Founders' cults in Southeast Asia: ancestors, polity, and identity.(Social Anthropology)(Book Review)

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, September, 2004 by Durrenberger, Paul

TANNENBAUM, NICOLA & CORNELIA ANN KAMMERER (eds). Founders' cults in Southeast Asia: ancestors, polity, and identity (Yale Univ. Southeast Asia Studs). xi, 373 pp., maps, tables, figs., illus., bibliogr. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 2003. $25.00 (paper)

Though the form varies with the nature of the spirits, ritual officiants, historical background, and social and political contexts, in the complex and overlapping cultures of Southeast Asia there is a widespread construct of founders' cults based on the idea that local spirits, spirits of the founders of the settlement, spirits of displaced original inhabitants, or spirits of a larger political realm own all land and are responsible for the well-being of inhabitants. In this volume, dedicated to Jane Richardson...

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