I have to admit that this data is peripheral to my core research, but I found it so delightfully confusing and mind-teasing that I jotted many of these peculiar situations into my journal. The food example is particularly mind-boggling because when I spoke to people about it afterwards, everyone said that it was quite impolite to put fallen food on a plate for someone else to take. However, being the person who dropped the food and being the person who watched the person drop the food places very different stresses on the subject. Also, by me talking about the situation brings ‘reflection’ into the situation and ‘reflection’ was not a common activity that I came across during my fieldwork.

The social, economic and historical background has definately shaped the way people think and act and is something I am currently reading up on! (I have a large shipment of books coming over from Indonesia as we speak). …incidentally, many of my older informants said that there has been a distinct shift in the behaviour of Indonesians since the economic crash of 1998.

I have to rush off at the moment, but I will bring these new thoughts with me and return to this blog later. Thank you once again, I can see that there is a new vocabulary that I can grapple with to approach this data.

Wow, that was a long post, including the part about homosexuality added on at the end. I wish that had been a separate post; there was some stuff on marriage and (homo)sexuality in the last Wednesday round-up and Vaughan over at Mind Hacks had a recent post on homosexuality and the brain, which could use a bit of anthropology. Gayatri Reddy’s book With Respect to Sex, on hijras (or a “third sex”) in India, could apply to some of the specific stuff you mentioned in that PS, as well as plenty of other articles and books.

But in terms of the fieldwork in Indonesia, thanks for sharing some of the ethnography! We haven’t done enough of that here, so it was good to have that more visceral sense of life in Indonesia.

Still, I got tripped up by this section: “These stories demonstrate a way of thinking that focuses on the needs of the present without any particular forethought or recollection of previous experience. My nine months research in Indonesia convinced me that such stories are common daily experiences. In fact, most close acquaintances I made during my fieldwork openly spoke of the laziness and unsophisticated thinking of their society.”

I agree with you, your own observations and the confirmation by informants coupled to the moments themselves all point to, as you say, “a certain kind of thinking” that could use some deeper analysis. And just saying “they’re different” completely avoids trying to grasp the anomalous yet quite real ethnographic reality.

But for cognitive ethnography, one problem struck me right off. The style of thinking and the (cultural) justification/explanation of that style are not necessarily the same thing. The present orientation and the explanation of laziness get conflated, both there in Indonesia and in some degree in what you write. I’d hate for someone who reads this post to come away saying, okay, the anthropologist described them as dirty and lazy, and the Indonesians say they are that say, so that’s what they are. But I could see it as an easy conclusion for some people to reach.

In terms of the style of thinking itself, three things jumped out at me. One was the orientation between “me” and “others.” They replace the fallen food, but don’t take it for themselves—they take what they think is cleaner food for their own consumption. Or they think about parking their particular car, that’s what they can control. This same sort of thinking does not get applied to “others,” for example, that someone might eat the fallen food or need to get out. I could imagine, given what I’ve seen in Colombia, that this style of thinking might be present in more public situations, and could be quite different in more intimate or family situations.

I could also imagine that there are all sorts of historical, social and political contingencies that shape a focus on just dealing with the present moment or problem. I would have liked to hear some more about them. The consequences of double parking might not be that bad—sure, an argument, but the other person doesn’t break your window and move your car by himself or vandalize your car for breaking some public norm. And taking care of yourself, and dealing well with your loved ones, might be an effective strategy in a place where governments and other groups might act with overwhelming power and effect and in unpredictable ways. Perhaps there are links to religious understandings of time and person, to take one of Geertz’s essay, or to link back to a post on time we had earlier.

And the food example for me really highlighted that some of what you see might be explainable by multiple, sometimes conflicting, models applying to the on-going moment and possible courses of action. Wasting food, especially publicly presented food, might be a big no-no. Knocking the food off and leaving it there to lie on the floor might be an insult—I don’t know, but it’s something you could ask about. Putting it back might be the reasonable action in that moment.

But that doesn’t mean you take that food for yourself. While I might think that I have to take it, after all it’s my fault that I knocked it over (a very Western sort of idea), they might think, How silly to take a piece of food that I definitely know is dirty and perhaps dangerous, what kind of fool do you think I am?

In that case, their actions would satisfy both a public model about the value of food and display and a me-model about taking care of self in the moment, because that’s the sensible thing to do. And that might help to explain the overall sequence of actions, behaviors, and contexts you saw.