ABSTRACT
This chapter describes and interpret ma'nene' as conducted annually and collectively in a northwestern village in Tana Toraja in the 1980s. It aims to gain access to lived social experience as represented in ritual practice and everyday discourse. Christianity is the world religion that has taken hold in the Toraja highlands since the arrival of the Calvinist Dutch Reformed Mission in the second decade of the 20th century. The cosmological and ritual bifurcation that shapes the cosmology and ritual permeates everyday practice as well, yielding a human condition in which people make a concerted effort to keep anything to do with death isolated from the rest of life. One way of rectifying the situation is to contextualise mortuary ritual in the wider cultural context. As Waterson has suggested, ‘most visitors to Toraja have been captivated by the funeral rites which punctuate Torajan life in such a spectacular fashion.
