Paper short abstract:

Villagers in Ara, Indonesia, are simultaneously members of ranked houses, of the Islamic umma, and of the nation state. Each institution generates a distinct mode of sociality and regime of value that interacts with the others to produce complex fractal forms of subjectivity.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores the concepts of value and sociality in the lives of subjects located in the village of Ara, South Sulawesi, Indonesia during the 1980s. During that time, every individual was engaged in a number of distinct modes of sociality. As members of ranked houses, humans interacted with other humans, ancestor spirits, and non-human spirits according to a hierarchical schema of ascribed and achieved ranks. As Muslims, the faithful interacted with fellow members of the umma, and with a range of subjects not tied to human space-time, including Allah, jinn, angels, saints and demons. As members of the nation, citizens interacted with fellow citizens, and with civil servants, police, schoolteachers, and other functionaries. Each mode of sociality generated incommensurable value regimes, along with diverse forms of subjectivity, affectivity, motivation, temporality, and ontology. Each mode of sociality is a historically particular assemblage of human and non-human subjects and objects, each with a distinct genealogy. Each mode operates to produce certain outcomes, such as traditional kingdoms, ethical individuals and national development. They interact with one another to produce complex fractal hybrids of these outcomes, or to produce sudden displacements of one dominant mode of sociality by another within a social formation. The paper concludes that far from it being possible to identify some atemporal, pan-human mode of sociality, no stable mode of sociality or system of values can be identified within the activities of even a single human being.