Club Dead, Not Club Med: Staging Death in Contemporary Tana Toraja (Indonesia)

This essay is broadly concerned with this theme of discourse and religious practices among the Sa'dan Toraja people of upland Sulawesi. Specifically, I wish to explore some of the ways in which the Torajan mortuary complex of the 1980s and 1990s has been reconceptualized as Torajans' encounters with the wider world intensify. Outward migration (merantau) to urban centres in Indonesia, increased familiarity with the bureaucratic organization of the Indonesian government and the Church, the spread of television, and the ever-growing presence of tourists and anthropologists in Tana Toraja Regency have all fostered Torajans' rethinking of their "traditional" funeral rituals. In short, this article examines how the national media, the travel industry, and Indonesian civil religion have begun to reshape local ideas about what constitutes a "successful" Torajan funeral. As I will suggest, in the 1990s the Torajan funeral is a product of this discourse with the nation and the West.