial era. The penetration of money into the Toraja economy has been a very slow and long-drawn-out process which has continued throughout the twentieth century, with some signs of an acceleration just within the last few years. People who were very old in the 1970s could remember earlier times when little coinage circulated in the highlands, and its uses were restricted and partly ornamental. In pre-Dutch times, limited use had been made of Portuguese coins, which were called oang by the Toraja (cognate with I.: uang, ‘money’). One dozen of these was called sareala’; two dozen (duandiala’) was equivalent in value to 1/8 buffalo, so that 192 oang equalled one buffalo. There were also copper coins bearing the image of a cock, called doi’ manuk, a currency minted by the English for use in the Straits Settlements, and Dutch coins of the VOC period. Bigalke (1981:38) notes that, according to the account of Van Rijn (1902), just before the Dutch takeover of the highlands, trade in local markets was largely by barter, complemented by some use of Dutch coinage. Money, as a strange and scarce good, was as likely to be used for decorative purposes, or placed in a bowl of water to be drunk by a sick person, as it was to be used in commercial transactions (Volkman 1985:32). According to Pak Kila’, Chinese, Portuguese or Dutch coins were ‘all the same’ to Toraja of the precolonial era, ‘because they were not literate and couldn’t tell the difference, and because they had no laws or government to organize such things’. His comment draws attention to the historical function of currencies as instruments of statehood, which as we have seen, was not a feature of Toraja politics in pre-Dutch times. Still, like other devices of the lowland states, this one too produced an echo in the highlands; according to Tato’ Dena’, wealthier members of the Toraja aristocracy sometimes produced their own imitations for trading purposes by pressing gold or silver into circular moulds to make coin-like shapes called raga-raga, which however lacked any distinguishing motifs. For about ten years after the arrival of the Dutch, people continued to use oang, as they were only gradually replaced by the Dutch coins known as gulden (later Rupiah) and ringgit (100 sen (cents) = 2 ½ gulden = 1 ringgit). Tato’ Dena’ recalled that the Portuguese oang was valued at 1 oang to 1 dokko’ (a coin worth 2 ½ Dutch cents). Eventually, as more Dutch currency came into circulation, oang were then used to make necklaces, bracelets, anklets and to decorate the hems of special sarongs worn by noble ladies at certain ceremonies. Ringgit have also been used in this way since Independence in 1949 and the introduction of the Rupiah. Roxana Waterson - 9789004253858 Downloaded from Brill.com05/28/2020 02:39:59PM via free access XVIII Dynamics of the ceremonial economy 411 When they first came into circulation, 4 ringgit were worth one buffalo in Malimbong, though people in Rantepao and other areas recalled that a buffalo could be bought for 2 ringgit. Why the Dutch currency should have had such a higher value than the Portuguese, I was not able to discover; the Dutch coins were reportedly of heavier silver, but probably one must also look for an explanation in terms of the wider economic transformations triggered by Dutch takeover. The rates they set, however, remained stable until World War II. At first, older acquaintances recall, ringgit were in very short supply. The introduction of a head tax compelled a need for cash that had never existed before, but the only people who had ready access to it were the handful of clerks and teachers who worked for the Dutch and received wages, or the village chiefs who were put in charge of tax collection, and were thus able to siphon off a share of their takings for personal use. Other than these few, only those with large enough surpluses of rice to sell found it easy to obtain cash. Besides the gulden and ringgit, Dutch coinage also included coins worth 50 cents (suku), 25 cents (setali), and 10 cents (ketip), all of silver, a 5 cent nickel coin with a hole in the middle, which the Toraja called to’tok tanga, and copper coins worth 2 ½ cents (dokko’), 4 cents (benggol), 1 cent (sen), and ½ cent (remis). Church Minister Herman Rapa’ of Pangala’, whom I interviewed in 1999, recalled that in Dutch times, rice was still often used as a measure of value, with 10 kutu’ being equal to 10 cents, or one ketip. He was one of the few Toraja to be admitted to higher education during the colonial period (he had attended the Dutch-language secondary school or MULO in Makassar in 1942) which enabled him to qualify as a school teacher. He recalled that his starting salary in 1947 was 85 gulden per month, a sum which the Dutch no doubt considered modest, but which in terms of local values had seemed to him a small fortune. Since at that time, the price of 1 sangpala’ buffalo was 5 gulden, this was the equivalent of 17 buffaloes per month! This example provides a vivid indication of the peculiar relationship between local and ‘global’ values in the Toraja economy, at the very tail end of the colonial era. The purchasing power of money was disproportionately high in terms of a scheme of local values within which the buffalo still held pride of place. Or to put it another way, evidently the Dutch judged the value of buffaloes very differently from the Toraja. By way of comparison, a teacher’s salary in the year 2000 was Rp. 1.2 million, while the price of a sangpala’ buffalo was Rp. 3.5-4 million. The teacher’s salary now has less than 2% of the buffalo-purchasing power that it did in 1947, or to put it another way, since that time the monetary value of buffaloes has risen by over 5000%! Today, the buffalo’s place in the local economy remains uniquely important. But it has become much easier to think of buffaloes in terms of their equivalent in money. Events in Indonesia have caused repeated drastic devaluations of the Rupiah, culminating most recently and dramatically in its collapse against Roxana Waterson - 9789004253858 Downloaded from Brill.com05/28/2020 02:39:59PM via free access 412 Paths and rivers the dollar with the Asian monetary crisis of 1997. This is one reason why the money value of buffaloes has skyrocketed; but it is also a result of the continuing demand for animals within the ceremonial economy. Older people’s recollections indicate that at one time, buffaloes as a measure of value were even more singularised than they are now. In the past, a certain equivalence was fixed between rice and buffaloes. The various restrictions surrounding the exchange of these two all-important items suggest that symbolic and ceremonial concerns dominated over instrumentalist ones in the economy. Buffaloes also had their equivalences in pigs. According to S.T. Mangesa’ (Ambe’ Pakiding), until around 1930, it was prohibited (pemali) to sell a buffalo for less than four pigs (or three pigs, for a very small one). In Rantepao and other areas, people recalled that a rate of 1,500 kutu’ of rice to one buffalo was common, but in Malimbong it was over 4,000. If exchanging a buffalo for rice, one could not give a round sum, but had to add 100 to 200 extra kutu’ as well, to be the buffalo’s ‘tail’ (ikko’na). So not only was a very high value maintained for buffaloes relative to rice, but also the exchange required a sort of personification of the equivalent quantity of rice, animated by the addition of a ‘tail’. Furthermore, exchanges had a peculiar, ritualised character, for on any occasion outside of a market place, when buffaloes were sold, or given over in payment of fines (for instance, as kapa’ at a divorce), the recipient had to kill a pig and give four flat winnowing-trays full of cooked rice (barang bo’bo’) for each animal. If the beast was a good one, valued at, say, six ordinary buffaloes of the sangpala’ size, then twenty-four trays of rice had to be presented. This mode of formalising the transaction was called ma’tombang. Tombang means ‘a buffalo’s wallowing-hole’, to which the round winnowing-tray is compared; it is said that the buffalo is being ditombang, ‘allowed to wallow’. Pak Frans Dengen (Papa’ Gory), a schoolteacher who lives in Ma’kale, recalled from his childhood days that large households, if short of rice for consumption, would sometimes use a buffalo to purchase rice from the grower in advance of harvest, while it was still in the field. Rice purchased in this way was termed pare denne’ or pare pa’tedongan. During the 1940s and 1950s, this was done partly because transport was so difficult that it was hard to bring rice from areas outside of Toraja to meet a shortfall. Another common reason for such an exchange might be the need to have large quantities of rice to feed to guests at a funeral or other ceremony, or to feed carpenters building a house. Up till the 1950s, one buffalo was worth 1,500 kutu’ of rice. According to Pak Banti (Papa’ Mawiring), who comes from Sa’dan, the exchange of a buffalo for rice was not that common, and was more likely to be a form of loan. In the past, someone who found themselves short of rice might go to a wealthy landowner and ask to borrow rice to the value of 1,500 or 1,600 kutu’, with a promise to pay it back at the end of a year, and offering a buffalo as security. Another practice was to request a slightly smaller sum of 1,200 kutu’, Roxana Waterson - 9789004253858 Downloaded from Brill.com05/28/2020 02:39:59PM via free access XVIII Dynamics of the ceremonial economy 413 with a promise to repay by sacrificing one sangpala’ buffalo at the funeral of a designated relative of the lender, say a parent. This was called dipa’padio kale, ‘intended for the body’. Repayment might then be some years off, and if when the moment came, one could produce only a smaller beast, the lender would have little choice but to accept it anyway; moreover, more than half the meat of the sacrificed animal would be given back to its owner anyway. This sort of arrangement, while clearly from the lender’s point of view a means to expand the size of funerals staged for one’s parents, was rather advantageous to the borrower, and in Papa’ Mawiring’s view is an indication of the generosity of the wealthy in the past toward the poor. This he sees as having been characteristic of the northerly Sa’dan nobility, from which he himself derives, by contrast with the aristocracy of the south. In other areas, by contrast, I was told stories of aristocrats who in the old days found various means to commandeer the buffaloes of commoners, though such anecdotal evidence is very hard to assess. But it was certainly not impossible even for poor people to acquire buffaloes, since the payment for tending another person’s buffalo cow was eventually to receive one of its calves. In Malimbong, exchanges continued to be ditombang until around 1950, but the amount of rice required had declined. By 1978, at the time of my first stay in Tana Toraja, one sangpala’ buffalo might fetch only 2,000 kutu’ or a single very large pig, and Ambe’ Pakiding told me he had once, when in urgent need of rice, even sold two buffaloes for as little as 3,500 kutu’. Sales by this date were no longer being ditombang, though once during my residence in Malimbong I did hear of this practice being carried out by a woman in Talion who was getting divorced. Her husband wished to remarry, and came to pay her the kapa’ or divorce fine of a buffalo, and she killed a pig and prepared the trays of rice in exchange. Pak Pasang Kanan of Sangalla’ commented that, up until the 1970s, rice was commonly sold in the market in its unthreshed state, as kutu’ pare. Once rice mills became more common, it became more convenient to sell it as grain (barra’), off the stem, so the valuation of buffaloes in terms of kutu’ has lost its relevance. By the 1990s, rice was almost invariably sold as grain, by the litre, so the equivalences between buffaloes and sheaves of rice have ceased to be relevant within the local system of values. Inflation in the value of buffaloes has been remarkable. In 1978, at the time of my first fieldwork, a buffalo of sangpala’ size was worth about Rp. 100,000 (then about £ 150 or US $ 280), while a good spotted buffalo could fetch Rp. 500-600,000 (between £ 700-850, or US $ 2800). Devaluation of the Rupiah in the latter half of 1978 brought its exchange value down to approximately Rp. 1,000/£ or Rp. 520/US $. In May 1979, a record price of Rp. 1 million was paid for a spotted buffalo in the market at Rantepao. Three years later, in November 1982, an enormous funeral was held at Karassik, south of Rantepao, at which an equivalent of 789 sangpala’ buffaloes was sacrificed (the actual total of beasts Roxana Waterson - 9789004253858 Downloaded from Brill.com05/28/2020 02:39:59PM via free access 414 Paths and rivers would have been less, since this included all sorts of fine animals, including piebald ones, whose value was worth several sangpala’ each). Exceptionally large pigs may be included in this calculation too, as being worth one buffalo each. The details were shared with me by Pak Ulia Salu Rapa’ of Nanggala, who had paid the then highest price ever for a spotted buffalo, for presentation at this funeral – Rp. 3 million. His reputation for buffalo sacrifice was then unrivalled throughout Tana Toraja. At this time he explained to me that the cost of what he chose to describe as even modest funerals had risen to Rp. 50 million. He explained that, as a descendant of the ruling house of Nanggala, one of whose grandparents had had a funeral of 400 buffaloes, if he himself were to kill, say, only 10 for his mother, he would forfeit immediately all the accumulated status of the family and could expect public scorn. His mother, who had for years been regarded as the head of the family, did indeed receive large shares of meat at any ceremony she attended, but then, she herself and her ancestors had also sacrificed a lot. ‘If I were to fail to hold a big funeral for her,’ he told me, ‘people would say to me: “All that meat your mother received has become your own flesh; why aren’t you going to pay it back?”.’ On the other hand, he explained, rich westerners or bureaucrats from Jakarta, who have often criticised the funeral sacrifices as wasteful, failed to take account of the socially redistributive dimension of the division of meat on these occasions. Such people, he commented, would be more likely to spend their money on a Mercedes, but they would never think of stopping to give the villagers a lift in it. Donzelli (2003:89) records a remarkably similar comment from one of her acquaintances, who expressed his moral obligation to repay the meat that his parents and he himself as a child had received, and which had become his own substance. This person went on to argue, in best anthropological style, that every culture has its own measures of value; Toraja are no more irrational in paying high prices for the buffaloes they deemed most beautiful, than westerners are in being willing to pay for diamonds, whose value is also in the eye of the beholder. One might go so far as to say that ritual here works to ensure the reproduction not only of a social system, but of persons themselves; a ‘person of substance’ (or more precisely, a family) is one who has eaten a lot of meat, and has thereby inherited the obligation to pay it back. Later, in the 1990s, I visited Pak Ulia again, and found that he had become a born-again Christian, leaving Gereja Toraja to join a newer church, the Gereja Kasih Persaudaraan or ‘Church of Brotherly Love’, an offshoot of the USA’s Church of Bethel, which now has the largest church building in Rantepao. Doubtless he has nothing more to prove in the mortuary arena; at any rate, he now talked less of the centrality of buffalo sacrifice in the Toraja way of life, stressing that the Christian faith requires humility. In any case, Pak Ulia’s reputation as one who dares to ‘sacrifice boldly’ (barani mantunu) is already unassailable. Roxana Waterson - 9789004253858 Downloaded from Brill.com05/28/2020 02:39:59PM via free access XVIII Dynamics of the ceremonial economy 415 When I returned to Tana Toraja in 1994, after an absence of eleven years, I learned that a sangpala’ buffalo was now worth Rp. 500,000 (around US $ 230), and the top price for a spotted buffalo had risen to Rp. 10 million (then about US $ 4,630). But acquaintances told me of a man in Ma’kale who had an animal for which he was asking Rp. 13 million; he had had an offer of Rp. 12 million but had turned it down, and it remained to be seen whether anyone was prepared to pay what he was asking. One might have expected that the financial crisis of 1997, which brought the Rupiah crashing to its lowest levels ever, might have put a check on Toraja enthusiasm for mortuary sacrifice, but the escalation of livestock values seems to have continued unabated. By 1999, the cost of even a sangpala’ buffalo had soared to Rp. 3 million, and the best spotted beasts were fetching Rp. 40 million; in 2002, sangpala’ buffaloes were worth Rp. 4 million, and prices for tedong bonga were reaching up to ten times that amount.12 People from Sa’dan like to claim that they are the ones who, in all of Toraja, are the most dedicated to buffalo sacrifice; that they will go to any trouble, not just to accumulate large numbers of animals, but a variety of beautiful, highest quality buffaloes with different kinds of desirable features. Returning to Rantepao from a visit to my Menduruk family in November 2002, I stopped by as I often did at the house of Papa’ Mawiring. He was out, but Mama’ Mawiring talked about the preparations being made for a large funeral at Sangkombong in Sa’dan, for Nene’ Kala’, a relative of his who had passed away the previous year. She lamented that I had not been with them a few days previously, when they had been to Sangkombong to inspect the buffaloes gathered there in readiness for the final mortuary ceremony. There were to be at least fifty buffaloes sacrificed at this ceremony, she told me, and it was a fine sight to see thirty of them already corralled in the house yard, all excellent, large beasts; as well as some spotted, they included others that were all black, or had huge horns, or favourably positioned whorls of hair (palisu) on their hides, or which were known to be good at fighting (manglaga), a feature that would add honour and excitement to the ceremony.13 A buffalo with very large horns ‘makes the funeral complete’, she told me. Mama’ Mawiring 12 I have not given further conversions, since the weakening of the Rupiah meant that prices between these years remained roughly equivalent in sterling. The rate in 1994 was approx. Rp. 3,400/£; by 1998 it had risen to around Rp. 13,000/£, and in 2002 it was over Rp. 14,000/£. 13 Before being sacrificed, the buffaloes are encouraged to fight each other in fallow rice fields beside the funeral ground. Like the men’s kick-fighting bouts and the cock-fights which are also traditionally a feature of high-ranking funerals, this can be interpreted as a means of stirring up ritual ‘heat’ or intensity on the funeral ground. Kick-fighting has been more or less prohibited since the 1970s, however, since it sometimes escalated into real fights, and no permits were being issued for cockfights even at the highest ranking funerals during the 1980s and 1990s, in an effort to stamp out gambling. Roxana Waterson - 9789004253858 Downloaded from Brill.com05/28/2020 02:39:59PM via free access 416 Paths and rivers could list with ease the names of half a dozen people (including her husband) who are well known in Sa’dan for their regular sacrificing of spotted buffaloes. Buffaloes with favourable features, she commented, bring good fortune to the one who sacrifices them, and to his or her descendants: ‘Masakke-sakke lan katuonanna; maluna-luna utan nakalutte’, she added – ‘they will be cool (enjoy good health) in their life; they will pick the juiciest vegetables (have good fortune)’.14 If the palisu on an animal are not well placed, by contrast, bad fortune, poverty, or sudden death may be expected to follow. Mama’ Mawiring’s comments indicate an aesthetic enjoyment in the buffaloes that take pride of place in the funeral rites; after a lifetime of pampering, they will be extra carefully washed and groomed on the day of the ceremony, and are often brought to the funeral ground with their horns decorated in coloured ribbons and gold tinsel. A few days later, Papa’ Mawiring was at home, and he showed me his photo album. It was full of pictures of buffaloes he had taken to various important family funerals, as well as some of the largest pigs. Papa’ Mawiring leads a modest life as a (now retired) secondary school teacher in Rantepao, but he and his wife are both descendants of Sa’dan’s nobility, and he has not shirked major expenditure on the funeral ground. The heaviest economic obligation for most people is in dealing with the funerals of grandparents, and even more so their parents and their spouse’s parents. A married couple share this duty, since it is understood that equal attentions ought to be paid to both sides of the family; as we saw in Chapter XI, the couple themselves sometimes refer to each other affectionately as a pair of buffaloes (bali tedong; sangayoka), who must pull together evenly if the plough is to run smoothly. Once these particular occasions have been accomplished, the burden of ceremonial expense will become lighter. In most parts of Tana Toraja (notably the southern Three Domains), where the competitive system called ma’tallang is followed, these sacrifices will also be the most crucial, since they secure one’s right to a share of the inheritance. Rice lands will be divided in proportion to the extent of each child’s sacrifices, a system which gives the ceremonial economy an extra competitive edge. The westerly Saluputti region differs in that here, ma’tallang is only resorted to when a couple die childless. Papa’ Mawiring has sacrificed spotted buffaloes on five different occasions, and as he recounted the details, it provided further evidence of inflation. The first one was in 1982, for the funeral of Mama’ Mawiring’s grandfather, who had been headman of Tampan village in Dutch days. For that buffalo he had paid Rp. 1,350,000. The second one was for her grandmother, Ne’ Palimbu. In 1983, he had sponsored the holding of a traditional Alukta ceremony to move 14 ‘Picking vegetables’ is a common metaphor for seeking a livelihood. Roxana Waterson - 9789004253858 Downloaded from Brill.com05/28/2020 02:39:59PM via free access XVIII Dynamics of the ceremonial economy 417 the remains of his mother’s father and grandparents from their family liang or stone grave to a new, concrete tomb or patane. For this occasion he had sacrificed eight buffaloes. Also in the album was a portrait of a gigantic bai tora, a boar with tusks, so big it had practically lost the ability to stand up, which he had taken to a merok feast at Sangkombong in 1988. That had cost him Rp. 450,000 then, but would now be worth Rp. 1,500,000. At the funeral of his own mother, in 1990, he paid Rp. 1,750,000 for a tedong bonga, and Rp. 750,000 for a tedong balian, a steer with a wide span of horns, which he reckoned at current prices would be worth Rp. 11 or 12 million. Altogether, for his mother’s funeral, he alone had sacrificed 19 buffaloes. In the year 2000, both his father and Mama’ Mawiring’s mother passed away; for the former, he bought a spotted buffalo for Rp. 16 million which by the time of our conversation, just two years later, he said, would be worth around Rp. 30 million. For his father he had sacrificed altogether six animals, including an all-black tedong pudu’, for which he had paid Rp. 4,700,000. That would now be worth Rp. 7,500,000, he said, while another for which he had paid Rp. 6,500,000 would have cost him Rp. 13 or 14 million in 2002. For Mama’ Mawiring’s mother he had also killed six buffaloes. So, in the space of four months, he had sacrificed 12 buffaloes, of which two were tedong bonga. This was the point at which his ceremonial expenditure had peaked. That in the meantime, his own house in Rantepao has remained for many years unfinished must be seen as quite in accord with socially approved priorities. Papa’ Mawiring feels obliged to kill so many buffaloes, he explained, only because of his inherited position in the community. His ancestors have always sacrificed a lot, so he would feel ashamed not to. Would his children, I inquired, be able or willing to maintain this level of ceremonial activity? ‘I have already told them’, was his reply, ‘after I am gone, don’t go on with this, it will ruin you – you shouldn’t cut more than six at a time!’ I cite these details because they enable us to trace a pattern of galloping inflation unique to buffaloes and pigs in the Toraja economy. In Appendix E I have tried to tabulate these values and their escalation, based on people’s recollections of past transactions. Although the trend may have been exacerbated by Indonesia’s monetary crisis of 1997, it can hardly be fully explained by that circumstance. It appears that prices have more or less doubled just in the last two years, and of all livestock, the rate of inflation is highest for tedong bonga. As Papa’ Mawiring said, these days, for a spotted buffalo ‘the seller can ask what he likes’. Prices for buffaloes have risen so fast that they have now pulled ahead of pig prices, breaking the long-standing equivalence between a sangpala’ buffalo and a very large pig. Even the largest pigs now fetch only up to Rp. 3 million, which cannot match the Rp. 3.5-4.5 million price of a sangpala’. Regional Autonomy has a place in this picture, for there has been inflation too in the taxes on funeral sacrifices. Since the devolution of power Roxana Waterson - 9789004253858 Downloaded from Brill.com05/28/2020 02:39:59PM via free access 418 Paths and rivers from Jakarta in 1999, central government now provides a reduced proportion of funding to the Regencies, which must raise their own revenues to cover the difference. There is no industry in Tana Toraja, and income from tourism has fallen off drastically over the past few years, as one disturbance after another scared foreigners away from holidaying in Indonesia. Hence, funeral taxes represent a major source of revenue for local government, and are likely to remain so in the immediate future. Between 2001 and 2002, slaughter taxes were doubled, from Rp. 25,000 per pig and Rp. 50,000 per buffalo in 2001, to Rp. 50,000 per pig and Rp. 100,000 per buffalo in 2002. In some districts (lembang), the charge is as much as Rp. 70,000 per pig, with a portion of this money going to the local government of the Kabupaten, another part to the lembang, and another part to the church. But sometimes, so I was told, people do their best to minimise expenses by declaring only a certain number of the animals to be sacrificed. For their part, local officials had for years been under suspicion of cooking the books and not entering all their takings, though I was told that the current Bupati had started an investigation and was now monitoring tax collections more strictly. For this reason, official statistics of the rates of slaughter at funerals in different districts of Tana Toraja are not a reliable source of information about trends in the ceremonial economy. Today, the intensity of ceremonial activity has created a shortage of locally reared pigs and buffaloes. Pigs reproduce much more rapidly than buffaloes, but even so, local production is insufficient to meet ceremonial demand, and there is a steady demand for imported pigs from other parts of Sulawesi. The situation with regard to buffaloes is of special interest. Their extraordinarily high value in the past doubtless had much to do with their relatively slow rate of reproduction, and the livestock markets, in Rantepao and to a much lesser extent in other locations such as Rembon, offered few animals for sale. If one wanted a buffalo for a funeral, it would be more usual to look for one locally than to go to market; nowadays, the reverse is true. Today, the livestock trade has been centralised in the Rantepao market, which is constantly busy, with a large number of beasts for sale. Many of these are being imported, not just from neighbouring Luwu’ or from Central and Southeast Sulawesi, but from as far away as Kalimantan, Sumbawa, Sumba, even Timor. Given the lower commodity prices of buffaloes in other parts of the archipelago, traders find it highly profitable to search out buffaloes in these areas and ship them back to Tana Toraja, where they can be sold at a much higher value determined by the mounting competition in the ritual economy. The escalation of sacrificial activity in Toraja can be seen to depend on this opening up of the ceremonial economy to a supply of livestock from outside, coupled with the ability to pay for it from new sources of wealth also being earned outside of the highlands. In the nineteenth century, as we saw in Chapter I, it was the village chiefs who were in a position to profit from their role as middlemen in the trade in coffee Roxana Waterson - 9789004253858 Downloaded from Brill.com05/28/2020 02:39:59PM via free access XVIII Dynamics of the ceremonial economy 419 and slaves, and convert new wealth to ceremonial purposes. The difference now is that today’s new sources of income are much more open to all, and we may conclude that this democratisation of wealth is a driving factor behind the impulse to compete which fuels inflation in the system. Since any debt incurred by the hosts of a funeral must eventually be repaid with an animal of at least the same size, inflation means that anyone repaying a debt, even in as little as two or three years’ time, may find themselves having to pay double in order to purchase an appropriate animal. Yet people still express a high degree of commitment to their obligations. At the same time, a more mercenary attitude to debt repayment has surfaced, especially around Rantepao, straining the old morality of delayed reciprocity. In the past it was not done to press one’s creditors, but even in the 1970s, the people of Rantepao were beginning to issue invitations to death feasts, which was tantamount to enforcing repayment of outstanding debts. This was regarded by people in Malimbong as being in bad taste. As it becomes harder and harder to repay debts at the current rate of inflation, some debtors (outside of the funeral context) are reportedly emboldened to offer a creditor a reduced sum of money in place of actual animals, claiming that they cannot afford to buy them; and the creditor, rather than wait indefinitely for repayment, might accept. By the mid-1990s, a remarkable new development had taken place, one which had been previously unheard of, and which seems to show that money has entered yet further into the heart of the ceremonial economy. What has happened is that, as the values of livestock have escalated, people (especially town dwellers) are beginning more and more often to arrive at funerals, not with an actual animal, but with an equivalent sum of money in an envelope. This has some social ramifications, because people of high rank arriving at a funeral customarily do not come alone, but bring with them an entourage of villagers (rombongan). The larger the group, the more prestige accrues to their leader, and it is they who help by leading the buffaloes, and carrying pigs trussed on bamboo poles or litters, along with other gifts such as pots or bamboo tubes filled with palm wine. But the leader also has the responsibility to make sure that the group is well looked after, and rewarded for their pains with the appropriate and customary shares of meat from the pigs they have carried. A growing trend over the past ten years or so has been to avoid actually sacrificing all the animals accepted at a funeral, but to keep some alive (dipatorro tuo) to be donated to the church or the desa/lembang fund for local ‘development’ projects.15 On one occasion I heard people talking in disgust about a particular member of the Saluputti aristocracy who had summoned a large group to accompany him to a funeral in the Rantepao area, 15 This development is also mentioned by Yamashita (1997:92). Roxana Waterson - 9789004253858 Downloaded from Brill.com05/28/2020 02:39:59PM via free access 420 Paths and rivers and whose pig had been one of those not butchered. In such a case he should have ensured that his group received meat from some other source, but he had singularly failed to look after them. If he was not prepared to uphold his traditional aristocratic obligations, they said, he could not expect them to fall in with any future demands on their time. As the former relationship of obligation between nobles and commoners is eroded, it is becoming more common to have to pay wages to those who carry one’s pigs to a funeral. Clearly, it is a lot less trouble for someone with a sufficient supply of cash simply to take an envelope to a funeral, than to go to the market, purchase a buffalo, and gather a group to accompany it to its destination. This changes the pattern of meat sharing, in that when money is given, no meat will be returned to the giver; whether the villagers who might once have accompanied him are consuming less protein as a result, or are now supplementing their diet from other sources, I am not able to say. The presentation of envelopes can operate in different ways, however. The first time I heard of it, I was told that this substitution of cash for livestock was happening because prices had become so high that many people simply couldn’t afford to buy whole pigs or buffaloes, so they made do with bringing a lesser sum, which could be used by the hosts to defray some of the funeral expenses, in whatever way they chose. At first, assuming that whatever sum was in the envelope would later be repaid with its exact equivalent, I thought this was a handy way to beat the problem of inflation. Tax lists from recent funerals in Malimbong show a significant proportion of envelopes, and I was told that the sums in them were commonly between Rp. 100-200,000 – considerably less than the cost of a pig. In the characteristically Malimbong way, people said they would not be too calculating about the amount returned (tae’ ta situkka’, ‘we don’t force each other’).16 But people in the area around Rantepao insisted that the sum in the envelope was supposed to be presented as standing for the value of a buffalo or a pig, and that the recipient would later be expected to repay, not the same amount, but whatever might by then be the market rate for an equivalent buffalo. In that case, the money is being made to perform a metaphorical function as buffalo-substitute; far from becoming the universal measure of value, with the power to reduce everything to itself, it is being used to stand in for the animal that remains at the centre of an older 16 Of 145 entries in the tax lists from the funeral of Indo’ Teken, my adoptive mother in Buttang, in October 2001, 49 groups brought a pig, 28 brought an envelope (containing variable amounts of cash), and 68 were listed as bringing pa’piong – pork already cooked in bamboos. This is another novelty: instead of presenting a live pig, which, when butchered, would be divided in half between the host and the presenting group, it is now becoming common to kill the pig at home first. The guests, I was told, will then surrender less than half of the cooked pig to their host, keeping a larger share for themselves. Roxana Waterson - 9789004253858 Downloaded from Brill.com05/28/2020 02:39:59PM via free access XVIII Dynamics of the ceremonial economy 421 value system. Such an instance should warn us against falling prey to our own metaphors of ‘penetration’; it would be more accurate here to say that money has been encompassed by the ceremonial system.17 But, whatever the sum given, it is hard to avoid the effects of inflation. Papa’ Mawiring confirmed that in Sa’dan, the amount given in an envelope need not equal the actual price of a pig or a buffalo, but even so, it is likely to be calculated and repaid in accordance with current livestock prices. In 1990, ‘when money was still worth something’, some people gave envelopes at his mother’s funeral containing sums of Rp. 5,000 or 10,000; but if he were to pay them back now, he said, he would give Rp. 50,000 or 100,000 simply because the Rupiah is now so devalued. One envelope contained a sum of Rp. 75,000, which at the time he noted was equivalent to the price of a pig with a girth of one metre; when he wanted to repay this debt in 2004, he first went to market and priced the pigs. A pig of that size was now worth Rp. 650,000, so he asked his creditor in advance whether he would prefer to be paid in cash or with a pig. The man replied with a modest disclaimer about the need for any repayment at all, but knowing this was just a manner of speaking, Papa’ Mawiring made his own decision, and brought his return gift in cash. In this instance, even though the initial gift was not specified as representing a pig of a particular size, the recipient on his own initiative nonetheless calculated its value as such, and judged his repayment accordingly, as being the only decent thing to do. Mortuary ritual and the constitution of value What then can we conclude about the true value of the buffalo? What does it mean to say that, according to Toraja ideas, this is the supreme embodiment of wealth? Its exalted role at the heart of the ceremonial economy suggests that this is the object that more than any other has the power to incite desire, and to move people to action. But one cannot say this without irony, since in order to realize its value in terms of social capital, the buffalo cannot be held on to, but must be given away and slaughtered. Or is this an irony only when viewed from the perspective of classical economic theory, where ‘self-interest’ is invariably defined in terms of the desire to accumulate things and hold on to them? These reflections bring us to a consideration of value itself, an issue that lies at the heart of theorising in economic anthropology. The most stimulating recent contribution to this literature comes from David Graeber (2001), who vigorously devotes his analysis to devising ways to escape 17 For comparative examples of the ‘taming’ of money as it has been drawn into ceremonial economies in a range of Melanesian socities, see Akin and Robbins (1999). Roxana Waterson - 9789004253858 Downloaded from Brill.com05/28/2020 02:39:59PM via free access 422 Paths and rivers the asumption, which permeates so much economic theory, that nobody ever does anything that is not designed to maximise self-interest, however defined. Graeber contrarily insists on the role that other moral values have to play in human affairs. He isolates three convergent ‘streams of thought’ in discussions of value. On the one hand, value can be defined sociologically, as what is considered good and proper in human life; on the other, it can be defined economically, in terms of what objects are viewed as desirable, and what others are prepared to give up to get them; and thirdly, there is value ‘in the linguistic sense’ (deriving from the ideas of De Saussure). This last refers to value as ‘meaningful difference’ (as De Saussure argued that words have meaning only in relation to each other); it implies that an object must be viewed as similar to, and yet different from, other objects with which it could be compared. This is especially relevant to considerations of rank value, where meaningful variations can be arranged hierarchically within a class of objects – for example, different denominations within a currency, different qualities of armshells within the Kula ring, or Toraja buffaloes of different sizes and properties.18 Perceiving that objects achieve their value in relation to wider social projects, however, Graeber extends his discussion beyond these approaches to the value of things in themselves. He proposes that we reconfigure our thinking about value, and understand it in the broadest sense as having to do with the importance of actions. Even the idea of ‘labour’ can usefully be more broadly defined as ‘effort’, since if we trace our analysis far enough, many varieties of effort exerted by different actors may in reality be bound up in the ‘labour value’ of a thing. In his analysis, then, ‘value is ultimately about how people portion out their creative energies’ (Graeber 2001:189). Let us consider the value of buffaloes in this light. If we compare buffaloes with other types of valuable, such as the armshells and necklaces used in Massim Kula exchanges, we can say that buffalo are somewhat similar in being ranked valuables, differing in their individual characteristics and admired for their aesthetically pleasing appearances. They have what Alfred Gell (1998:159), in his analysis of art styles, calls ‘psychological salience’ within the context of Toraja culture. The salience has to do with collectively held notions of excellence and with culturally signficant activities (in this case, what you can do with a buffalo, which is to give it away in a highly public context where it can be duly admired by as many people as possible, and then sacrificed). I interpret ‘salience’ also as attaching to something that gives rise to pleasure of a socially approved kind.19 Graeber notes how 18 Even in the world of mass-produced commodities, such differences exist or if necessary must be created through advertising: the difference between Pepsi and Coke, for instance. 19 Campbell (1983:241) notes that even hearing the names of the highest-ranking vaiguwa necklaces in the Kula ring is said to make men’s bodies shake with desire. Roxana Waterson - 9789004253858 Downloaded from Brill.com05/28/2020 02:39:59PM via free access XVIII Dynamics of the ceremonial economy 423 frequently valuables, in different cultures, are simultaneously items of adornment. As such, they become extensions of the self. The magnificent specimens whose photos adorn the pages of Papa’ Mawiring’s album might be seen in this light, also. But buffaloes differ in an important respect from such items as Kula shells, whose value lies not just in their beauty, but in their being distinguished by their own personal names and histories. Buffaloes cannot accrue value by accumulating history, since they are perishable and destined for sacrifice. In this sense, their value has a ‘terminal’ quality, in Kopytoff’s (1986:75) sense. They are purchased at one moment as commodities in the market, only to be redefined as ceremonial gifts, but sacrificial dismemberment is the intended outcome of this moment of glory. In the process of the meat distribution, their heads will be presented to one or another tongkonan, reinforcing long-established links with the hosts’ own origin house. The horns, their only enduring part, will end up gracing the front post of the receiving house. In this sense, although their own individuality as valuables will be erased, they do at least assist the accumulation of history and glory of houses, while helping to reinforce the relations between them. We could say that there are two contrasting social dimensions to the funeral ceremony. On the one hand, there are the many ways in which it serves to express social hierarchy and status competition; but there is also that other emphasis on the essentially egalitarian relationships of cognatic kinship and the expression of solidarity between affines, helping each other by sharing their grief. Arguably, it is this that provides the most pressing compulsion to continue the duty of ritual expenditure, and the threat of shame that makes it so hard for anyone to withdraw from their continuing obligations. In my analysis of the ma’bua’, I proposed that that was the rite which most sharply contrasted in its messages with mortuary ritual, being the one in which undifferentiated benefits were sought for the entire community. Now I want to go further, and point out how, even within the funeral itself, the two contradictory dimensions of hierarchy and equality are played out together. If there is a paradox here, it is one that is also embodied in the social structure at large. In earlier chapters, we saw how the potential for harmony and balance in cognatic relations is amply exemplified in the expressed desire for equality in marital relationships, in the lack of hierarchical differentiation between siblings (either as older/younger or as male/female), or in the reciprocal links between parents-in-law (baisen), with their mutual interests in their grandchildren. The paradox is that this structure coexists with the structure of rank, with its ideology of naturalised and irreconcilable differences of birth between tana’. That these two dimensions of structure and ideology can clash is illuminated by some remarks of Tato’ Dena’ on the difficulties engendered by a marriage between people of different ranks. Parents-in-law, he said, must not be unbalanced [in observing their ritual obligations to each other] (baisen Roxana Waterson - 9789004253858 Downloaded from Brill.com05/28/2020 02:39:59PM via free access 424 Paths and rivers tae’ na ma’din tongka), because if one side were to be more diligent and generous in their contributions to the other’s ceremonies, this would cause them to quarrel. This is most likely to happen when the families are of unequal rank. The low ranking family is more likely to expend effort in maintaining face, while the high-ranking (or wealthier) family may not bother making much effort at all. Then the rich will get richer while the poor get poorer. Or as Tato’ Dena’ expressed it: ‘The long is made longer, and the short is cut even shorter’ (kalando disambung, kondi’ dile’to’i), or ‘What’s half full is spilt, while what’s full to the brim is not poured out’ (Ia penanga tisebok, ia lempan tangtisebok). These are ironic inversions of phrases more customarily expressed the other way around, to convey a desirable state of harmony and balance in human affairs. In an unequal match, the poorer family is at risk of venturing beyond their means, while being slighted by the wealthier family if the latter disdain to respond to their overtures, rather as in a culture of honour one may insult a challenger deemed unworthy by refusing to duel with him. What exactly about the social order is being reproduced, then, in mortuary ritual? Apparently, both the (ideal) equalities expressed in the bonds of kinship, and the inequalities of rank (equally idealised, by some), are being enacted. If this gives rise to contradictions, different regions of Toraja seem to deal with them differently, too. While southern and central areas are generally held to be the most aggressively competitive, in Saluputti with its more egalitarian social ethos, people may seek to resolve the paradox by upholding kinship bonds over status. At one level, one shows one’s feelings for one’s affines by presenting them with highly valued livestock for sacrifice. But at the same time, people in Saluputti strive to moderate the agonistic aspects of the exchange. They claim to show their affection for each other by refraining from driving each other too hard in their ceremonial obligations. Hence the oft repeated comments, ‘we are fond of each other’ (tasikaboro’); ‘we don’t force each other’ (tae’ tasitukka’). They would rather a relative attend a funeral, even if only ‘holding their armpits’ because empty-handed, than not attend at all. After all, exactly when a debt must be repaid is never specified. If it is not possible on one occasion, it may yet become so at some future date. Two things can sever a kin relationship altogether: either rejecting a gift, in an effort to break out of the system and avoid becoming beholden to the giver, or else explicitly demanding payment of a debt outside of the ceremonial context. A debt called in in this manner is said to be ‘demanded raw’ (dipalaku mamata) or as we might say, in cold blood, and it is never done except as an extreme insult, explicitly designed to effect a severance of the relationship, as a result of some other quarrel. If following the proper paths of mortuary exchange is the very image of sociality in Toraja eyes, this mention of rawness may prompt a consideration of contrasting, negative images of antisocial behaviour. We have seen Roxana Waterson - 9789004253858 Downloaded from Brill.com05/28/2020 02:39:59PM via free access XVIII Dynamics of the ceremonial economy 425 already that the hoarding of wealth or its private expenditure on consumer goods brings little kudos in Toraja eyes. A more dramatic traditional image of antisocial consumption is that of the batitong, a person who at night becomes transformed into an evil, blood-sucking spirit who creeps about underneath the floors of other people’s houses, sucking and devouring their entrails while they are asleep, thereby causing sickness and death. Before the advent of modern medicine, illness used sometimes to be attributed to a person’s having been ‘sucked by a batitong’ (nasussu’ batitong). The emphasis on sucking metaphorically inverts the ideal of generosity and the ‘pouring out’ of prestations on the funeral ground which by contrast embodies the ideal of social solidarity, while the lust to eat raw human flesh clearly represents the very antithesis of civilized behaviour. In fact, eating anything raw is so powerfully associated with uncontrolled appetites and a negation of culture that even old ladies sharing their betel nut would sometimes laugh and jokingly remark, ‘Look! We’re eating something raw!’ as if to apologise for a questionable indulgence.20 Another belief that surfaced sometimes in conversation in the village was that some forms of illness may be the result of human agency (saki to lino), being caused by others maliciously trying to poison one. This is giving, but of a sort intended to destroy. Lurid as they may appear, these images have salience as imagined inversions of sociality, the very opposite of the ideal of being generous (mabalele) which, again in Tato’ Dena’s poetic words, will bring its own rewards: Malabo-labo silambi’ Manengkeng mambala tama Nekke’-nekke’ dolo pura Malabo undi maserong Spend your wealth freely, and others will do the same for you If you are stingy, it will sap your own strength Meanness will cause things to be finished sooner Be generous, and good fortune will come to you in return Fulfilling one’s ritual obligations certainly demands a continuing willingness to remain engaged in the web of kin relations, with its related outpouring of ceremonial expenditure, while for the ambitious at the same time it offers the possibility of using this activity to build a public reputation. Let me return for a moment to the idea of an economy of emotions which I raised in the beginning of this chapter. What would this economy look like? Pleasure, desire and satisfaction are emotions which, Graeber (2001:21) suggests, deserve a more thorough consideration in economic analysis. A theory of value is needed ‘to 20 Fruit is eaten raw, but rarely. It is usually considered to be kids’ stuff, and given to the children. Tiny tomatoes, grown in vegetable patches around the house yard, are pounded with chillies to make a condiment for rice, which makes them count as food even though not cooked; but my occasional longing for a tomato salad definitely met with disapproval. Roxana Waterson - 9789004253858 Downloaded from Brill.com05/28/2020 02:39:59PM via free access 426 Paths and rivers bridge the gap’ between society and human purposes, ‘to move from meaning to desire’. Desire, in turn, needs to be seen as something bigger than self-interest, and value as the way people represent the importance of their own actions to themselves. If the buffalo is an object of desire, what is it that is desired more, enough to cause its owner to want to give it up? As in other prestige economies, making a name for yourself is the individual player’s reward, a goal that clearly implies the necessity of recognition by others. For the Kwakiutl, prototype of the ‘potlatch’ economy, giving things away could be seen as ‘a defining action’ (Graeber 2001:202). But it is an action which requires an audience to be effective; the giver requires his gift to be witnessed by ‘a (demanding but appreciative) public’. ‘If there ain’t no audience, there ain’t no show’, as the saying goes, and we can see that ceremonial economies involve a strong element of display. They seem to be very effective in harnessing desire and effort, culminating in moments of public spectacle, when the results of one’s efforts will be put on display for all to see. Just as for potlatch or the Kula, a persuasive argument can be made that Toraja people sink their efforts into the staging of mortuary prestations because it is a challenging and absorbing game. If one inherits from one’s own house and ancestors the obligations, in the form of livestock already received, and meat already consumed, that create the compulsion to continue the cycle of giving and receiving, one is also at the same time planning how to create sufficient credits to ensure that one’s own funeral will be celebrated in style. And since individuals must thus face the prospect of their own mortality, they will at least have the consolation of knowing that their efforts ultimately become part of the ritual history of their family group and its origin houses. In the returning of shares of meat, too, statuses will be reaffirmed or challenged. And in the process, society itself witnesses its own renewal. The darker side of this emotional construction is undoubtedly the sense of anxiety that must sometimes accompany the burden of debts, with its attendant possibilities of future shame and humiliation if they cannot be repaid. People worry not only about meeting their own debts, but about whether their children may be pressed into pawning the diminishing shares of land they inherit in order to pay for their parents’ funerals. It is hard not to surmise that anxiety over meeting ceremonial debts must lie behind the comments Wellenkamp (1987:8) records from one of her acquaintances, Nene’na Tandi: I always tell [my wife], ‘Let’s not think long, we must instead think of the time just ahead – tomorrow and the next day. If we think at length, we’ll be ruined. We, ourselves will be ruined, everything will be ruined. Thus, we must be quiet.’ If you look at people who are thin, that arises from thinking. Anyone who is thin, thinks too much. Roxana Waterson - 9789004253858 Downloaded from Brill.com05/28/2020 02:39:59PM via free access XVIII Dynamics of the ceremonial economy 427 Yet, somehow or other, obligations will usually be met. Pak Sarira from Malimbong reflected: I myself have experienced how we think we won’t be able to find the money [to repay ceremonial debts], yet somehow when it comes to it, something will show up. That is because Toraja will always help each other out. We want to stage a ceremony of reasonable proportions, and our relatives will feel that they must make reasonably generous contributions, too. There is status competition (I: gengsi), but you can’t really call it that, because that sounds negative. It’s a matter of selfrespect (I: harga diri). We respect each other and respect ourselves, and individual self-respect can’t be separated from that of the family [...]. Because a funeral will be held at the tongkonan, other relatives will say, ‘Oh, that’s my tongkonan; I must contribute somehow.’ The rest of the family won’t criticize him openly [were he not to], but he will feel it inside. The characterisation of funerals as a form of potlatch tends to focus the attention on the agonistic dimension of the ritual activities, and the idea of status competition (the Indonesian word gengsi is often used by Toraja in this context, as in the example above). In this sense, funerals might very well be classified, in Appadurai’s terms, as ‘tournaments of value’.21 In the past I have also tended to emphasise that dimension. But still I have to conclude that this is not the whole story. One must take account of the fact that Toraja themselves often claim that, though this is one part of the drama, it is not after all the heart of the matter. As some of the comments already quoted suggest to us, old noble families have to work at maintaining the status already accumulated. If asked why people continue to spend their wealth on funeral sacrifices, a common reply is that they are afraid that if they do not, others will deride them as poor people (to kalala’). Or, as Tato’ Dena’ commented, noka’ disanga to tangpalambi’mo (‘they refuse to be labelled as people who can no longer afford it’). It’s not surprising, then, if those who in the past have been accustomed to being derided as poor seek to translate new wealth into an enhanced ceremonial standing by conspicuous spending in the ritual arena. In a similar vein, Papa’ Mawiring commented that, if a rich person refuses to sacrifice, people will say that he is ‘afraid of falling’ (matakku’ latobang), in 21 Appadurai 1986:21. He writes: ‘Tournaments of value are complex periodic events that are removed in some culturally well-defined way from the routines of economic life. Participation in them is likely to be both a privilege of those in power and an instrument of status contests between them. The currency of such tournaments is also likely to be set apart through well understood cultural diacritics. Finally, what is at issue in such tournaments is not just status, rank, fame, or reputation of actors, but the disposition of the central tokens of value in the society in question. Finally, though such tournaments of value occur in special times and places, their forms and outcomes are always consequential for the more mundane realities of power and value in ordinary life.’ Roxana Waterson - 9789004253858 Downloaded from Brill.com05/28/2020 02:39:59PM via free access 428 Paths and rivers other words, of losing his wealth, and that the poorest guest would be more appreciated than this one. Conversely, we can say that it is fear of a fall in social esteem that causes the wealth to be ceremonially expended. As we have seen, if buffaloes remain the supreme measure of wealth, still the social capital to be gained from them cannot be realized without publicly sacrificing them, just as Kula ornaments cannot be kept too long, but bestow fame on their owners only by remaining in circulation. But Papa’ Mawiring went on to add that, at any funeral in Tana Toraja, people are ‘very social’ (I: sangat sosial). They will contribute, they will eat together, and these days the hosts will not sacrifice all of the livestock brought but will set some animals aside to be sold and used for other purposes: to fund new roads and churches, for instance. Money is raised for these projects also by auctioning (ma’lelang) the meat from some animals instead of distributing it.22 Furthermore, sacrificers of livestock must pay tax on each beast to the government. Ever since Dutch times, Church and government, unable to put a stop to funeral expenditure, have instead found ways to derive revenue from it for purposes they deemed more rational, and to fund development; Papa’ Mawiring’s commentary indicates how far this form of contribution has become integrated into the broader picture of social life. As host, he said, if you do not uphold your status by sacrificing, people will say, ‘What’s the point of your being rich? What do you contribute to the family? To the community? Or to the government?’ This comment certainly reflects a modernised conception of sociality, one that includes commitment to wider institutions beyond the immediate group of one’s own kin or dependents, as well as to a new ideal of ethnic identity. In this formulation, wealth is pointless unless expended in mortuary rites, precisely because, far from wasting it, this is seen as a means of distributing it through the community. Toraja people will typically not be impressed by other forms of conspicuous expenditure, for example an ostentatious modern house. But, Papa’ Mawiring noted, anyone who is known to help the Church, or educational institutions, or who engages with Toraja students outside Toraja and helps them with their fees, of such a person people will say: ‘He still knows he’s Toraja, and would help us if we needed it.’ He went on to reflect that in the past, people stuck together, and kinship relations were very strong, because they stayed in one place and did 22 A detailed discussion of meat auctions (lelang) is provided by Donzelli (2003). As she has pointed out, this is a dimension of the funeral proceedings that has been neglected by most ethnographers. Intriguingly, she observes that although the goals of lelang are apparently entirely rationalistic, people sometimes bid disproportionately large sums for unprestigious cuts of meat, thereby reintroducing an element of competitive display into this part of the event. This is only possible because of the greater amounts of cash now circulating in the economy, yet it remains evidence of an older way of thinking. Roxana Waterson - 9789004253858 Downloaded from Brill.com05/28/2020 02:39:59PM via free access XVIII Dynamics of the ceremonial economy 429 not travel much; whereas in today’s world, people spread far and wide and rarely see each other. He sees Toraja society as poised at a point of transition in which kinship commitments might easily be eroded. Yet since the means of communication are now so various, people today have many ways to stay in touch with each other. Thus he chose to conclude optimistically, that in spite of these separations, there is a still a chance for the bonds of kinship to survive. Another friend, whose outlook in many respects is distinctly modernist, and who for his own part has rather detached himself from ceremonial competition, nonetheless expressed his thoughts in a way that says a great deal about the idea of value as creative effort. His verdict cunningly reclaims the work ethic from the capitalist system, and locates it securely within the ceremonial one: A lot of people say it’s a waste, and from the outside it looks like that. But from a broader point of view, it isn’t really. Our ancestors were clever when they ordered their descendants to make these ceremonies. If not for that, there would be nothing here in Toraja. It’s this that forces people to strive and work hard, because they feel they simply have to find a buffalo or a pig for a ceremony. Torajans will die to keep up their good name. They must keep up their name within the family too. If a person feels rejected by the rest of the family, he’ll take it very hard. And then again, it’s funerals that make tourists keen to come here, and that brings money into the economy too. So, from a narrow point of view, you could say it’s wasteful, but from a wider one, it isn’t. I began this chapter by setting out to trace how the ceremonial economy, interlocked as it is with the domains of the domestic economy on the one hand, and the global market economy on the other, has responded to changing circumstances and the introduction of money over the course of the twentieth century. We can conclude that, in spite of all the transformations which highland society has undergone, and the drastic alterations in cosmology and world view that this has entailed, Toraja economy and social life can still be seen as being essentially underpinned and driven by the ceremonial system – or what is left of it. Though the overall balance between the great rites of East and West may have collapsed, what is left still manifests a surprising vigour. A powerful social consensus continues to hold that it is the giving and receiving of buffaloes and pigs, whether to ease the pain of mourning or to celebrate the renewal of origin houses, that is the true and proper expression of the bonds of kinship and sociality. I have often heard Toraja voice their belief, in this context, that as a people, their own system of kinship and feelings of social solidarity are stronger than other people’s. Ritual provides the structure and the occasion for the practical enactment of those emotions, while at the same time offering the opportunity for individuals (or couples, Roxana Waterson - 9789004253858 Downloaded from Brill.com05/28/2020 02:39:59PM via free access 430 Paths and rivers since it is really the joint efforts of spouses which are invested in these prestations) to convert their own efforts into social value through their actions on the ceremonial ground. As Papa’ Mawiring put it, ‘Ritual is the trunk (basis) of everything here in Toraja’ (Garonto’na tu pesta inde te’e Toraya) – a sentiment with which, whatever their personal feelings about it, I believe most Toraja would agree. Roxana Waterson - 9789004253858 Downloaded from Brill.com05/28/2020 02:39:59PM via free access