Incorporating the Foreign as the Autochthonous: An Ethnographic Study of the Puyuma People of Eastern Taiwan
Wen-te Chen, Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica
Compared with other Austronesian-speaking peoples on the island of Taiwan, the Puyuma have been well known for their intimate relationship with, and active efforts to co-opt, powerful regimes from the outside world. These kinds of interaction can be traced to as early as the 1630s when the Dutch occupied the island, and continued through to the mid-twentieth century. Underlying these relationships is the important dimension of dialectical relation between ‘insider’ and ‘outsider,’ i.e., the co-existence of inclusion and exclusion. In order to demonstrate how this theme is intimately related to the constitution of the Puyuma and their distinctive socio-cultural features, the paper will explore the constitution of the house and community, ritual practices, and, more importantly, ritual houses and men’s houses that used to be (and in some cases still are) associated with noble families. Mechanisms by which the foreign has been incorporated as the autochthonous vary and are differently articulated through time. This study has comparative implications for the studies of Austronesian-speaking peoples in Taiwan and beyond.
