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return to Sumatra: 195 7,199 7

EDWARD M. BRUNER—University of Illinois

In 1957, my wife and I began fieldwork in Indonesia in a Toba Batak mountain village in

North Sumatra.1 W e returned in 19 71 , and then again in 1 997, four decades after our initial

visit (cf. Geertz 19 95). In this article, I reflect on the revisits, emph asizing less how the villagers

have changed (they are m ore prosperous), or on how I have changed (I am older), but more on

how anthropolog y has changed in the past 40 years and how this disciplinary change has led

me to rethink ethnographic fieldwork and reevaluate my own role as ethnographer. In my

reflections upon these sequential experiences and the changes engendered—in the villagers,

in myself, and in anthrop ology— I find the latter most impo rtant because it is in the voca bulary

of the discipline that anthropologists find the language to think about and to describe the

ethnographic encounter. I refer not just to the theory and method of fieldwork but also to the

stories anthropologists tell themselves about the fie ld and the c onve ntional wisdom of the era

about the field experience.

Spec ifically, I raise the question of h ow to do ethnography in a transnational global w or ld, a

current question of the 1990s (Appadurai 1996; Gilroy 1993; Gupta and Ferguson 1997;

Hannerz 1996; Lavie and Swedenburg 1996; Robbins and Bamford 1997). In a study of her

1958 high school graduating class in Newark, New Jersey, Sherry Ortner (1997) writes about

doing fieldwork in the postcommunity, as members of her class have spread out all over the

United States, a con dition Ortner refers to as being rad ically de localize d. In his study of WestAfrican street vendors in Ne w York, Paul Stoller (1997) similarly discusses the prob lem of d oin g

ethnography in what he calls transnational spaces. In my o w n w ork on tourism (Bruner 1996b ),

I have developed the concept of the touristic borderzone, a performative space within which

tourists and locals meet. All three of these concepts (the postco mmunity , the transna tional space,

and the touristic borderzone) problematize the notion of locality, and all three select sites for

ethnography in which the movement of peoples is prominent. All three propose conceptuali-

zations similar to Mary Louise Pratt's contact zone (1992), Homi Bhabha's Third Space (1994),

or the Tex-Mex border theory developed by Gloria Anzaldua (1987), Coco Fusco (1995), and

Guillermo Gomez-Pena (1996). These theoretical notions are different from the model ofmu ltisited ethnography proposed by George M arcus (1995), one that emphasizes d iscontinuous

spaces rather than a thi rd space or borderzon e. They are also different from Appadura i's m ode l

of flows or scapes w hi ch , as Marcus (1997:102) points out, is cartographic imagery. The point

In this article, I reflect on how ethnography h as change d between my 1957

fieldwork in a Toba Batak village in Sumatra, Indo nesia, and my return visit in 1 997.

I argue that current issues of transnationalismand globalization are as significant

in what is seemingly the most traditional of anthropological sites, a mountain

village in Southeast Asia, as in more modern worldly settings. I discuss culture andethnography, and I explore different experiential meanings of the term village.

(ethnography, culture, transnationalism, locality, Toba Batak, Indonesia, ex-

change, mortuary rites)

American Ethnologist 26(2):461-477. Copyright © 1999, American Anthropological Association.

return to Sum atra 461



is that despite areas of overlap, there are significant differences between the various transna-

tional approaches.

W hat d o these recent conceptualizations o f transnational spaces have to do w ith ethnograp hy

in a mountain village in Southeast Asia, seemingly the most stable of settings? The Toba Batak

are a classic case of a people residing in small hamlets and practicing we t rice agriculture , wit h

a social system that includes pa trilineal descent and asymm etrical cross-cousin ma rriage. Wh at

do the Toba Batak have to do with borderzones? All of the residents of the village are of the

same ethnic group , all are Christian, and all are related to one another throug h lineage or affinal

ties.I claim that transnationalism and globalization are as significant in the most traditional

anthro polog ical locality, in a highland Sumatran village, as they are in a study of a high school

graduating class in New Jersey or of West A frican street vendors in Ne w Y ork . It is not necessary

to seek novel settings in which to study what Appadurai (1997) calls the postlocal. Whereas I

label the study of a high school class, street vendors, or tourism as novel or exotic, other writers

w ou ld consider the Toba Batak an archetype of exotic peop les. As anthropologists kno w, w hat

is called exotic depends on one's perspective. In any case, I doubt that there are any spaces in

today's world that are not in some sense transnational, or to phrase it more cautiously, that

could not profitably be approached from some transnational perspective.A further q uestion arises: were the changes I noticed in 1997 more the result of how the w orl d

had changed in the previous four decades or of how anthropological theory had changed? In

other wo rds, was the perspective I em ployed in 1957 appropriate to that era and the transna-

tional vision appropriate for 1997? I raise these questions with the understanding that social

theory b oth reflects and is constitutive of changes in the wo rld .

This article brings to focus some of the shifts in the discipline over the past 40 years, and it

defines what "revisiting a field site" means nowadays. It argues for a more culturally and

symbolically sensitive transnationalism, one that takes account of the people's own under-

standing of a revisit and of globa l forces. It does not regard earlier wo rk as tota lly discon tinuou sw ith the present, or as fatally com promised po litica lly, o r as subversive of truth. It charts where

we w ere and where we are going.

the first visit

Let me remind the reader where anthropology or, at least, I began 40 years ago. Prompted

by Ortner's (1997) reference to Robert Redfield's (1955) work on the " little c om m un ity," I took

that book down from my library shelf and was surprised to find on the title page this long

forgotten note: "To Edward Bruner, with warm regards and appreciation for your help. RobertRedfield." While a graduate student at the University of Chicago, I apparently contributed in

some small degree to Redfield's work on the concept of the little community. Redfield states

that the little community, typically a village, is a natural unit that presents itself as common

sense and that has four characteristics: it is distinctive, small, homogeneous, and self-sufficient

(1955:4). Redfield did not problematize the concept of the village but took it as a given, and

each of his four characteristics has been questioned b y contem porary anth ropo logical theory.

I hasten to add that in the mid-1950 s Redfield, Julian Steward, and others were w ork ing as

well on how the village related to the nation and to the larger civilizations of which they were

a part. These researchers extended the scope of a nthropo logy beyond the loca l, although theydid not yet have the concept of transnationalism or borderzones. Their inquiry accepted the

village as one un it, and the nation or the civ iliza tion as another u nit, and sought the relationship

between them. Graduate students at the University of Chicago in the 1950s were becoming

critical of community approaches, particularly if the village or the local unit was depicted as

isolated, functiona lly integrated, and self-enclosed. Subsequently, many anthropo logists w ork -

462 american ethnologist



Figure 1 . Ed Bruner in the village in 19S7.

ing in Indonesia and elsewhere further developed and extended the postlocal beyond-the -vil-

lage tradition. For millennia, Indonesia has been in interaction w ith Chinese, Indie, Islamic, and

European civilizations. After Independence from the Netherlands in 1949, extensive population

movements occurred throughout the archipelago, including rapid migration to the cities.

Ethnographers of Indonesia have long studied the effects of outside influences on the country,

the position of the ethnic group w ithin the nation-state, and processes of urba nization .

Nevertheless, it was impossible fully to escape the prevailing wisdom of the era, especially

for an aspiring young ethnographer, and a village co mm unity was the generally accepted place

to begin field study. I recall the moment in 1957 w hen I first saw the village in whi ch my w ile

and I were to work. Lumban Panggabean, located in Tampahan, Lintong ni Huta, near the

market town of Balige, is one of thousands of small ht?mlets (huta) in the North Tapanuli

highlands a long the Bukit Barisan moun tain range, the home land ot the Toba Hatak (Figure 1).

I had been searching for a field site when a distinguished elder invited me to study his village

and offered his house. Except for a Dutch priest and a German missionary doctor, no other

Westerners lived in this region. As I approached the village, I looked at the massive slop ng

roofs of the high ly decorated rectangular houses built on stilts. I saw people farm ing w ith water

buffalo in gently curved, terraced rice fields. Small groups of people sat on rattan mats talking

to one another. I passed sarong-clad w om en nursing babies, while a swarm of < hildren followed

my every footstep. The scene was idyllic and ru ral, set against a bac kdropo t the mist enshrouded

volcanoes that surround Toba Lake. For a boy from New York City wh o had lived in apartments

all his life, I said to myself, "This is it, this is my little community.

Then, as now, I was aware of the romanticism that pervaded not only my view of the village

but also of my role as ethnographer, although I did not then realize the colon ialism implfc it in

my beliefs. My mother-in-law, who had not yet forgiven her daughter for marrying an

anthropologist, was particularly concerned about what she saw as the dangers of our 19S7 trip

to Sumatra. I tried to reassure her by pointing out where Indonesia was loc ated on a map, hut




she exclaimed, "My God, it 's the end of the world." Her comment only served to strengthen

my romantic view of myself as heroic adventurer. Although during research for my 1954

dissertation, I used English to communicate with the Native Americans whom I studied, many

of m y professors at Chicago b elieved that I w o ul d never becom e a " real" anthropologist until I

worked in a foreign land, using a foreign language. Meyer Fortes, who had come to Chicago

from Cambridge as a visiting professor, told me this explicitly and urged me to go overseas.

After the 1 95 7-5 8 field experience in Indonesia, I felt that I had met the disciplin e's expectations

of foreign fieldwork and had become, more or less, real.

In 1957, my intention was to remain in Tapanuli for the full 15-month field period, but

unanticipated circumstances changed that plan. My wife and I had been listening to the radio

when, to ou r surprise, we received a Vo ice of Am erica broadcast from the P hilippines re porting

that, as a result of the impending civil war, all U.S. women and children had already been

evacuated from North Sumatra. I looked at my w ife and she at me, and we had no response but

to lau gh, an anxious nervous laughter. W e kn ew of the po litical troubles and had heard rumors

of impending armed conflict. The villagers, showing concern for our safety, placed a U.S. flag

on our house, I suppose to indicate that we were not Dutch. The villagers also assigned an

adolescent boy to stand guard at night to protect us. This was a heavy burden for the villagers

to bear, as they not only had concern for their o w n safety, but it wo ul d not have been easy for

unarme d villagers to protect tw o Am ericans from a military a ttack. They inform ed us that should

trouble develop in the vil lage, they w ou ld escape to the jungle. Not on ly w ou ld they bring us

with them, they were prepared to share their food. I di d not relish going into the jungle, especially

as I was already being treated for ameobic dysentery. My concern heightened when growing

numbers of rebel troops appeared in our area, carrying military equipment clearly marked as

property of the United States. We now know this equipment was courtesy of the Central

Intelligence Agency wh o supported the rebe llion as part of the world wid e Cold W ar fight against

communism. Thus, in 1957, transnational forces were clearly visible in the towns in the Batak

highlands, as global powers aimed to overthrow the Sukarno regime and its communist

supporters who were then governing Indonesia.

After hearing that the elite Javanese Suliwangi division from the central government was

approaching from the coast, my wife and I sought the local military commander, Major Sahala

Hutabarat, to ask if he was prepared to fight the government forces from his base in the

highlands. He told us that he had known of our research and had been following its progress.

He then shared w ith us his experience in the Un ited States, w here he had trained at Fort Benning,

Geo rgia, and then he said he was prepared to fight. My wif e an d I made plans to leave Lum ban

Panggabean the next day, started on the road to the coast only to find we were driving into atank b attle, returned to the village , sold our car to the rebels, traveled by boat on Lake Toba to

avo id the fighting , and then rode a bus to the coastal city of M ed an . In Me da n, the U.S. consul

informe d us that he had made plans for our eva cuation , but we d ecide d to rem ain. Clifford and

Hildred Geertz, whom I had visited in Jakarta in 1957, had a similar experience with the

rebellion at about the same time in Central Sumatra, in Padang, where they, he with malaria

and she wit h hepatitis, escaped to Jakarta and then m oved on to do their research in Bali (Geertz

1995). Such was ethnography in Indonesia in the 1950 s.

Medan had a large Toba Batak migrant population, and I continued my studies of Batak

culture in this urban loc ation. I had not intended to study urban ization, but the exigencies ofthe war situation led me to do so. The transition from a village to an urban research setting was

made som ewhat easier, as previously my w ife had been ado pted in the v illage as a daughter of

the local lineage of the Simandjuntak clan. As her husband, I became a brother-in-law to the

patrilineage . These relationships gave both m y w ife and me a kinship pos ition as a wife receiver

(boru) of the Simandjuntak clan.2 W hen w e arrived in Me dan , the urban Batak recognized these




fictive kin ties, and we began work w ith o ur lineage and affinal relatives and branch ed out from

there (Bruner 19 61 ,19 63 ,19 74 a, 1984a).

We visited Lumban Panggabean briefly in 1971 (Bruner 1974b), but then some 26 years

passed wit ho ut our returning to Sum atra. Preparing for the 1997 visit, I was concerned that after

such a long period of time, 40 years after the initial field trip, the people with whom we had

lived w ou ld no longer remember us, or possibly those that we did know would have died. Nor

did I trust my own memory, as Toba Batak villagers I had known as teenagers would now be

m iddle aged, and I was not sure I w ou ld recognize them . Con ceptua lly, a return to an old field

site is like going to a high school reu nion, a revisit after a tem poral gap of decades, to see peop leyou remember only as they once w ere, wh ich raises questions about then and n ow , about age

and m emory (Ikeda 1999). Although we had made many other trips to Indonesia, our Indonesian

and Toba Batak language skills were at best rusty, and we did not know if we could co mm unicate

w ith the villagers. I must adm it that I was also concerned about my health, for at the age of 72,

I was not entirely sure \i I still had the stamina for even a brief period o f fieldw ork. I had other

doubts as wel l . Ma ybe the idea of a revisit was too m uch of an anthro pologica l dre am , a fantasy

about a return to "o ur" village , where I had made the transitional rite of passage from fledgling

neophyte to established fieldw orke r.

the encounter

How, then, were we received in 1997? Here my story turns to the transnational nature of our

encounter in Sumatra, beginning with our preparations to return. We took advantage of both

established Batak kinship as well as anthropological professional ties. We also employed

electronic means of comm unica tion to contact educated, cosm opolitan people in Sumatra who

knew the local Toba Batak world.

We first contacted a daughter of the Simandjuntak lineage. I had known her in 1957 when

she was a child and in 1971 when she was a university medical student. She now lived in

Washington, DC, where her Batak husband was employed at the Indonesian Embassy. Her

father, Ar no ld S imandjuntak, was brother to the elder who had originally invited us to the village

in 19 57. Both she and my w ife w ere Simandjuntak daughters from Lumban Panggabean, w hi ch

gave us the right to ask for her help . I com mu nicated with her by telephone and e-mail to explain

the purpose of my planned visit. She telephoned her mother in Medan, who in turn asked her

son to go to the village on his motorbike and inform the villagers of our impending visit. Her

mother, Mrs. Arnold Simandjuntak, whom I had known in 1957-58, was now a widow. Her

old age and high social standing allo we d her to act authoritatively o n her deceased husband's

behalf. I then communicated by e-mail and fax wit h M angasa Silitonga and Usman Pelly, bothacademics, both Ph.D.s from the University of Illinois, and both living and teaching in Medan.

Mangasa, a linguist, had been m y research assistant in 19 71 , and I had been a mem ber o f

Usman's dissertation com mittee in the Illinois anthrop ology dep artment. They greatly facilitated

our visit.

The day after we arrived in Medan, on February 21, 1997, a traditional Toba Batak ritual

(adat) was held in our honor at the home of M rs. Simandjuntak. It was attended by our ado ptive

kin living in M eda n, including both Simandjuntak lineage members and their affines w ho were

descended from the founder of the village of Lumban Panggabean. The ceremony was

characterized by eating sangsang (a sacred dish made of pork m ixed w ith the bloo d of the pig),Batak singing and dancing, ritual speech, and the presentation of a sacred cloth iulos),

sym bolizing the blessing for health, prosperity, and generativity given by the lineage mem bers

(hula hula) to their w ife-receiving affines (boru). I had attended such adat cerem onies in the past

(Bruner 1974b), and w hile this version was shortened it still containe d the essential eleme nts,

althou gh there was a more playful tone to the proceedings than I had previously expe rienced .




For example, one person wh o was about to m ake a ritual speech i n the ceremony jok ingly asked

wh at language should be used, Toba Batak, Indon esian, English, or French. M y wife, who loves

ol d Batak songs, left her assigned place in the ceremony to jo in th e S imandjuntaks who were

singing together as a group . In some rounds she became a featured so loist, a role I have never

seen her play at any social gathering in Illinois.

Our son-in-law and daughter accompanied us to Indonesia, and the Batak were especially

delighted to meet our daughter—our eldest child— to w ho m we had given a Batak middle name,

Riana (joyous one ). The Batak subsequently referred to us as Am a ni Ria and Na i Ria, father and

mother of Ria(na). At the welcoming ceremony, our son-in-law and daughter were also given

an ulos cloth and a blessing (Figure 2), to encourage the gift of fertility from spiritual powers.

My daughter, then age 37, had hoped for children for some years. The Simandjuntaks wished

her 17 sons and 16 daughters, a traditional saying. Four months after receiving the sacred

blessing of the Toba Batak, my daughter became p regnant. It must have been a pow erful blessing

because she gave birth to twin sons.

In Medan, we found a warm reception, warmer than we had anticipated. We learned that

we had become something of a legend, as stories were to ld of how I had slipped from a terraced

edge and had fallen into the rice fields in 1957 and of how my w ife s till spoke Toba Batak wit h

the coarse accent of a vil lage wo m an . O n the wa ll in the living room of one hom e, we found

a framed p icture of my w ife and me taken in 19 71 .

At the Medan ceremony, I met Dr. Sinaga who, like me, had married a daughter of the

Simandjuntak lineage; this made us members of the same kinship category. Dr. Sinaga was not

only a medical doctor but also had received a Ph.D. in biochemistry from a university in

Holland. He held a prominent position at a large teaching hospital in Medan. He was an

imposing figure who spoke in many languages with wit and insight. In the presence of Dr.

Sinaga, it was difficult to maintain my romantic vision of the Toba Batak Other, any residual

notion of the Batak as prim itive, or any sense of the ethnographer as a person of privilege relative

to the "n atives." The power ine qualities of 1957 between the wea lth a nd prestige of the visiting

Am erican scientist and the poor uneducated natives had been leveled by 199 7. Of course, given

the postmodern critique in anthropology in the years between our visits, I was already

predisposed to give up these colonialist notions; indee d, I had con tributed to the critique (Bruner

198 4b; Turner and Bruner 1986).

What is at issue here is the distinctio n betwee n the anthrop ologist and the n ative, the scientist

and the primitive, old anthropological binaries that I had accepted so readily in 1957. In

discussing the preparations for our return, I first described fictive kinship relations through the

Simandjuntak lineage and then professional anthropological ties through two Illinois Ph.D.s.From a Western perspective, the kinship and the professional might seem quite distinct, as

oppos itions, the old and the new, gem einschaft and gesellschaft, but these oppositions merged

du ring the visit to Sum atra. The kinship ties led to the performance of a "trad itiona l" Toba Batak

welcoming ritual, but the playful tone and the presence of Dr. Sinaga, a thoroughly modern

man, disrupted the association between kinship and tra dition . Further, on the professional side,

my former assistant, Professor Mangasa Silitonga, himself a Toba Batak, held what he called a

"pa rty" for us that includ ed not only Batak dancing and cerem onial food such as sangsang, but

also an old-style Batak orchestra using classic instruments to perform the most traditional of

Batak ritual m usic (godang), designed to recall the ancestral spirits. This was no t the recuperationof tradition in performance art, but rather was the enactment of livin g Toba Batak culture , 1990s

style. In some respects, the party Professor Silitonga held for us was even more "old" Batak,

given the form of the dancing and the m usic, than the kinship-based cerem ony held at the home

of Mrs. Simandjuntak. The weary oppositions between anthropologist and native, traditional

and modern were indeed problematized on our return to Sumatra.




Figure 2. Jane and Blair Valen tine, the author's daughter and son-in- law, receiving the sacred ulos blessmp.

Our entourage arrived in Lumban Panggabean the next day in two Toyota sport-utility

vehicles. W e fou nd that almost the entire village p opula tion had been waiting for us, includin g

representatives of each of the community's 35 families. My wife and I came with two drivers,

my daughter and son-in-law, and three Simandjuntaks, who had appeared fr. m nowhere to

accompany us from the city.

Upon entering the village, Batak women hugged my wife (Figure 3), while men and women

shook my hand, including those too young to have known us on previous visits but who had

heard about us since. Villagers told and retold stories and recalled memorable moments from

our earlier visits, some that I had forgotten. The group crow de d together in the local cottee shop

(warung), a gathering place and sometimes meeting hdll. We then resumed the exc hange ot

return to Sumatra 467



Figure 3. Elaine Bruner cnlering the village in 1997.

gifts, an exchange characteristic of Batak society, that we had begun together 40 years before.

In 195 7, the villagers we lcom ed us into their lives, adopted my w ife as their daughter, patiently

facilitated our research, answered our questions, and generously provided their blessing and

protection. When we left the village in 19S8, they gave us as girts some of their sacred lineage

heirloom s, inc lullin g priceless old carvings and bark books w hic h I in turn don ated as part of

a collection to the Peabody Museum at Yale University, where I was on the faculty. These old

Batak heirlooms were very meaninglul to us, but we telt they should be in the public domain

for all to see Subsequently, to our great disapp ointm ent, I learned that with ou t m y know ledge

the museum sold the collection.

468 am erican ethnologist



Figure 4. Ed Bruner distributing money gifts.

In 1997, in our role as wife receivers, it was appropriate to make cash gifts (Figure 4) to my

wife's lineage. We gave each of the 35 families an envelope containing 20,000 rupiah (then

about U.S. $10). Among the Batak themselves, affines make cash gifts to the r wife giv ng

lineage. The Batak kinship pattern is one of exchange, with the wife receivers in perpetual debt

for the supreme gift of a wife and of offspring to perpetuate the family line . These are debts thatcan never be repaid, which precipitates exchanges, among kin groups that may cont nue tor

generations.

The village that once had no running wa ter, indoor toilets, or electricity, had all oi these and

even television in 1997. In the coffee shop, people could gather and drink a Coca Cola or a

beer and watch television . CN N no less. They watch ed and discussed the O.J. Simpson trial,

the movements in the New York stock exchange, the latest Mideast conflict, and events m the

Balkans. In this isolated village in Sumatra, at the end of the w orld , to use my m othe r-in-law's

phrase, people could watch the same news that I viewed in my Illinois living room, at

approximately the same time.C N N may well be the quintessential transnational m edium , as Abu-Lughod (1997) points out,

although I disagree with her statement that television and transnationa' influences "Irender]

more and more problematic a concept of cultures as local zed com m un'ties of people

suspended in shared webs of meaning" (1997:123). Rather, I agree with the first part of her

statement, since Toba Batak culture is no longer localized, but I do not agree with the second

part. Batak people are indeed enmeshed in shared webs of mean ng, even it they are dispersed

as may be seen from their vibrant kinship network. But I shall say more about shared Titan i gs

in the next section.

mortuary rituals

An oth er new developm ent in Lumban Panggabean has been the construction ot mass vc

cement monuments along the road (Figure 5), marking the graves ot prominent and wivilthy




Figure 5. Recent Toba Batak gravesites in the village.

men of the village (with a place for the remains of their wives). It was striking to me that early

in their lives all these men had left the village to make their fortunes elsewhere in Indonesia,

usually in cities. They had lived their adult lives in a modern international w or ld , and only after

death d id they return permanen tly to their high land village . The graves gave a symbolic presence

to men who were otherwise absent and were a daily reminder to villagers that the route to acelebrated afterlife, a goal in the Batak cosmological system, lies in leaving the village. Such

monumental gravesites are to be found in other villages throughout the Tapanuli highlands.

One elaborate monument was dedicated to Sia Marinus Simandjuntak, Ompu Tagururadja,

the respected elder who had invited us to study Lumban Panggabean and stay in his house in

1 957. He died at the age of 90. As I stood by his grave, I recalled the days 40 years ago when

we had met every m orning over tea and papaya to discuss Batak cultu re. S.M. as he was ca lled ,

had been a prominent journalist in his early years, an ardent nationalist, and later the bupati,

the highest government adm inistrative officer for the district of North Tap anu li. S.M. my m entor

and teacher, moved back anc: forth between village and city, and we were fortunate that hewas in residence in the village for the period of our fieldwork. He had a good anthropological

mind and enjoyed discuss ng the complexities and ambiguities of Toba Batak lite and culture.

M y w ife and I both cried at his gravesite.

All monuments, by their nature, serve to bring the past into the present. Among the Toba

Batak, the graves tes are built in the villages, hut they ^re not just constructed anywhere in the

highlands. The specific locatio n selected i thought to be the ancestral hom eland ol that

particular deceased person. It is sacred territory, the hona ni pasogit, literally the place of the

ancestors. The gravesite is hallowe d m agical g round a site ot orig in , a place to give offerings

to one s ancestors and to ask for their b lessing. For these reasons gravesites are not ordina rilyconstrue ted in areas outside Tapan uli.

Elaborate mortuary pract ces involving the reburial ot the bones ot important ancestors have

long been a part ol Toba Batak culture, probably going bac k to megalithic times (Bartlett 1 l) J4),

At a first tuneral a man is usually buried in the earth. I ater there m ay be rebunals and ever-larger

grave inonumenls, until finally the bones may be exhumed and placed in a cement structure.




Figure 6. The monument dedicated to the founder of the Simandjuntak clan.

In the past, whether a man was considered to be a venerated ancestor was a decision made by

his patrilineal descendants, who organized and paid for the rebunal ceremony. In a sense,

reburial was as much a testimony to the power and status of descendants as to the ancestor

himself.

In addition to individual tombs, in recent decades, there have been constructed in the

highlands enormous monuments (tugu) to clan ancestors, some going back 15 generations

(Figure 6). They may contain space not only for the ancestor and his spouse, hut also for hissons and their wives. As all clan descendants have the right to attend the mortuary ritual

comm emorating the building of the tugu, these ceremonies may draw thou san d, of people and

last many days. Monuments are expensive to build and the associated rites are co tly. The

villagers themselves cannot atford them , they are paid for with urban m oney— by c lan m embers

w ho have become successful in m odern Indonesia or abroad and wh o p articipate in clan rituals

as a tribute to themselves, their descendants, and their clan ancestors.

It is ironic that in these monumental gravesites, in these massive structures, the bones of the

deceased are literally fixed in concrete, immobilized. Yet the graves themselves are symbols of

mobility, of dispersal, of movement by the deceased or his descendants to el ewhere, to thecenters of Indonesian m odern ity. It is only the urban rich w ho can atford to b uild them . These

grave m onuments of such great durab ility attempt to fix the past, to im m ob ilize in concrete the

shared culture of the Toba Batak (Bruner 1987).

In the case of Lum ban Panggabean, and in other v illages, how ever, the recent grave strut Hires

were p lanned for and in some cases paid for by the men later buried w ith in them . Wealthy men

pay for their own monuments and may even take part in their design. Each one is different, each

man assuring for himself that he wi ll be remembered alter his death. Such monum ents o ccup y

prom inen t locations, and in Lumban Panggabean they are vi ible every time one enters or leaves

the village. The row of m onuments can be seen from the win dow s or verandahs of some houses,and are close to the coffeehouse, the village meeting place. No one in the village i an escape

the daily reminder that the route to success in life and in death is !o migrate

Almost every young Toba Batak with w ho m I spoke in 1 (iS7 and 1 ')()7, both men and wom en,

wan ted to leave the village. Those wh o migrate seek edu cation, em ploym ent, and a better hie

in the larger society, while those who remain have few choices but to U\xn in the rice lit Ids,




as the Batak contend, like water buffalo. The Batak say that education is the golden plow,

although education offers different hopes for men and women. Men have greater employment

opportunities, whereas women aspire to marry men who have left or will leave the village.

Compared w ith the few em ployment possibil ities in highland Tap anuli, Indonesia's urban sector

has enjoyed an expanding economy and high annual growth rates (until the political turmoil of

1998). Urban centers provide abundant opportunities for the entrepreneurial Batak while

development and progress are hardly visible in the villages. During the Dutch colonial era,

migration was discouraged (part of colonial policy), and only after Indonesian Independence

in late 1949 d id large-scale migration become possible. Since 1 950 , hundreds of thousands ofToba Batak have left the highland villages, and there has followed almost a half century of

extensive migra tion. Usman P elly, a dem ographic anthropo logist, estimates that there are about

two million Toba Batak, of whom 700,000 have migrated outside of the Tapanuli highlands; of

these, about 300,0 00 reside in the city of Medan (personal com m unica tion, September 8,19 97).

The overwhelming majority of those who leave maintain their Batak identity and their Batak

clan name (which immediately identifies their ethnicity to other Indonesians), participate in

their local variant of Batak ritual practice, and return to the village for important ceremonies.

There are, of course, extensive changes in the culture of those wh o have left, as wel l as among

those who remain. Still, almost all Toba Batak continue to maintain an ever-evolving butdistinctive Toba Batak social and cerem onial system, wherever they may reside.

rituals of reincorporation

I have described tw o sets of rituals as if they were interdepe nden t. First, I described the Batak

ceremonies of blessing and gift exchange (in which my family participated), and second, I

described the rituals for deceased migrants who have constructed gravesites and monuments

in the highlands. I now propose to theorize a connection between these two seemingly discrete

ceremo nial practices. I do so in part from the villagers' perspective, but m ore im portantly from

the perspective of Batak cultural symbolics. Both sets of rituals serve to domesticate difference

and are an example of the production of locality (Appadurai 1996). The rituals involving my

family incorporated us as part of the Toba Batak sociocultural system. We, as foreign travelers,

became "Ba takized" and were given a position with in a living kins hip system, so that every tim e

we address another member of the lineage or indeed any Simandjuntak, we and they use the

appropriate kin terms. My description of these rituals may serve another purpose, which is to

construct myself as ethnographer and situate myself as an active researcher within the anthro-

pological community. Wealthy migrants who build monumental graves in the highlands do soin part to make a claim to their success in the larger society and to display their wealth and

power. From the villagers' point of vie w, thou gh, mortuary rituals and the monum ents serve to

reincorporate powerful Batak migrants into village society. Despite their prominence in trans-

national cosmopolitan settings, the migrants return at death to their village of origin. What for

the migrants is a symbol of prestige becomes for the villagers a symbol of domestication and

reincorporation within the local village world. The migrants may have been international

businessmen, high governm ent o fficials, or generals in the arm y, but in death they com e to rest

in the soil of their ancestors. For the villagers both sets of rituals (for my family and for the

migrants) m ake the strange familiar, the globa l lo cal, and are the means by w hi ch Batak cu lturerenews itself and comes alive again, incorporating poor village farmers, we althy migrants, and

foreign anthropologists into one shared web of meaning.

What happens to those who resist incorporation and refuse to play by Toba Batak rules?

Returning migrants and anthropologists are predisposed to accept the Batak system and allow

themselves to be enmeshed into a shared web of meaning, but what of members of different




ethnic groups, say the Javanese, M inan gka bau , or Indonesian Chinese? Urban Batak may relate

to these groups on a daily basis as colleagues, neighbors, shopkeepers, schoolmates, or

government officials. In these interactions, Batak cannot simply extend or adapt their social

system, because at some p oint, at the point o f con juncture (Sahlins 1981), people e xperience

irreconc ilable differences and inherent contrad ictions. Indonesia is ethnically diverse; there are

300 ethnolinguistic groups in the archipelago. Within their own ethnic group, and especially

in ethnically homogeneous rural areas, the Toba Batak practice Batak culture by Batak rules

(see Bruner 1973). In the city , Batak learn the new ru leso f an emerging Indonesian urban cultu re.

The Toba Batak compa rtmentalize and adapt. Tow ard other Batak, in village or city, they behaveone wa y— speaking the Batak language, using Batak rules and kin terms. Toward Indonesians

of other ethnic groups, they speak Indonesian and live by the rules and practices of Indonesian

city life (see Bruner 1973 an d 1974a). O f course, the boundaries are not impe netrab le, as there

is seepage along the ethnic borders, and Batak relations with non-Batak have transformed the

Batak system, in village and city alike.

discussion

W hen I look back to my Batak papers based on the 19 57 -58 and 1970s fieldwo rk, I see that

the major research focus was the analysis of the transformations in the Toba sociocultural system

in different locations and contexts. I studied how the system changed in the village, in the coastal

city of M eda n, and in Bandung and Jakarta, tw o cities in Java. In this early field wo rk, I was a

mo bile ethnographer, follow ing my subject matter, doin g mu ltisited ethnography (Marcus 1995)

and traveling theory (Clifford 1997). Appadu rai (1996), too, might have been delighted to know

how brilliant were the Toba people in producing locality. Let me explain.

W hen Batak peoples first arrive in a new c ity, they form a ceremo nial and m utual aid society

consisting of all the different Batak subgroups, not only Toba, but also Karo, Simelungun,

Pakpak, An gko la, and M an da iling. This happened in Bandung in the 1950s (Bruner 1972). As

the population increases, the Toba Batak form their own separate ethnic organization, then

divide into units of related partrilineal clans, and then further segment into single clan

associations (dongan sam arga). W ith even further g row th, each clan subdivides into regionally

based clan segments. For example, the Tobing clan may form four district groups for the

northern, southern, eastern, and western parts of a city. These divisions reproduce the system

of lineage segmentation and adapt it to an urban environment. An interesting feature is that the

patrilineal segmentation goes to the clan level, and then further division occurs along territorial

lines. Some large clans no w have 30 or m ore territorially based clan segments in one c ity. Theassociations help w ith wedd ings and funerals, facilitate the adat, provide emergency aid , give

scholarships to p rom ising students, and form a network to assist new migrants as they adjust to

the city and find e mp loyme nt. M y p oint is that the Toba Batak reproduce their social ceremon ial

system w ith transformations, thereby p roducing locality wherever they may reside. They place

a map of lineage segments and affinal relations as an overlay on their new territory. I learned

this only by fo llow ing the Batak migration routes and studying permutations in the Toba Batak

social and cosmological system. It would, perhaps, be more accurate to say that, rather than

follo win g the Batak people, I was followin g an anthropological p roblem, the study of con tinuity

and transformation in the Batak soc iocultural system. The principles of the patrilineal asymmet-rical system had been utilized by the Batak not out of some innate cultural imperative as if

somehow "tradition" mechanically reproduces itself, but in response to the situation in w hic h

the Batak found themselves in urban Indonesia and in the nation-state.

Abu-Lughod (1991) says that anthropologists should be "writing against culture," that is,

against culture as a homogeneous shared set of meanings. The phrase "w ritin g against cu lture ,"

return to Sumatra 473



conveys Abu-Lugh od's notion of culture as a contested and p artial arena of struggle and cap tures

current disciplinary thinking. Indeed, I have advocated this position as well (Bruner and

Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 1994; Bruner 1996a). Abu-Lughod's stance is a reaction against the

concept of culture as integrated, functionally consistent, and static. Taking a longer view,

though, I maintain that culture can be conceptualized as both contested and shared, in part

because in the contestation there is sharing. If the parties to a con flict have nothing in co m m on ,

they have no grounds to disagree. My position is that anthropologists should be writing not

against culture, but against our ow n an thropo logical preconceptions of what constitutes cu lture

and w here it is located. Aspects of culture that ethnographers leave out are often the ones theytake for granted or are ones they somehow deem inappropriate for their ethnograp hic accou nt.

Anth ropolog ical perceptions of what should be included in the study of a culture do change

over time. The profession is now well aware that pre-World War II ethnographers failed to

situate their accounts in the larger patterns of colonia lism and politica l dom inatio n w ith in wh ich

they were e mb edded. In his famous intro duc tion to 77ieNtyer(1940), Evans-Pritchard, frequently

cited and criticized, at least provided some information on the context of British rule, although

he never could have envisioned the extent of the subsequent anthropological critique of

colonialism. In his classic 1935 study of the Crow, Robert Lowie's view of culture was based

upon a narrative structure, wid ely shared in the discipline at the time , that led him to describenot Crow practice (what he actually observed in the field) but, rather, a historical composite.

He includ ed aspects of Crow culture that had comp letely disappeared, such as buffalo hun ting

and the nom adic warrior life; he also omitted aspects of Crow culture still current, such as the

relations of the tribe to the federal governm ent. H is characterization o f the Crow was based on

a prior theoretical vision of what should properly be included in an ethnographic description,

and the reader cannot know from his account how the Crow actually lived in the 1920s.

Ethnographers know this now , and there have been many critiques o f salvage ethnography. The

relevant question for this article becomes: what was my 1957 prior vision, my unexamined

taken-for-granted narratives about fieldwork, anthropology, and myself as ethnographer? Mo resignificantly, w hat might be the discipline's current prior visions and narratives?

Geertz (1973) once wrote that anthropologists do not study villages, they study in villages. I

would amend that now, and Geertz (1995:53) might agree: anthropologists should no longer

study in villages, and if we do, then our view of that village should be radically altered. As I

have sho wn , the set of beliefs and practices that exists with in the physical confi nes of the village

wo uld now be a very incomplete characte rization of contem porary real-time Toba Batak culture

because so much of that culture is located elsewhere and takes place outside of the villa ge , in

sites all over Indonesia and the world at large. The village population is demographically

skewed, as a disproportionate number of wid ow s, ch ildren, and o ld people live there. A studyrestricted to one site risks neglecting the flow of k now ledge , m oney, sym bols, people, and goods

to and from other sites, Appadurai's "scapes." Further, the thoughts of those inside the village

include a consciousness of the outside: thoughts of their relatives in diverse locations, stories

migrants tell when they return to the village , schemes for escape from the labor of wor k in the

rice fields, knowledge of econom ic opp ortunities elsewhere, and images dep icted in telev ision ,

f i lm, and other media. To take the village as the unit of analysis, and then to see forces as

imp inging from the "o utside ," is no solution because many of these forces already exist w ith in

the village and w ith in the consciousness of the villagers.

For most anthropologists, perhaps, the postmodern critique has transformed our attitudetoward ethnography; certainly, my ow n view has changed. In 1957,1 was more confident about

the discipline and more secure about my role as ethnographer. Everything seemed clearer in

those years, and anthropology appeared more stable. In retrospect, however, I see that

anthropology was somewhat rigid and limited in the scope of what could be studied. I enjoy

the freedom postmodern innovations bring to my investigations, freedom to follow my human-




istfc inclinations, to discuss the politics of fieldwork, revel in the inherent ambiguities of the

situation, seek the ironic inconsistencies of life, view the subject matter historically and

processually, bring more play and openness into field research, grapple with the global

interconnectedness of the world, study new topics (such as tourism, which did not appear to

be serious enough for the anthropo logy of the 1950s), and write reflexively, as in this article. I

applaud the new transnational work of Ortner, Stoller, Abu-Lughod, Appadurai, and Marcus,

and they w ou ld probably agree that the profession needs to take account of transnationalism

in all anthropological settings.

Sherry Ortner's 1958 high school class was together in one locality, engaged in face-to-face

relations only during the school years, for after graduation the members of the class dispersed

and there came to be 100 percent geographic mobility. The class members and their spouses

come together most prominently in reunions. In Ortner's terms, they are a postcommunity. In

Paul Stoller's case of the West African street vendors, the members of different African nations

and ethnic groups migrate to New York City for varying periods of time and while there, form

an occupa tional subgroup in o ne of the most ethnically diverse cities in the w or ld. For Stoller,

they occupy a transnational space. In my w ork on to urism , the tourists come from distant places

and the natives come out o f their comm unities to coexist in a specially constructed lo cality, a

performance space, which I call a touristic borderzone, from which the tourists return to their

hotels, and the locals to their homes and fam ilies, each to their ow n spaces.

The Batak village remains a fixed, bounded locality, but the ways of the outside world now

reside w ithi n the village and w ith in the m inds of the villagers. For nearly 50 years, a stream of

villagers has been migrating wh ile ma intaining an identification w ith their place of orig in; some

migrants retain ownership of their village homes and rice fields. This was already clear to some

extent in 1957 but was stunningly apparent by 1997. The Batak as a group constitute a postlocal

com m unity, one that is radically delo calize d. The culture of the Toba Batak continues to emerge

in many diverse transnational spaces, and there is continuous interaction among geograph icallydispersed ethnic and k in group mem bers. Just as Ortn er's class has a center in the high sch oo l,

and as Stoller's street vendors have a center, in Senagal or other West A frican nations, so, too,

do the Batak have a center (bona ni pasogit) in their home village. Batak identify themselves as

members of that village, even if they were born elsewhere and have never been to the village.

The village represents for them the sacred orig in of their lineage, kin , ancestors, and the ir spirit

(tondi). Some recent conceptualizations (Clifford 1997) privilege travel, mobility, and move-

ment, but I would contend that Clifford's formulation must be tempered by an ethnographic

understanding of the specific cultural symbolics involved and of the peoples' own sense of

travel, mobility, locality, and place. These topics can best be studied by fieldwork and by themethods of ethnography. The particular strength of anthropo logical science compa red to other

disciplines is precisely that it can produce a more culturally and symbolically sensitive

transnationalism.

Appa durai w rites that "the task of ethnography now becomes the unraveling of a conundrum:

what is the nature of locality as a lived experience in a globalized, deterritoralized world?"

(1996:52). The same locality, howe ver, in this case the Toba Batak village , as "l ived experience,"

has no mon olit hic me aning . Researchers canno t assume that a bound ed space such as a village

has its own intrinsic meaning. For most younger Batak, the village is a place from which to

escape, a site of lifelong drudgery, poverty, and (for some) a symbol of their failure to positionthemselves so as to experience the excitement and the opportunities available in the larger

wor ld . For some wealthy urban elders, it is place to be buried, to return to in the afterlife, to be

forever with the ancestors. For yet other sophisticated Batak living in transnational spaces, the

village becomes an imaginary place, a sacred center, a site of memory, which they glorify in

nostalgic and even romantic terms, much as this ethnographer first did in 1 957.




notes

Acknowledgments. This article was presented at seminars at the Departments of Anthropology at theUniversity of Illinois and at the Chinese U niversity of Hong K ong. I am indeb ted to the seminar participantsfor helpful comments.

1. My wife, Elaine C.Bruner, an educator and therapist, has been a partner in all of my field trips beginningin 1948 wit h my first field experience as an undergraduate, part of Clyde K luckhohn 's project am ong theRamah Navajo. For our work in Sumatra, she learned to speak both Indonesian and Toba Batak and fullyparticipated in village life, focusing on the women and children. Invariably, she has been a dedicatedcom pan ion, a perceptive fieldw orker, a nd my best critic.

2. Shortly after our arrival in the village, the Batak explained that by adopting my w ife as a daughter, w e

cou ld have a small ceremony for whic h I wo uld have to contribute on ly one p ig but that if I were adoptedas a son of the clan, it would require a large ritual for which I would have to donate at least one waterbuffalo. They presented their option as if they were saving me money, and only subsequently did I realizethat by adopting my wife, we became wife receivers and hence were placed in a subservient position in thekinship system.

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accepted April 2, 1998final version submitted May 12, 1998

Edward M. BrunerDepartment of AnthropologyUniversity of Illinois607 South MathewsUrbana, IL [email protected]

ae bruner sumatra

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