RITUAL PREPARATION FOR LIVING

Abstract

In the childhood rite of passage, lodong mé, performed by the Krowé people from Flores island in eastern Indonesia, infants are introduced for the first time to the implements that will be important for their future working life. Customarily, females are given instruction in the use of weaving equipment and males a machete, but nowadays it is increasingly popular for both genders to use a ballpoint pen and to mimic the act of writing. The Krowé state that during this ritual children learn practical skills and a diligent work ethic concomitant with the particular tool to which they are exposed, and the pen is now seen to portend a prosperous professional career. With reference to this rite of passage I examine transformations in the Krowé social memory of education that have taken root during their engagement with Dutch colonial, Catholic and Indonesian administrations and which are being expressed in contemporary ritual practice. Drawing on ecological theories of mind and a comparative Austronesian perspective on Krowé ritual and religion, I argue that the lodong mé concurrently incorporates and affects change in Krowé valorisations of learning and livelihoods, and as such is a key event in the construction of their social memory of education.

Notes

*The author is grateful to Professor James J. Fox, Dr Geneviève Duggan, Dr E. Douglas Lewis and Dr Rod Nixon for their contributions to the development of the ideas presented in this article. The author would also like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions on improving it. Errors of fact and judgement are the writer's alone.

¹Politics of identity in Sikka District are complex and there are no exact geographical borders or classificatory divisions among the three groups mentioned – especially with regard to the people of Sikka and Krowé. Indeed, in some usages Krowé can refer to anybody who is not a member of the core Sikka population who originate from the village of Sikka Natar, and many people conventionally labelled Krowé do not self-identify using this ethnonym (see Butterworth 2008: 25–52). Added to this mix, Sikka District is also home to people from the Palu'e and Lio ethno-linguistic groups as well as smaller groups of Chinese and other ethnic groups in Sulawesi.

²In 2006 in the desa of which Romanduru village is part, 1,143 of the total population of 1,664 were classified by the desa administration as farmers, 15 were civil servants (including government school teachers), 15 were teachers in private (Catholic) schools, 5 were health workers (nurses and midwives), 26 were tradespeople (carpenters and builders) and 4 were receiving government pensions.

³As the Krowé lodong mé ritual continues to integrate, reflect on, and influence people's experiences of education and employment, the question of future change must be raised. Will an increasing valorisation of academic education and professional employment, and its consolidation in the ritual system, subtract from the positive (or pragmatic) valorisation of the agricultural practices which are still fundamental to most Krowé livelihoods? While current data suggests that the lodong mé is just beginning to transform with new educational and career imperatives, and that ‘customary’ values still remain core, a longitudinal study of the ritual will shed more light on this question.