Tapping A Blessing in The House of A Young Sufi

Abstract

Anthropologists, who have studied the concept of ‘precedence’ in Austronesia argue that the appearance of genealogies among common descent groups can be traced to particular ‘cognate’ metaphors that rely on ‘botanic’ icons and spatial arrangements. (Bellwod 1996; Fox 1997:8) Along the same lines, Parmentier (1987), who uses Peircean semiotics, illustrates the ‘schematic’ features of similar metaphoric icons in the Belauan Islands. Canberran anthropologists, as well as Pelras and Parmentier, draw attention to the function of metaphors in social action. Various ‘iconic metaphors’ linked to the concept of ‘precedence’ and to the implication of spatial arrangements and other materialised symbols, were found orchestrated in the Austronesian societies that they study.