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Contentment and Suffering, a psychocultural ethnography of the Toraja wet-rice farmers of Indonesia, provides a rich portrait of Torajan life and contributes to debates on the relationship between culture and individual psychology.
Hollan and Wellenkamp describe the central aspects of Torajan personal experience -emotion, identity, and sense of self- and a variety of fascinating cultural practices, including possession trance, kickfights, elaborate mortuary customs, dream interpretation, and buffalo sacrifice.
Presenting exceptionally detailed ethnographic data through a person-centered perspective and extensive use of open-ended interviews, Contentment and Suffering engagingly expresses how the Toraja understand their lives.
Douglas W. Hollan is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Jane C. Wellenkamp is Assistant Research Anthropologist in the Anthropology Department of the University of California, Los Angeles.