This collection of papers, the third in a series of volumes on the work of the Comparative Austronesian Project, explores indigenous Austronesian ideas of origin, ancestry and alliance and considers the comparative significance of these ideas in social practice. The papers examine social practice in a diverse range of societies extending from insular Southeast Asia to the islands of the Pacific.

Drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork, this study explores the ideas of belonging and citizenship among former pro-autonomy East Timorese who have elected to settle indefinitely in West Timor. The study follows different East Timorese groups and examines various ways they construct and negotiate their socio-political identities following the violent and destructive separation from their homeland. The East Timorese might have had Indonesia as their destination when they left the eastern half of the island in the aftermath of the referendum, but they have not relinquished their cultural identities as East Timorese. The study highlights the significance of the notions of origin, ancestry and alliance in our understanding of East Timorese place-making and belonging to a particular locality. Another feature of belonging that informs East Timorese identity is their narrative of sacrifice to maintain connections with their homeland and move on with their lives in Indonesia. These sacrificial narratives elaborate an East Timorese spirit of struggle and resilience, a feature further exemplified in the transformation of their political activities within the Indonesian political system.

This wide-ranging book re-evaluates in detail the early history and historiography of Brunei Darussalam, the origins of the sultanate, its genealogical foundations and the structure and administration of Brunei society. Contributors draw on the seminal work of Donald E. Brown whose major monograph on the sultanate was published in 1970 and marked the beginnings of advanced sociological, anthropological and historical research on Brunei. Among the key issues addressed are status systems, titles and social stratification, Chinese sources for the study of Brunei, Malay oral and written histories and traditions, the symbolism, meanings and origins of coronation rituals, previously unknown sources for the study of Brunei history and the processes of incorporation of minority populations into the sultanate. Contributions by leading scholars of Brunei, Borneo and the wider Indonesian-Malay world, both from within Brunei Darussalam and beyond, address some central preoccupations which Brown raised and which have been the subject of continued debate in Austronesian and Southeast Asian studies. A novel contribution to the study of the history of Brunei Darussalam, this book will be of interest to scholars of Southeast Asian history, Asian history, Colonial and Imperial history and anthropology.

Following the historic 1999 popular referendum, East Timor emerged as the first independent sovereign nation of the 21st Century. The years since these momentous events have seen an efflorescence of social research across the country drawn by shared interests in the aftermath of the resistance struggle, the processes of social recovery and the historic opportunity to pursue field-based ethnography following the hiatus of research during 24 years of Indonesian rule (1975-99). This volume brings together a collection of papers from a diverse field of international scholars exploring the multiple ways that East Timorese communities are making and remaking their connections to land and places of ancestral significance. The work is explicitly comparative and highlights the different ways Timorese language communities negotiate access and transactions in land, disputes and inheritance especially in areas subject to historical displacement and resettlement. Consideration is extended to the role of ritual performance and social alliance for inscribing connection and entitlement. Emerging through analysis is an appreciation of how relations to land, articulated in origin discourses, are implicated in the construction of national culture and differential contributions to the struggle for independence. The volume is informed by a range of Austronesian cultural themes and highlights the continuing vitality of customary governance and landed attachment in Timor-Leste.

Origins and migration are core elements in the histories, identities and stories of Tibeto-Burman-speaking populations in the extended eastern Himalayas, a region stretching from eastern Nepal through Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland and the hill tracts surrounding Assam, to upland Southeast Asia and southwest China. This book is the first to bring together contemporary research on Tibeto-Burman-speaking hill peoples in this region and the only multi-disciplinary study of the closely related topics of origins and migration in this part of Asia, presenting current research by anthropologists, folklorists, linguists and historians. Through a series of case studies on local and regional populations, the contributors explore origins and migration in relation to theoretical and methodological approaches, language, identity and narrative.

This festschrift for Josephus D.M. Platenkamp brings some central concerns of anthropology into focus: social morphology, exchange, cosmology, history, and practical applications. Ranging across several disciplines and continents, but with a preference for Southeast Asia, the contributions look at a common approach that unites these diverse themes. In this view, the most constitutive relationships of society are based on exchange. Exchange and ritual articulate central values of a society, thus appearing as parts in relationship to a whole. These relationships encompass both human and non-human beings, the social and the cosmological domain. Thus, the study of these subject issues merges into a single project. (Series: ?Anthropology: Research and Science / Ethnologie: Forschung und Wissenschaft, Vol. 27) [Subject: Anthropology]Ã?Â?Ã?Â?