Ignition stories; indigenous fire ecology in the Indo-Australian monsoon zone.

9781611631159

Ignition stories; indigenous fire ecology in the Indo-Australian monsoon zone.

Fowler, Cynthia.

Carolina Academic Press

2013

274 pages

$38.00

Ritual studies monograph series

QH545

Fowler (sociology, Wofford College, South Carolina) presents a collection of creative nonfiction narratives about interconnections between people and fire in the indigenous Kodi community on the Indonesian island of Sumba. Among the Kodi and other comparable subsistence farming communities, she says, igniting fire is a recurring activity through which they become knowledgeable about their environments and shape their surroundings to select for qualities they prefer in the spaces where they live. The stories illustrate such dimensions of the relationship as a history of fire from the Kodi perspective, pyrospheres, fire sticks, ritual and mundane responses to fire, and kindling.

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