Selako Male Initiation

Abstract

The detailed description and analysis of religious rituals is the very stuff of ethnography. Moreover, in a world still enriched by a few traditional societies not yet enmeshed in the universalistic world religions, we should not neglect present opportunities to explore a diversity that will be unavailable to later generations, who will wonder at our lack of foresight. Detailed examination of rituals that are fast disappearing should be a primary task of the anthropologist. Boas recognized this almost a century ago and made it a key justification of his program for American Indian ethnography, but modern anthropology neglects what in the past has been seen as a principal task of ethnography. The ritual the Selako Dayak call basunat is of central importance in their culture.1 Basunat accomplishes the all-important status transformation of boys into adult men. It expresses and reaffirms the Selako construction of the nature of the world and the Selako place in the world. The symbolism of basunat ritual informs our understanding of the essential differences Selako make between maleness and femaleness. Through the ritual boys are made aware of those qualities that separate boys from men and males from females. Basunat allows a statement of the household's position in village society and provides an important opportunity to enhance or maintain the household's rank in the society at large. Selako culture is rich in ritual performance, but there are few rituals more intense, dramatic, or expensive than basunat. Our understanding of the basunat ritual derives from both the symbolic and social domains. Attention to the social context in which the actors move illuminates the meanings of the ritual itself and the symbols of rank and position that the actors manipulate. Our concern with symbolism leads us to look for binary oppositions and to relate those oppositions to other symbolic formulations in Selako culture. Turner (1964) directs us to look for the ways in which ritual moves boys into men and transforms society. Following Geertz (1965) we attend to how ritual symbols encapsulate world view or ethos and organize the lives and behavior of actors.