ABSTRACT
The Toraja people of Indonesia manage to prevent many conflicts from becoming violent. In this chapter, Hollan notes that the Toraja make heavy use of avoidance. He also explains how the Toraja maintain the peace through a complex and overlapping set of intra- and interpersonal controls of emotions and conduct. This redundancy of checks on conflict and aggression is particularly effective, as, for example, individuals simply avoid adversaries, limit their expressions of anger, share and recount the culturally accepted attitudes about the tragic consequences of aggressive acts, and when a dispute cannot be ignored, submit to a mediation process conducted by a village elder, who tends to be more concerned with restoring social harmony than with individual rights or punishing a disputant.
