N Herriman
Biographic Data
| ID | 24701 |
|---|---|
| NAME | N Herriman |
| GIVEN NAMES | N |
| FAMILY NAME | Herriman |
| SIGNATURE | HERRIMAN N |
| AFFILIATIONS | La Trobe University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6702-7070 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 19 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 20 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 19 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2006 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2022 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
The Cocos Malays
Influencing the influencers
Indonesia boasts a lively influencer scene. These influencers promote various products and messages, including political messages, to their followers for commercial gain, and have been particularly active during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) pandemic. Influencers in Indonesia are potentially subject to state regulation, particularly via the controversial Electronic Transactions and Information Law (ITE Law) which criminalizes digital co…
Fashion, Thresholds, and Borders
Introduction Since at least the work of van Gennep in the early 1900s, anthropologists have recognised that borders and thresholds are crucial in understanding human behavior and culture. But particularly in the past few decades, the study of borders has moved from the margins of social inquiry to the centre. At the same time, fashion (Entwistle), including clothing and skin (Bille), have emerged as crucial to understanding the human condition. I…
Witch-Hunt and Conspiracy
This book brings unique insight and prize-winning analysis to an extraordinary story – that of a witch-hunt and ‘ninja’ craze that swept a region of Java, Indonesia, in 1998. When neighbours, family members and friends believed that one among them was a sorcerer, this suspicion would sometimes culminate in the death of the suspect. In 1998, these sporadic killings turned into an outbreak of violence. Muslim organisations attributed the escalation…
Management of Biodiversity
Indigenous people have, in recent decades, become increasingly involved in environmental conservation. Notwithstanding, some social science research has critiqued as problematic or untenable ideas (notably “Indigeneity” and “conservation”) that putatively underpin Indigenous conservation. But does the critique accurately characterize actual Indigenous conservation projects? And can we create conceptual space for Indigenous conservation? Based on …
Presumptions of promiscuity
This article is concerned with a pervasive gender stereotype within Indonesian society, that of janda, meaning both widows and divorcees. The term janda is no neutral signifier of marital status, but rather carries a bundle of pejorative meanings concerned with status and presumed sexual availability to men. It is bound up within assumptions about the normality of heterosexual marriage in Indonesia, and in many ways janda is the antithesis of the…
Seeking the State
Anthropological research on Southeast Asian states has contributed to understanding how local communities engage with states in their everyday lives. Two approaches drawing out the complexities of state‐society entanglement stand out. First is Foucault's idea that states possess the art‐of‐government. Through techniques such as mapping, census data, biometrics and so on, states are believed to achieve new levels of control over people, who are th…
Hard-Copy Rumours’
Many scholars have analysed media and communications in Indonesia by focusing on state control and resistance to it. Another approach emphasizes the press and society interacting. This paper analyses rumours spreading through East Java in October and November 1998, which held that ‘ninjas’ were targeting traditionalist Muslims, their leaders, preachers and the whole community. The author argues that these rumours developed through the interplay o…
Language and Superdiversity
Over the past two or three decades, global immigration has apparently surpassed the ‘waves’ of post-WWII immigration both in its speed and extent. The resultant ‘superdiversity', as it has been lab
The Morbid Nexus
For the past few decades, the idea that witchcraft and sorcery are closely linked with the experience of capitalism has proven captivating. Leading international anthropologists, such as the Comaroffs, Geschiere, Ong and Taussig have argued for the modernity of the supernatural. They have demonstrated that, instead of declining in the modern period, beliefs and practices associated with evil spirits and magic are regularly invoked to explain the …
Human rights and sorcery in East Java (Respond to this article at http
Human rights acquires different meanings in different contexts. In this article, I demonstrate how a local interpretation of human rights was linked to an outbreak of ‘sorcerer’ killings
Thailand's political peasants
Thailand’s political peasants: Power in the modern rural economy, by Andrew Walker. University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, Wisconsin, 2012, xiii + 276pp., endnotes, bibliography, index. ISBN: 978
Caring and Family
This article explores marriage migration within a 'Malay' ethnic group - the Cocos Malay population on Home Island of the Cocos (Keeling) Islands. Marriage is considered important because it produces legitimate children and gives achieved status. Marriage migrants and their Home Island spouses portray their betrothal as jodoh - a good match made by the extended family. Marriage is also associated with the role of family, as couples often live wit…
Sorcery, Theft and Affinity
Research has called attention to the importance placed on incorporating the ‘Other’— turning outsiders into insiders—particularly in local and rural contexts of Southeast Asia. This can be seen in a variety of cultural phenomena such as origin myths, marriage patterns and even home design. Rather than focusing on the way strangers are included, in this article I analyse the converse phenomenon: estrangement among family, neighbours and friends. I…
Objects of Manipulation
Some of the most important contributors to the study of Indonesia have observed that the concept of ‘rakyat’ [the people] has been central to the way Indonesians understand their nation.1 Yet until now there has been little attempt to consolidate and build on these observations by analysing the nuances and implications of understandings of the term ‘rakyat’. In this paper, the author encourages the development of such research by critiquing its u…
The Great Rumor Mill
Different methods of communication imply different social and political relations. Generally, mass media are distributed through centralized broadcast stations or presses and controlled by the elite. Face-to-face communications, which circulate through physically close contact between people, have more subversive potential. The author analyzes rumors spread in the press and by word of mouth during October and November 1998 in East Java, Indonesia…
A Din of Whispers
In rural Banyuwangi, East Java, Indonesia, sorcery and the reprisals for it occur amongst neighbours, kin and acquaintances. When illness occurs following a dispute between these people, sorcery may be suspected. The people who identify and take action against the suspected sorcerer are usually the suspected sorcerer's own family members, neighbours or acquaintances. By describing an instance where malevolent magic occurs within rather than betwe…
Sorcerer” Killings in Banyuwangi
This article interrogates the operation of an assumption of state responsibility frequently found in current scholarship on violence in Indonesia. There has recently been “an upsurge of interest in
Fear and Uncertainty
The Great Rumor Mill
Different methods of communication imply different social and political relations. Generally, mass media are distributed through centralized broadcast stations or presses and controlled by the elite. Face-to-face communications, which circulate through physically close contact between people, have more subversive potential. The author analyzes rumors spread in the press and by word of mouth during October and November 1998 in East Java, Indonesia…
Fear and Uncertainty
Sorcerer” Killings in Banyuwangi
This article interrogates the operation of an assumption of state responsibility frequently found in current scholarship on violence in Indonesia. There has recently been “an upsurge of interest in
Sorcery, Theft and Affinity
Research has called attention to the importance placed on incorporating the ‘Other’— turning outsiders into insiders—particularly in local and rural contexts of Southeast Asia. This can be seen in a variety of cultural phenomena such as origin myths, marriage patterns and even home design. Rather than focusing on the way strangers are included, in this article I analyse the converse phenomenon: estrangement among family, neighbours and friends. I…
Fear and Uncertainty
Sorcerer” Killings in Banyuwangi
This article interrogates the operation of an assumption of state responsibility frequently found in current scholarship on violence in Indonesia. There has recently been “an upsurge of interest in
A Din of Whispers
In rural Banyuwangi, East Java, Indonesia, sorcery and the reprisals for it occur amongst neighbours, kin and acquaintances. When illness occurs following a dispute between these people, sorcery may be suspected. The people who identify and take action against the suspected sorcerer are usually the suspected sorcerer's own family members, neighbours or acquaintances. By describing an instance where malevolent magic occurs within rather than betwe…
Objects of Manipulation
Some of the most important contributors to the study of Indonesia have observed that the concept of ‘rakyat’ [the people] has been central to the way Indonesians understand their nation.1 Yet until now there has been little attempt to consolidate and build on these observations by analysing the nuances and implications of understandings of the term ‘rakyat’. In this paper, the author encourages the development of such research by critiquing its u…
The Great Rumor Mill
Different methods of communication imply different social and political relations. Generally, mass media are distributed through centralized broadcast stations or presses and controlled by the elite. Face-to-face communications, which circulate through physically close contact between people, have more subversive potential. The author analyzes rumors spread in the press and by word of mouth during October and November 1998 in East Java, Indonesia…
Caring and Family
This article explores marriage migration within a 'Malay' ethnic group - the Cocos Malay population on Home Island of the Cocos (Keeling) Islands. Marriage is considered important because it produces legitimate children and gives achieved status. Marriage migrants and their Home Island spouses portray their betrothal as jodoh - a good match made by the extended family. Marriage is also associated with the role of family, as couples often live wit…
Sorcery, Theft and Affinity
Research has called attention to the importance placed on incorporating the ‘Other’— turning outsiders into insiders—particularly in local and rural contexts of Southeast Asia. This can be seen in a variety of cultural phenomena such as origin myths, marriage patterns and even home design. Rather than focusing on the way strangers are included, in this article I analyse the converse phenomenon: estrangement among family, neighbours and friends. I…
Human rights and sorcery in East Java (Respond to this article at http
Human rights acquires different meanings in different contexts. In this article, I demonstrate how a local interpretation of human rights was linked to an outbreak of ‘sorcerer’ killings
Thailand's political peasants
Thailand’s political peasants: Power in the modern rural economy, by Andrew Walker. University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, Wisconsin, 2012, xiii + 276pp., endnotes, bibliography, index. ISBN: 978
The Morbid Nexus
For the past few decades, the idea that witchcraft and sorcery are closely linked with the experience of capitalism has proven captivating. Leading international anthropologists, such as the Comaroffs, Geschiere, Ong and Taussig have argued for the modernity of the supernatural. They have demonstrated that, instead of declining in the modern period, beliefs and practices associated with evil spirits and magic are regularly invoked to explain the …
Hard-Copy Rumours’
Many scholars have analysed media and communications in Indonesia by focusing on state control and resistance to it. Another approach emphasizes the press and society interacting. This paper analyses rumours spreading through East Java in October and November 1998, which held that ‘ninjas’ were targeting traditionalist Muslims, their leaders, preachers and the whole community. The author argues that these rumours developed through the interplay o…
Language and Superdiversity
Over the past two or three decades, global immigration has apparently surpassed the ‘waves’ of post-WWII immigration both in its speed and extent. The resultant ‘superdiversity', as it has been lab
Presumptions of promiscuity
This article is concerned with a pervasive gender stereotype within Indonesian society, that of janda, meaning both widows and divorcees. The term janda is no neutral signifier of marital status, but rather carries a bundle of pejorative meanings concerned with status and presumed sexual availability to men. It is bound up within assumptions about the normality of heterosexual marriage in Indonesia, and in many ways janda is the antithesis of the…
Seeking the State
Anthropological research on Southeast Asian states has contributed to understanding how local communities engage with states in their everyday lives. Two approaches drawing out the complexities of state‐society entanglement stand out. First is Foucault's idea that states possess the art‐of‐government. Through techniques such as mapping, census data, biometrics and so on, states are believed to achieve new levels of control over people, who are th…
Witch-Hunt and Conspiracy
This book brings unique insight and prize-winning analysis to an extraordinary story – that of a witch-hunt and ‘ninja’ craze that swept a region of Java, Indonesia, in 1998. When neighbours, family members and friends believed that one among them was a sorcerer, this suspicion would sometimes culminate in the death of the suspect. In 1998, these sporadic killings turned into an outbreak of violence. Muslim organisations attributed the escalation…
Management of Biodiversity
Indigenous people have, in recent decades, become increasingly involved in environmental conservation. Notwithstanding, some social science research has critiqued as problematic or untenable ideas (notably “Indigeneity” and “conservation”) that putatively underpin Indigenous conservation. But does the critique accurately characterize actual Indigenous conservation projects? And can we create conceptual space for Indigenous conservation? Based on …
The Cocos Malays
Influencing the influencers
Indonesia boasts a lively influencer scene. These influencers promote various products and messages, including political messages, to their followers for commercial gain, and have been particularly active during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) pandemic. Influencers in Indonesia are potentially subject to state regulation, particularly via the controversial Electronic Transactions and Information Law (ITE Law) which criminalizes digital co…
Fashion, Thresholds, and Borders
Introduction Since at least the work of van Gennep in the early 1900s, anthropologists have recognised that borders and thresholds are crucial in understanding human behavior and culture. But particularly in the past few decades, the study of borders has moved from the margins of social inquiry to the centre. At the same time, fashion (Entwistle), including clothing and skin (Bille), have emerged as crucial to understanding the human condition. I…
Sociology (16 works) · Political science (14 works) · Asian Studies and History (13 works) · Law (13 works) · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies (8 works) · History (7 works) · Law (6 works) · Politics (6 works) · Anthropological Studies and Insights (5 works) · Art (5 works)