Suspicion and Overlapping Orders of Precedence: Imagining Secret History in Founder-Focused Societies of Eastern Indonesia

Abstract

This article describes how the dominant order of precedence in Seram, eastern Indonesia is challenged by the suspicion of the existence of a secret history. In a context where being the original founder is of importance and the sequence of predecessors' arrival is the basis of orders of precedence, such a suspicion evokes a hopeful possibility for marginal communities that the present social order is false and vulnerable to the abrupt revelation of the true past. Although generally inclined toward the founders, there are overlapping orders of precedence at work in Seram. Each order of precedence conjures up a different image of the marginal community, which, despite each placing them as the lesser group, induces a sense of contradiction and that the widely recounted history is problematic. In this respect, this article offers a contribution to the field of Austronesian studies, which has long been concerned with how orders of precedence emerge and are at play among the historically mobile Austronesian societies.