Relational Histories and the Production of Difference on Sulawesi’s Upland Frontier.
2001. Journal of Asian Studies 60(1): 41-66.
Tania Murray Li's essay examines the relations between hill people and coastal people in Sulawesi in Central Sumatra. Her article demonstrates the ways in which the identities of the hill people are historically constructed in relation to the identities of coastal elites. Her paper traces the complex role that outside authority has had in the formation of local community and identity, and she finds that the hill people are often anxious to reap the benefits that they perceive would follow from a closer relationship with the state. Her empirical evidence, like Agrawal's, comes both from written records and her own fieldwork.