第68 回研究会＜2015/4/17＞
Gregory Forth氏
‘Living’ in Nage: An exploration of the concept of ‘life’ in an eastern Indonesian society
第68 回「東南アジアの社会と文化研究会」を下記の通り開催します。 今回はASAFAS客員教授として来日中の、人類学者Gregory Forth氏（カナダ・アルバータ大学）をお招きして開催します。 オープンな研究会ですので、ご関心をもたれた方はぜひお気軽にご参集ください。事前登録等の手続きは必要ありません。
2015年4月17日（金）16:00～18:15（15：30開場）
京都大学大学院アジア・アフリカ地域研究研究科
総合研究２号館（旧・工学部 4号館）4階 AA401
Gregory Forth氏（カナダ・アルバータ大学教授・ 京都大学大学院アジア・アフリカ地域研究研究科客員教授）
Recent writing in anthropology, and especially prominent attempts to revive the nineteenth century notion of ‘animism’, tends to depict small-scale, non-western societies as drawing distinctions between ‘living’ and ‘non-living’ things, as well as between humans and non-human animals, in ways very different from members of modern or ‘western’ societies. More specifically, ethno-linguistic groups falling in the first category have been described as maintaining an ‘animist’ or ‘animic’ cosmology or ‘ontology’. Drawing on ethnographic materials collected among the Nage people of Flores island, a group of highland cultivators and occasional hunters and fishers, the present paper questions this view. In particular, it analyses partly quantitative evidence which shows that the majority of Nage people distinguish living from non-living things in much the same way as do, for example, scientifically-educated westerners—a view which Descola (2013 [2005]) has called ‘naturalist’ and defined as the very opposite of his ‘animism’. Since differences appear among informants distinguished by age and gender, it is further shown, how older men—the very group one might expect to maintain an ‘animistic’ perspective—are in fact the least likely to do so, hence countering any suggestion that Nage ‘naturalism’ reflects factors of social change including modern education, literacy, or conversion to Christianity. In addition to providing negative evidence countering the new ‘animism’, the paper discusses other features of Nage cosmology which are consistent with their views on living and non-living things. These include Nage ideas concerning the ‘soul’ (mae) and spiritual beings called nitu; a pervasive empiricism and skepticism that pervades Nage folk zoology; and the strong ontological distinctions they recognize between humans, non-human animals, and spirits. Finally, attention is given to several methodological issues, including factors possibly explaining internal variation in Nage representations and factors that may have contributed to an anthropological view of small-scale societies as ‘animist’.
2014年度世話人代表・研究会事務局
小島敬裕 （京都大学東南アジア研究所）
kojima(at)cseas.kyoto-u.ac.jp
加藤裕美 （京都大学白眉センター）
kato(at)cseas.kyoto-u.ac.jp
