Cultural History In Focus | “So My Name Shall Live: Stone-Dragging and Grave-Building in Kodi, West Sumba” by Janet Alison Hoskins

 

Dancers at a Funerary Feast | Lamboya, West Sumba | 1947
© Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen | The Netherlands

 
 

So My Name Shall Live: Stone-Dragging and Grave-Building in Kodi, West Sumba

 
 

by Janet Alison Hoskins

 
 

This article is generously provided by Janet Alison Hoskins.


 

Gold Ornament | Mendaka
© The Dallas Museum of Art | Texas, USA

Stone Memorial Figure | Waikabubak, West Sumba
© Musée du Quai-Branly | France

Gold Crown Ornament | Lamba
© The Dallas Museum of Art | Texas, USA

Nobleman’s Ceremonial Mantle | Hanggi | West Sumba
© The Dallas Museum of Art | Texas, USA

Woman’s Gold Earring from West Sumba | Mamuli
© The Dallas Museum of Art | Texas, USA

Funerary Statue | Sumba
© Museum der Kulturen Basel | Switzerland

 

Dragging a Grave Stone | West Sumba | 1930
© Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen | The Netherlands

Transporting Gravestone | West Sumba | 1929
© Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen | The Netherlands

Detail of Memorial Stone in Anakalang | West Sumba | 1976
© Steven G. Alpert

The King of Anakalang with Two Nobles | West Sumba | 1930
© Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen | The Netherlands

Graves in a Sumbanese Village | West Sumba | 1949
© Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen | The Netherlands

 

Janet Alison Hoskins

Courtesy of Subject

Courtesy of Subject

Janet Alison Hoskins is Professor of Anthropology and Religion at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. 

Her books include The Divine Eye and the Diaspora:  Vietnamese Syncretism Becomes Transpacific Caodaism (2015, University of Hawaii Press), The Play of Time: Kodi Perspectives on History, Calendars and Exchange (1996 Benda Prize in Southeast Asian Studies, Association of Asian Scholars), and Biographical Objects: How Things Tell the Stories of People’s Lives (1998).  She is the contributing editor of four books: Transpacific Studies: Framing an Emerging Field (with Viet Thanh Nguyen, University of Hawaii 2014), Headhunting and the Social Imagination in Southeast Asia (1996), A Space Between Oneself and Oneself:  Anthropology as a Search for the Subject (1999) and Fragments from Forests and Libraries (2001).

She served as President of the Society for the Anthropology of Religion from 2011-13, and has produced three ethnographic documentaries, including “The Left Eye of God: Caodaism Travels from Vietnam to California”, as well as two which deal with ritual life on Sumba:  “Feast in Dream Village” and “Horses of Life and Death”. 

 
 

Watch previews of “Feast in Dream Village” and “Horses of Life and Death”.

 

Colophon

Author | Janet Alison Hoskins
Publication | Bijdragen Tot de Taal-, Land-, en Volkenkunde
Issue | 142 — 1986 — no:1 Leiden — 31-51
Publication Website | www.kitlv-journals.nl