The People of the Alas Valley: A Study of an Ethnic Group of Northern Sumatra.

• Author: Korom, Frank J.

The work under review is a revision of the author's doctoral dissertation, which was completed at Oxford University in 1990 under the esteemed social anthropologist Rodney Needham, who has contributed a very brief preface. Briefly stated, Iwabuchi's study is an ethnohistorical and ethnographic depiction of the Alas people, who inhabit an eponymous region of northern Sumatra. Alasland was first colonized by the Dutch in 1904, when nearly one-sixth of the population was massacred by the intruding soldiers. It later came under Japanese rule during the Second World War, finally becoming part of the Republic of Indonesia after its declaration of independence.

Due to the exigencies of colonialism and war, the Alas people suffered greatly. There was economic decline, ecological degradation and cultural decay. Moreover, the post-independence years were fraught with peril due to bandits, arson, and murderers who exploited the deteriorating condition of the region. A very bleak scenario indeed for an ethnographer's first field foray. But this is partially the reason why Iwabuchi chose the region and this ethnic group. Moreover, aside from sporadic Dutch accounts, the Alas were virtually missing from published works written about Sumatra. Seeing the culture dying before his (and their) very eyes, Iwabuchi felt determined to learn their language, gain their trust and publish a monograph attesting to the lingering vitality of the "traditional" way of life. Iwabuchi was not an intruder into this cultural environment, for two village elders residing at his ethnographic site - the village of Kute Melie (Koeto Moelio) - wholeheartedly encouraged him to write the study. They too realized that their culture was undergoing radical change and wanted to have it recorded for future generations.

Given the (post-)modern trend in cultural anthropology to see such attempts at recording a "dying" society and its culture in terms of a "salvage" paradigm, one could easily dismiss Iwabuchi's study as a work belonging to a bygone era, were it not for the fact that his meticulousness makes the study a goldmine of information. True, it does not advance anthropological theory to any great extent, since it is a rather conservative social anthropological study done in the best British fashion. Nonetheless, it does provide us with a detailed, historically and contextually framed, account of one Alas village, its family and household structure, the elaborate system of descent...