Skip to main content
Ref ID: 22569
Ref Type: Book Section
Authors: Wee, Vivienne
Title: Material dependence and symbolic independence: constructions of Melayu ethnicity in island Riau, Indonesia
Date: 1988
Source: Ethnic diversity and the control of natural resources in Southeast Asia
Place of Publication: Ann Arbor, Michigan
Publisher: Center for South and Southeast Asian Studies, University of Michigan
Abstract: In this chapter I follow Bordieu (1977) in arguing for a comprehensive economics that would take into account both material and symbolic capital. In the context of this argument, the symbolic economy is, to use Bourdieu's (1977:171) words, "the institutionally organized and guaranteed misrecognition" of the material economy. As the epigraph above indicates, it is through such misrecognition that the symbolic economy legitimates the material economy from which it originates. I propose to apply this argument to some ethnographic observations of certain island communities in the Indonesian province of Riau, where I have been doing research since 1979.
Date Created: 4/27/2015
Editors: Rambo, A. Terry
Hutterer, Karl L.
Gillogly, Kathleen
Volume: 32
Page Start: 197
Page End: 226
Series Title: Michigan Papers on South and Southeast Asia Center for South and Southeast Asian Studies, The University of Michigan