Going Through the Emotions: Passion, Violence, and “Other‐Control” among the Dou Donggo

Abstract

I take as my starting point an anecdote about passionate and violent displays of emotion, displays I observed in 1983 during the adjudication of a dispute in the Dou Donggo village of Doro Ntika, on the island of Sumbawa in eastern Indonesia.' The dispute, which I have described in detail elsewhere (Just 1986a:49-51) was ostensibly about an assault a young man, la Ninde, was supposed to have made on an older, married kinswoman. Even though virtually everyone in the village knew what had happened, the proceedings took place in public before a panel of village elders and called for the presentation of evidence and the testimony of witnesses who were also examined by the presiding elders. The business stretched out over the better part of a day. Remarkably, displays of passionate emotion and violence on the part of everyone concerned-accuser, accused, wit-