Meaning and Power in a Southeast Asian Realm
In: Princeton Legacy Library
The ruler in the Indic States of Southeast Asia was seen not as the ""head of state"" but as the center or navel of the world. Like polities, persons and houses were and are viewed as centered spaces (locations) where spiritual potency can gather. Shelly Errington explores the politics of constituting and maintaining such centered socio-political spaces in a former Indic State called Luwu, which lies in South Sulawesi (Celebes), Indonesia. The meaning of political life and the ways its cultural forms were and are sustained depend on locally construed ideas of ""power"" or spiritual potency
