Biosocial Synchrony on Sumba: Multispecies Relationships and Environmental Variations in Indonesia. By Cynthia T. Fowler. 2016. Lexington Books, Lanham. 137 pp.

Abstract

Fowler’s Biosocial Synchrony on Sumba is a subtle reminder for ethnobiologists/anthropologists to view indigenous beliefs and knowledge systems from the perspective of the respective communities. Are anthropologists also capable of adopting the perspectives of the non-living? Fowler answers her own question by employing what she calls a “manipulation of perspectives” to promote an understanding of biosocial beings from the perspectives of seaworms, their worshippers, the celestial bodies, and human bodies. Fowler’s arguments draw strength from the huge volume of data collected since 1997 in collaboration with the Kodi people of tana nale or the land of seaworms, effectively interweaving ethnography, astronomy, marine biology, and ecology. The crux of the book is based on Ingold’s theory of biosocial becomings, and the author has successfully portrayed how indigenous understandings see no boundaries between the living and the non-living, the close and the distant, or nature and culture.