Being and place: movement, ancestors, and personhood in East Java, Indonesia

Abstract

This article is about the transformation of the frontier character of East Java and the impact that such a transformation and the migrations that precipitated it have on forms of personhood in a specific locality. Within this context, it enquires into the capacities of human subjects to create place and the capacity of place to create persons. In particular, it looks at the ways in which memories, kinship, and ritual practices are spatialized and the manner in which such practices, once solidified and coagulated into topographies that map social relations, give rise to particular conceptions of place and personhood as mutually constituting and equally fluid and alterable.