Potent Landscapes: CL: 19 (Southeast Asia Politics, Meaning and Memory) - Tapa dura

Potent Landscapes, by Catherine Allerton, is an engagingly written anthropological study of place and culture in Southeast Asia. . . . In conclusion, the rich ethnographic description along with great clarity in theoretical discussion makes the book a pleasure to read. . . . it is an important contribution to the conceptualization of landscapes and would be interest to scholars and students of Indonesian studies, Southeast Asian studies, and Anthropology in general.-- "Southeast Asian Studies" Taken as a whole, the book vividly illustrates how actual field realities complicate the idealized research methodologies on which ethnographers of children frequently have been encouraged to build their research proposals. . . . This book is most successful as an exploration of, as Allerton puts it, 'the process of undertaking ethnography with children, and the ways in which it might be different to ethnography with adults.'-- "Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute"

Potent Landscapes is an ethnographic investigation of the power of the landscape and the implications of that power for human needs, behavior, and emotions. The book situates Manggarai place-making and mobility within the larger contexts of diverse human-environment interactions as well as adat revival in postcolonial Indonesia. Although it focuses on social life in one region of eastern Indonesia, the work engages with broader theoretical discussions of landscape, travel, materiality, cultural politics, kinship, and animism. Potent Landscapes analyzes the power of a collective landscape shaped both by the Indonesian state's development policies and by responses to religious change.