Austronesian Societies and Their Transformations

Abstract

This paper examines the common austronesian reliance on similar idioms and metaphors to define ideas of origins and on the use of narratives for the construction of a shared past. Thus common origin-not just “descent”-becomes a prime marker of identity. Among austronesians, the sharing of a journey may be part of this reckoning of social ancestry. Within this cultural framework the paper considers two formal systems of differentiation: the one, a system of lateral expansion; the other, a system of apical demotion with concomitant predatory expulsion. Each system relies on a differently structured narrative of the past on which to base its construction of origins.