Are Ancestors Dead?

Spectres of Seppo: the afterlives of Finland's nuclear waste experts

“…This allowed traces of his past to linger on after his death. Seppo's predecessor status persisted as a ‘generative node’ in the present (Astuti & Bloch 2013: 112). Yet, for my informants, predecessor parables were not necessarily told to venerate the dead (Insoll 2011: 1044), to prescribe handed‐down rules (Mueggler 2017: 14), or to restrict the living by force (Graeber 1995: 272‐4).…”

‘Living’ in Nage, or the Meaning of ‘Life’ in an Eastern Indonesian Society

“…During 30 years of fieldwork, I have become far better known to older men (people now in my own age group), becoming familiar with both women and younger Nage only in the last 10 or so years, and then mostly in the context of more directive questioning such as that involved in the present study, where I needed to stress my wish to learn people's individual views. This may have encouraged women and younger people to offer their own interpretations, rather than drawing on what may be called a general cultural view – a view which also would be less familiar to younger people and which these and women generally (by contrast to older men) would feel less confident in expressing or would be less likely to defer to (on the factor of ‘deference’ in informant responses, see Astuti and Bloch ). Indeed, many women did appear more unsure than did men about what was living and what was not, and were also more inclined to say they did not know.…”