Ata Tana 'Ai - Sociopolitical Organization

Social Organization. Tana 'Ai is divided into seven socially and politically independent ceremonial domains or tana. Each domain consists of a number of clans (sukun), usually five, of which one is pu an (source, original). The source clan consists of descendants of the founding ancestors of the domain. Each clan consists of a number of lepo, which are ranked according to the precedence of their founding within the clan. One of the elder men of the pu'an house of the clan serves the community as its tana pu'an, in whom is vested ultimate ritual responsibility for the well-being of the domain. All rights to land, residence, exploitation of resources, and ritual status of clans and houses within the domain derive ultimately from the source of the domain as descendant and heir of the domain's founding ancestors. While the Ata Tana 'Ai express a preference for clan endogamy, the alliance system of a domain functions in such a way that only one-third of marriages are endogamous and two-thirds are between men and women of different houses and different clans. In cases of interclan marriage, upon the death of the man, one of his daughters, who is a member of the house and clan of his wife, is returned to his clan in a transaction known as the "return of ama 'lo'en" (father's forelock). The purpose of the return of father's forelock is to return a man's blood to his clan in the person of one of his daughters. A man who has married out of his house and clan is viewed as "lost" to his sisters; his daughter, by returning to her "source," replaces her father in his clan and there founds a lepo in aliiance to his sisters' house, a new house that is ranked as the "most recent" in the hierarchy of precedence of houses within the clan. The complex network of alliances, reciprocal obligations, and enduring material exchange relationships between houses of different clans, which is formed over time through father's forelock transactions, is fundamental to the coherence and dynamics of the Tana 'Ai social order. Just as the statuses of the clans of a domain are defined by the precedence of their founding in relation to the "source" clan, so too are the houses within a clan ordered in terms of their precedence with respect to the oldest, or "source," house. This precedence is defined in terms of the temporal order in which the father's forelock transactions that founded them occurred. Within both the domain and clans, rights, wealth, and authority are delegated from older and more "central" groups to more recent and more "peripheral" groups.

Political Organization. In contrast to many of the societies of eastern Indonesia, Tana 'Ai never had an indigenous raja, nor did the Tana 'Ai domains constitute local secular states. The pattern of a diarchical division of power and authority between a secular ruler and a ritual authority, common to other eastern Indonesian societies, is reflected in a division by which women, as the heads of clans, exercise secular authority over domestic and horticultural matters and men, as the ritual specialists of the domain, exercise sacred authority, principally in the execution of ritual. In the thought of the Ata Tana 'Ai, the feminine and masculine domains of authority are complementary and mutually dependent. Women govern within the lepo and men, exercising the delegated authority of their sisters, are the principal medium of relations between lepo and clans, all of which are conceived primarily as ritual in nature. In other terms, the shared hegemony of men and women in community affairs can be categorized as between the pragmatics of subsistence, which are the realm of women, and the pragmatics of alliance and ritual, which are the realm of men. When dealing with secular matters, men are conceived as acting as the delegates of their sisters and clan or lepo mothers. Authority generally is conceived as being delegated from the feminine categories of the universe to the masculine, and from "sources" or "centers" to "peripheries," where women are paradigmatic of sources and men of peripheries. Thus the source of the domain is the chief ritual authority of a domain whereas the senior woman of his lepo represents the authority by which he delegates authority to others. In the political life of the Ata Tana 'Ai, which is principally acted out in rituals, there are those who possess the "right to speak" and those who possess the "right to sit." The former (such as clan ritual specialists and young men) are apparently more active in community affairs, but the latter (such as the source of the domain and senior women) possess greater authority. In Tana 'Ai, women rule within autonomous social units and men, in whom is vested authority for the conduct of the external affairs of the group, are the "glue" that binds the confederation of diverse clans and houses into the larger domain.

Social Control. The mythic histories of Tana 'Ai recount rebellions against the sources of the domains, but the recent history of Tana 'Ai has been pacific. Conflicts between individuals most frequently arise from quarrels over rights to plots of land, the boundaries between gardens, the killing of domestic animals found in the forests, and the taking without permission of fruits from cultivated trees and palms. A conflict between members of a lepo is referred to the headwoman and principal male ritualist of that lepo for adjudication. The elder ritualists of a clan settle disputes between people of different lepo within the clan. Men who are expert in the rituals of the domain convene to adjudicate disputes between people of different clans.