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Grounded in ethnographic and archival research on the Indonesian island of Bali, More Than Words challenges conventional understandings of textuality and writing as they pertain to the religious traditions of Southeast Asia. Through a nuanced study of Balinese script as employed in rites of healing, sorcery, and self-defense, Richard Fox explores the aims and desires embodied in the production and use of palm-leaf manuscripts, amulets, and other inscribed objects. Balinese often attribute both life and independent volition to manuscripts and copperplate inscriptions, presenting them with elaborate offerings. Commonly addressed with personal honorifics, these script-bearing objects may become partners with humans and other sentient beings in relations of exchange and mutual obligation. The question is how such practices of "the living letter" may be related to more recently emergent conceptions of writing—linked to academic philology, reform Hinduism, and local politics—which take Balinese letters to be a symbol of cultural heritage, and a neutral medium for the transmission of textual meaning. More than Words shows how Balinese practices of apotropaic writing—on palm-leaves, amulets, and bodies—challenge these notions, and yet coexist alongside them. Reflecting on this coexistence, Fox develops a theoretical approach to writing centered on the premise that such contradictory sensibilities hold wider significance than previously recognized for the history and practice of religion in Southeast Asia and beyond.

Balinese forms of social organization, collective labor and solidarity are gradually being transformed – and often displaced – by new social institutions and their attendant ideals, desires and pleasures. The rise of the nuclear family, as a new social ideal and institution, is one the more important developments in this connection. This essay examines rival conceptions of the family, and of household economy, that underpinned a debate that took place in a southerly Balinese ward over the provision of neighborly assistance during six-monthly odalan ceremonies. The analysis provides insight into how social and cultural transformation is understood and experienced at the level of day-to-day life.

Let me begin with an expression of gratitude to Verena Meyer, Thomas Hunter, Penny Edwards, Laurie Sears, Tom Patton and Kaja McGowan. It is a rare privilege to be read with such nuance and generosity by one's colleagues. I have learned much from their comments here, as I have from their work more generally. Given the brevity of my response it will have to be selective, focusing on a couple of the more prominent themes—namely, cultural complexity and translation. But I hope to return in future and think further along several of the other, very productive lines of questioning they have opened up in relation to the book.

The link between family, fear and women's bodies has a complicated history in Indonesia, tied to both international aid and economic development—as well as, in more recent years, to consumerism and transnational capital. Yet, if the 'small happy and prosperous family norm' is now the aspiration of many young Balinese, this was not always the case. Today advertisements for family planning technology encourage women to overcome fears of discomfort and physical side-effects in order to realize 'the family of their dreams'. But the fears of earlier days were not so easily allayed—incited by stories of infertility, infection and death resulting from use of the IUD. What do older Balinese remember of the early days of the KB program? How does this compare with the aspirations of younger Balinese as they pursue the pleasures of life in a 'small family' and experience its anxieties? This article presents preliminary reflections on a new project exploring how Balinese differing in gender, generation and social class talk about and act on their plans for the future. Given its importance for both state bureaucratic and commercial representations of domestic life, the ideal of the patriarchal nuclear family figures centrally in these reflections.

Om swasty-Alaikum… Interpréter l'humour religio-ethnique sur la scène balinaise.
Cet article examine l'humour religio-ethnique sur l'île indonésienne de Bali, avec un accent particulier sur la transformation du théâtre improvisé en arène de commentaire social et politique. L'analyse est centrée sur le personnage d'un ' bouffon' musulman à bec-de-lièvre (bondrés), dont les bouffonneries se font l'écho et amplifient une gamme de susceptibilités comiques et chauvines très répandues dans la société balinaise actuelle. À première vue, le préjugé incarné dans ce personnage semble refléter les frustrations balinaises face aux difficultés économiques persistantes faisant suite aux attentats perpétrés dans des boîtes de nuit en 2002 et 2005. Comme l'a dit le religieux le plus célèbre de l'île, les Balinais ont été contraints de vendre leur terre pour acheter des brochettes, alors que les musulmans «de l'extérieur » vendent des brochettes pour acheter des terres balinaises. Si l'on ajoute à cela la place croissante de la piété islamique dans la vie publique indonésienne et les récentes attaques sur ce qui est perçu comme hétérodoxe (cf. Ahmadiyah), on pourrait penser que les Balinais hindous ont des raisons de s'inquiéter. Mais les musulmans «de l'extérieur » sont-ils réellement la cause des difficultés des Balinais ? Ou bien, est-ce qu'en prenant pour cibles «les nouveaux venus » dans l'île, les acteurs et leurs publics ne contribuent-ils pas à passer sous silence un certain nombre d'injustices plus difficiles à traiter ?

It is as if bombings have become a trend in Indonesian society.Tempo Interaktif, 25 December 2000.To put it crudely: because the languages of Third World societies – including, of course, the societies that social anthropologists have traditionally studied – are 'weaker' in relation to Western languages (and today, especially to English), they are more likely to submit to forcible transformation in the translation process than the other way around.Talal Asad (1986: 157–8)

Archaeology on the Great Plains. W. Raymond Wood. ed. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1998. 522 pp.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1971