Cultural History In Focus | “Speaking to the Spirits: Thinking Comparatively about Women in Asian Indigenous Beliefs” by Barbara Watson Andaya

 

A Sa'dan Toraja priestess during the bua' festival. Sulawesi. Dr. C.H.M. Nooy-Palm 1970
© Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen

 
 
 

Speaking to the Spirits

 
 

Thinking Comparatively about Women
in Asian Indigenous Beliefs

by Barbara Watson Andaya

 
 

This article is generously provided by Barbara Watson Andaya and Barbara Budrich Publishers.

 

Memorial in Stone of Mother and Child
© Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen

Belu Female House Door | Oromattan
© Musée du quai Branly

Mother and Child Rice Bin Charm
© The Dallas Museum of Art

Puppet | Si Gale Gale
© Yale University Art Gallery

Carved Female Figure
© Sarawak State Museum

Female Ancestor Figure | Lio
© Musée du quai Branly

Shrine Figure | Luli
© The Dallas Museum of Art

Shrine Figure | Luli
© Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen

Female Ancestor Figure
© Yale University Art Gallery

Belu Female House Door | Oromattan
© The Dallas Museum of Art

Standing Charm Carved from a Dugong’s Tooth
© The Dallas Museum of Art

Female Ancestor Figure with Child
© de Young Museum FAMSF

 

A Sa'dan Toraja priestess during the bua' festival. Sulawesi. Dr. C.H.M. Nooy-Palm 1970.
© Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen

Female dukun (sorceress) and midwives, each with their supplies. Java? 1900-1940.
© Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen

Sa'dan Toraja women in trance during the ma'bugi festival. Sulawesi. Dr. C.H.M. Nooy-Palm 1966
© Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen

Portrait of Oesoen, head priestess of the Kayan-Dayaks, Upper Kapuas River-Central Borneo 1898-1900.
© Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen

Portrait of a Minahasan priestess. 1865-1875.
© Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen

Batak harvest festival trance dancers. Samosir-North Sumatra. 1910-1925
© Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen

A woman is revived from trance with incense and woodsmoke. Bali. 1949.
© Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen

'Traditional' childbirth dukun (sorceress) and 'modern' midwife. Java? 1900-1940.
© Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen

A Sa'dan Toraja priestess sets out offerings for the bua' ceremony. Tanah Toraja, Sulawesi. 1970. Dr. C.H.M. Nooy-Palm
© Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen

 
 

Barbara Watson Andaya

 
 
Barbara Watson Andaya
 

Barbara Watson Andaya is Professor of Asian Studies at the University of Hawai‘i. Between 2003 and 2010 she was Director of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies and President of the American Association of Asian Studies in 2005-06. In 2000 she received a John Simon Guggenheim Award, and in 2010 she received the University of Hawai‘i Regents Medal for Excellence in Research. Her specific area of expertise is the western Malay-Indonesia archipelago, on which she has published widely, but she maintains an active teaching and research interest across all Southeast Asia.

Her publications include Perak, The Abode of Grace: A Study of an Eighteenth Century Malay State (1979), To Live as Brothers: Southeast Sumatra in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (1993); The Flaming Womb: Repositioning Women in Early Modern Southeast Asia (2006). Her most recent books, in collaboration with Leonard Y. Andaya, are A History of Early Modern Southeast Asia (2015), and a third edition of A History of Malaysia (2016). She is working on a book on gender and sexuality in Southeast Asia and another on religious interaction in Southeast Asia

 
 
The Flaming Womb Repositioning Women in Early Modern Southeast Asia Barbara Watson Andaya
A History of Malaysia Barbara Watson Andaya Leonard Yuzon Andaya
A History of Early Modern Southeast Asia, 1400-1830 Barbara Watson Andaya Leonard Yuzon Andaya

Colophon

Author | Barbara Watson Andaya
Publication | “Gender in Focus: Identities, Codes, Stereotypes and Politics” | pages 41 - 63
Editors | Andreea Zamfira, Christian de Montlibert, Daniela Radu
Publisher | Barbara Budrich Publishers
Year of Publication | 2018