Cultural History In Focus | “Material Words: The Aesthetic Grammar of Toraja Textiles, Carvings, and Ritual Language” by Aurora Donzelli
Material Words
The Aesthetic Grammar of Toraja Textiles, Carvings, and Ritual Language
by Aurora Donzelli
This article is generously provided by Aurora Donzelli.
Aurora Donzelli
Aurora Donzelli is a linguistic and sociocultural anthropologist with an expertise in Southeast Asia. Her first book—Methods of Desire (University of Hawaii Press, 2019)—examines the intersection between language and capitalism among the inhabitants of the Toraja highlands of Sulawesi, in Indonesia and discusses how the growing influence of transnational lending agencies such as the IMF and the World Bank is transforming the ways in which people desire, voice their entitlements, and imagine the future.
Her second book—One or Two Words (NUS Press, 2020)—analyzes the transformations in political talk ensuing from Indonesia’s administrative restructuring and describes the emerging forms of cosmopolitan indigeneity and the novel ways of imagining the nation-state in the Indonesian peripheries. She is a Recipient of research grants from the National Science Foundation and the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology and she is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Bologna, in Italy and at Sarah Lawrence College, New York.
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Author | © Aurora Donzelli
Publication | Journal of Material Culture
Year of Publication | 2019