Tetum Ghosts and Kin: Fieldwork in an Indonesian Community

By concentrating on ghosts and kin in this analysis of the symbols employed in the ritual and myth of the Tetum society, Hicks enables readers to understand much of how the worldview of the society relates to its religion. As he himself observes, "When we examine Tetum culture, taking the ritual relationship between ancestral ghosts and their human kin as our starting point, such different spheres as rituals, religious beliefs, kinship practices, oral literature, ecology, and architecture together blend into a single expansive field of study." Thus the book is not only a useful example of symbolic analysis, but it also demonstrates the functional integration of culture that has fascinated anthropologists for at least the past half century.