Adam Harr


Adam Harr Entered 2000 aph8u@virginia.edu	Adam with his teacher Yohannes Tuka Loba, learning to tell the tale of Kolo Mbono No'o Loge Losu ("Pointy-Head and Pointy-Butt")
Sociocultural and Linguistic Anthropology Regional focus: Indonesia and the Austronesian world I am a sociocultural and linguistic anthropologist with a research focus on politics and religion in contemporary Indonesia. In broadest strokes, I seek to understand the ways in which people use communicative resources to produce the sense that contingent social realities are natural and inevitable. For me, the most intriguing ground for exploring this fundamental anthropological problem has been the poetic and persuasive use of language in religious and political performances. I am currently (2011) completing my dissertation, titled Marginal Centers: The Culture of Local Politics in Post-Authoritarian Indonesia. This dissertation examines the complex constitution of local political voices as Indonesia enacts democratizing and decentralizing reforms. Focusing on the first campaign for chief executive (bupati) of a new democratic constituency in central Flores, I show how aspects of "customary law" (adat), including ritual language, exchange, and spectacular feasts, were mobilized to establish a candidate's legitimacy. Drawing on 26 months of linguistic and ethnographic fieldwork, my analysis contributes a fine-grained ethnographic perspective to scholarship on Indonesia's ongoing political transformation. More broadly, my research contributes to scholarly understanding of the ways in which political voice is crucially mediated by culturally specific understandings of place.

Entered 2000
aph8u@virginia.edu

Adam with his teacher Yohannes Tuka Loba, learning to tell the tale of Kolo Mbono No'o Loge Losu ("Pointy-Head and Pointy-Butt")

Sociocultural and Linguistic Anthropology

Regional focus: Indonesia and the Austronesian world

I am a sociocultural and linguistic anthropologist with a research focus on politics and religion in contemporary Indonesia. In broadest strokes, I seek to understand the ways in which people use communicative resources to produce the sense that contingent social realities are natural and inevitable. For me, the most intriguing ground for exploring this fundamental anthropological problem has been the poetic and persuasive use of language in religious and political performances.

I am currently (2011) completing my dissertation, titled Marginal Centers: The Culture of Local Politics in Post-Authoritarian Indonesia. This dissertation examines the complex constitution of local political voices as Indonesia enacts democratizing and decentralizing reforms. Focusing on the first campaign for chief executive (bupati) of a new democratic constituency in central Flores, I show how aspects of "customary law" (adat), including ritual language, exchange, and spectacular feasts, were mobilized to establish a candidate's legitimacy. Drawing on 26 months of linguistic and ethnographic fieldwork, my analysis contributes a fine-grained ethnographic perspective to scholarship on Indonesia's ongoing political transformation. More broadly, my research contributes to scholarly understanding of the ways in which political voice is crucially mediated by culturally specific understandings of place.