Change and Continuity in Minangkabau: Local, Regional, and Historical Perspectives on West Sumatra

by Lynn L. Thomas, Franz Von Benda-Beckmann (Contribution by)

Overview

Social scientists have long recognized many apparent contradictions in the Minangkabau. The world's largest matrilineal people, they are also strongly Islamic and, as a society, remarkably modern and outward looking.

Focusing on Minangkabau proper, and treating several adjacent areas as well, this collection examines the resilience and adaptability of the Minangkabau in the face of outside political and economic pressures and of distortions in social science and legal theory. Individual studies address issues of kinship and other forms of social organization, ideology, and political and economic life. Together, they emphasize the integrity of Minangkabau social forms while revealing fascinating patterns of continuity and change in Minangkabau culture.

This collection will be of particular interest to anthropologists specializing in Southeast Asia, but it will also be important reading for those concerned with the issue of change and continuity in the third world generally.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780896801271
Publisher:	Ohio University Press
Publication date:	03/01/1986
Series:	Ohio RIS Southeast Asia Series , #71
Edition description:	1
Pages:	353
Product dimensions:	(w) x (h) x 0.80(d)

Table of Contents

1.	Themes and Issues: Editors' introduction	1
2.	The Relevance of Minangkabau Studies for Anthropological Theory	19
Part I.	Kinship in Local and Supra-Local Organization
3.	Mother, Mother's Brother, and Modernization: The problems and prospects of Minangkabau matriliny in a changing world	29
4.	Rethinking Matriliny: Decision-making and sex roles in Minangkabau	45
5.	Siblingship and Social Structure in Negeri Sembilan: Perspectives from myth, history, and the present	73
6.	Implications of Merantau for Social Organization in Minangkabau	111
Part II.	The Rantau, Islam, Political History, and Ideology
7.	Myth and Reality: Minangkabau institutional traditions in the rantau	121
8.	Islam, History, and Social Change in Minangkabau	141
9.	Islamization in Kerinci	157
10.	Political History and Social Change in Minangkabau: Information from literary works	181
Part III.	Politics and Economics in Historical Perspective
11.	Economic Constraints, Social Change, and the Communist Uprising in West Sumatra (1926-27): A critical review of B. J. O. Schrieke's West Coast Report	207
12.	Transformation and Change in Minangkabau	235
13.	Commercialization and Change in Minangkabau: a re-examination of the historical watershed	279
14.	The Impact of the Indonesian Independence Struggle on Minangkabau Society	303
	Abbreviations	322
	References	323