Fishing, Housing, and Barter: A Threefold to Living Sea-Based Economy in Lamalera, Indonesia
-
Manage No DI00001203 Country Republic of Korea Author Charles Beraf (Researcher, Detukeli Research Centre, Indonesia) Published Year 2021 Language English Copyright 
Attach File View (ENG)
| Description | Our society is moving toward becoming more urban, individualistic, and modern. As it does so, traditional communities may eventually experience a real, and not just relative, local cultural decline. There is a threat that more traditions will vanish as the traditional way of life becomes less and less known, and the local economy system becomes outdated. However, we should also acknowledge that some traditional communities still exist. Lamalera is one of those traditional communities. In this paper, I try to single out the Lamalera tradition—namely ola nua, particularly its sea-based economy, which might be different from most economy systems in modern society. There are three reasons for this choice. First, Lamalera is a traditional community that exemplifies a sea-based economy as an integral part of society. Second, Lamalera has a long history of this traditional economy. Third, the sea-based economy in Lamalera has been a unique and distinctive culture that appropriates traditional economy as a way of life for Lamalerans, not as an ‘imposed thing’ from outside. In modern society, which is characterized by capitalism and mechanization (industrialization), the economy system causes alienation and exploitation: workers are alienated from their own human potential. In a contemporary perspective, as individual workers become highly specialized in division of labor, the deployment of tasks per person results in the performance to be more impersonal and automated. In Lamalera, on the other hand, even with differentiation in positions and roles, Lamalerans work and express their potentials for the purpose of the community to which they belong. | ||
|---|---|---|---|
