Books by Catherine Allerton
The Manggarai people of eastern Indonesia believe their land can talk, that its appetite demands ... more The Manggarai people of eastern Indonesia believe their land can talk, that its appetite demands sacrificial ritual, and that its energy can kill as well as nurture. They tell their children to avoid certain streams and fields and view unusual environmental events as omens of misfortune. Yet, far from being preoccupied with the dangers of this animate landscape, Manggarai people strive to make places and pathways “lively,” re-traveling routes between houses and villages and highlighting the advantages of mobility. Through everyday and ritual activities that emphasize “liveliness,” the land gains a further potency: the power to evoke memories of birth, death, and marriage, to influence human health and fertility.
Potent Landscapes is an ethnographic investigation of the power of the landscape and the implications of that power for human needs, behavior, and emotions. Based on two years of fieldwork in rural Flores, 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.
Papers by Catherine Allerton
The Open Encyclopaedia of Anthropology, 2023
Children, as the youngest members of our species, exist in all human societies across space and t... more Children, as the youngest members of our species, exist in all human societies across space and time. But societies differ widely in their understandings of childhood as a distinctive stage of the human life cycle. This entry describes anthropological work on childhood as a varying cultural construction, from early comparative studies of childcare and development, through work on the socialization of young children, to more recent ‘child-focused’ research that takes children’s perspectives on their role and position seriously. Anthropological research casts a critical light on institutional attempts to formulate universal understandings of childhood, whether these are found in developmental psychology, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, or the spread of formal schooling as an essential aspect of modern childhoods. Children, through their participation and observation in social worlds, are always understanding more than they are told by adults, often applying cultural concepts or different languages in innovative ways. This frequently leads children to destabilise or reject wider representations of childhood that reflect adult prejudices, or wider fears about the ‘disappearance’ of childhood or a loss of ‘innocence’. Paradoxically, adult attempts to protect children, whether from work or from societal harms, often say more about the politics of representations of childhood, than they do about children’s actual experiences.
This text is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credit(s).
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 2023
Childhood, though it is understood cross-culturally in very different ways, always has a distinct... more Childhood, though it is understood cross-culturally in very different ways, always has a distinctive temporal framework, since children's growth and development cannot be undone. Yet, in many contexts, the times of childhood have become discordant with the rhythms, timescales, and temporal controls of migration. Focusing on the children of Indonesian and Filipino migrants in Sabah, Malaysia, this article explores the contemporary clash between the temporalities of migration and childhood. Children face separations and ruptures in shared time due to Malaysia's migration regime, and experience the temporariness of migrant life differently to their parents. Educational exclusion leads to temporal discontinuities between Malaysian-citizen and migrant childhoods, and racialized understandings of national time emphasize the negative potentiality of migrants' children. Overall, the article argues for the importance of considering the interaction between the temporal conflicts of capitalism and forms of natural time such as childhood. For all researchers who work, over time, with children, there is an astonishing pathos to the passage of that time. Energetic 4-year-olds we once played with, or quiet 9year-olds who sat and chatted with us, transform, in later visits, or in posts on social media, into young adults, workers, migrants, parents. We can all experience this pathos when we look at Malinowski's wonderful photographs of Trobriand children playing-children who, hopefully, went on to lead long and fulfilling lives, but who are now almost certainly long deceased. These images are, as Sontag argued for all photographs, touched with pathos in their role as memento mori, allowing us to experience the mortality of the subjects shown, and testifying to 'time's relentless melt' (1979: 15). In this article, I highlight this particular characteristic of time as an intrinsic feature of all children's lives. Although, cross-culturally, childhood is understood in very different ways as a phase of life, all children are born as babies, take time to grow, and have a sense of the passing of time. Moreover, the unfolding and passing of an individual childhood, as an aspect of 'natural' time, cannot be undone.
Critique of Anthropology, 2020
In the Malaysian state of Sabah, public antipathy towards the presence of large numbers of migran... more In the Malaysian state of Sabah, public antipathy towards the presence of large numbers of migrant workers influences a widespread ignorance of the educational and other exclusions of their children. Children of migrants are rendered invisible in Sabahan cultural discourse because they are not recognized as proper subjects, or even as 'normal' children. Cultural denial of such children's circumstances can be seen in local newspaper reports that consider such children with reference to fears of 'illegals' and their threat to future Sabahan citizens. This discourse draws on a particular understanding of child deservingness, and utilizes what Cohen describes as 'neutralization techniques'. However, such apparently wilful blindness can best be understood by considering it on a spectrum of different forms of ignorance and denial. This includes the blatant lack of recognition afforded by powerful individuals who should be more aware of the children of their workers, the humanitarian blindness of volunteer teachers who overemphasize the saving power of education, and the complex and situational ignorance of children of migrants themselves. Appreciating other, potentially more benign or protective, forms of denial is crucial to understanding how ignorance of the complexity of the situation of children of migrants continues, even among those hoping to resolve it.
Ethnos, 2019
In Sabah, East Malaysia, decades of informal migration, combined with increasingly strict immigra... more In Sabah, East Malaysia, decades of informal migration, combined with increasingly strict immigration regulations, have led to a paradoxical situation of immobility. Impoverished eastern Indonesian migrants find themselves ‘stuck’, unable either to return home and build a house in their home village, or to plan for a future in Malaysia. Their Sabah-born children are born migrants, excluded from Malaysian schools, but mostly lacking knowledge of their parents’ Indonesian homes. The paper discusses the narratives of three migrant families from east Flores, exploring how practices of care are intertwined with control exerted by the state, employers, and non-migrant kin in places of origin. It argues that many families have been led, by necessity, to emphasise short-term care and physical proximity with children over long-term care such as investment in education. However, the continued significance of Florenese commitments to land and houses can make living in the short-term morally problematic.
Suomen Antropologi: Journal of Finnish Anthropological Society, 2019
This article describes the emotional power that 'Sahabat', by the Malaysian singer Najwa Latif, c... more This article describes the emotional power that 'Sahabat', by the Malaysian singer Najwa Latif, came to have for me during fieldwork with the children of refugees and migrants in the city of Kota Kinabalu. The sweet, youthful and optimistic energy of this song helped me to immerse myself in daily fieldwork trips, easing my transition from English-speaking parent to Malay-speaking fieldworker. The song also allowed me to relax and ignore the frustrations of traffic-bound urban fieldwork, as well as to soothe my frustrations with a society that excluded children who had known no other home.
UNHCR’s current #IBelong campaign presents stateless people as uniquely excluded, emphasizing the... more UNHCR’s current #IBelong campaign presents stateless people as uniquely excluded, emphasizing the need for legal solutions to their situation. Such approaches to statelessness sidestep both the complexities of lived experience and the wider politics of state recognition. In response, this article utilizes ethnographic data from Sabah, Malaysia, and theorizations of the gray areas between citizenship and statelessness to argue for the fundamental connection between statelessness and irregularity. Such a connection is central to understanding both the everyday lives of potentially stateless people and Sabah’s public discourse on statelessness as a mirage obscuring the problems of “illegals” and “street children.”
Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 2018
This article makes a case for attending to the specificities of child illegality in migrant conte... more This article makes a case for attending to the specificities of child illegality in migrant contexts. This is not simply because children have been left out of previous accounts, but also because their status as minors makes both their citizenship and their illegality different to that of adults. The analysis is based on research with children born to migrants in the state of Sabah, East Malaysia. I argue that such children are configured as Sabah's impossible children, and that this configuration influences their experiences of illegality and exclusion in distinctive ways. From a young age, children are aware of document 'checking' raids and, as 'foreigners', are unable to attend Malaysian schools. However, informal documents from learning centres, as well as age and contingent circumstances, may give them a temporary, 'liminal' legality. Finally, given that irregular migrants experience both exclusion and inclusion in a host nation, the article describes children's urban forms of belonging. These forms of inclusion demonstrate children's engagement with Sabah as a home, as against their political construction as an impossible problem.
Tilburg Law Review. Special Issue on Statelessness. 19: 26-34., 2014
This article explores issues involved with researching statelessness 'on the ground' during ethno... more This article explores issues involved with researching statelessness 'on the ground' during ethnographic fieldwork in Malaysia with the children of migrants and refugees.
Journal of Material Culture, 2007
Studies of Indonesian textiles have predominantly focused on their symbolic and religious aspects... more Studies of Indonesian textiles have predominantly focused on their symbolic and religious aspects, ignoring their everyday use as clothing. This article reveals the sensual, intimate life of Manggarai sarongs as everyday garments, a life that has remained a 'secret' in the academic literature. Sarongs, with their capacities to wrap, protect and hide, accentuate the properties of skin and can therefore be considered 'super-skins'. As artefactual extensions of their wearer's body they absorb substances and intentions, offer comfort at times of upset or illness, and transmit social and emotional messages. As burial objects, sarongs index the close kinship performed in everyday acts of feeding, comforting and protecting. However, there is no single 'social life' or 'career' of a sarong. Instead, sarongs as super-skins have a range of possibilities of becoming, in connection with the varied fates and projects of human lives.
Anthropological Forum, 2009
Anthropological Forum, 2009
Southeast Asian perspectives on power (eds) Liana Chua, Joanna Cook, Nicholas Long and Lee Wilson. London: Routledge. Pp67-80., 2012
Landscapes beyond land: routes, aesthetics, narratives. (eds) A. Arnason, N. Ellison, J. Vergunst and A. Whitehouse. Oxford: Berghahn., 2012
Questions of Anthropology. (eds) Rita Astuti, Jonathan Parry and Charles Stafford. Oxford: Berg., 2007
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. Special issue, Returning to hospitality: Strangers, guests and ambiguous encounters. 18: S49-S62., 2012
This paper analyses two key aspects of Manggarai hospitality: the making of 'liveliness' and the ... more This paper analyses two key aspects of Manggarai hospitality: the making of 'liveliness' and the making of guests. Liveliness is an affect produced at crowded and noisy events where stimulants and food are consumed. However, being lively is also an interpersonal quality demonstrated in everyday visiting. Having outlined the significance of liveliness, I examine the transformative role of hospitality substances and sounds in three key event-types: those for affines, for wage labourers, and for spirits. I show how 'making guests' involves the entanglement of food, bodily substance, money, and speech, and allows important but potentially difficult exchanges to take place.
Body Arts and Modernity. (eds) Michael O’Hanlon and Elizabeth Ewart. Wantage: Sean Kingston Publishing., 2007
Lipsticked brides and powdered children: cosmetics and the allure of modernity in an eastern Indo... more Lipsticked brides and powdered children: cosmetics and the allure of modernity in an eastern Indonesian village
Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde (BKI) 160-2/3: 339-362., 2004
Indonesia and the Malay World. Vol. 31, No. 89: 119-128., 2003
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Books by Catherine Allerton
Potent Landscapes is an ethnographic investigation of the power of the landscape and the implications of that power for human needs, behavior, and emotions. Based on two years of fieldwork in rural Flores, 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.
Papers by Catherine Allerton
This text is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credit(s).
Potent Landscapes is an ethnographic investigation of the power of the landscape and the implications of that power for human needs, behavior, and emotions. Based on two years of fieldwork in rural Flores, 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.
This text is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credit(s).