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Batak tape cassette kinship: constructing kinship through the Indonesian national mass media
Author(s) -
RODGERS SUSAN
Publication year - 1986
Publication title -
american ethnologist
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.875
H-Index - 78
eISSN - 1548-1425
pISSN - 0094-0496
DOI - 10.1525/ae.1986.13.1.02a00020
Subject(s) - kinship , indonesian , wife , alliance , mass media , sociology , orality , fictive kinship , genealogy , literacy , politics , gender studies , anthropology , history , political science , linguistics , law , pedagogy , philosophy , archaeology
As Leach noted in Political Systems of Highland Burma, Southeast Asia's Kachintype kinship systems (with asymmetrical marriage alliance between wife‐givers and their indebted wife‐receivers) tend to be constructed in interaction with neighboring cultures. This paper examines one contemporary example of that for Sumatra's Angkola Batak. Focusing on the way national communication media shape local kinship ideas (and foster notions of “culture” and “kinship”), commercially produced Angkola tape dramas on family themes are examined as art forms providing Angkola with new images of human relationship . [kinship, Indonesia, orality and literacy, mass media, asymmetrical alliance]