Compare and Contrast the Ways in Which the ‘Natural Environment’ Influences the Understanding of Human Beings as Persons Among Australian Aboriginal Peoples and Balinese Peoples.
Question: Compare and contrast the ways in which the ‘natural environment’ influences the understanding of human beings as persons among Australian Aboriginal peoples and Balinese peoples.
The natural environment is a key influence in cosmogonic and cosmologic conceptions of human beings as persons among Australian Aboriginal people and to a lesser extent Balinese people. Meyers (1987[1973]) asserts that personhood is socially generated and defined by culture; the conception of personhood in a society is intrinsic to the very nature and structure of human society and social behaviour universally. The environment in which a society is found has particular influence over the social behaviour, structure and interactions of its inhabitants, and impacts on daily life and ritual observances. The Australian Aboriginal understanding of human beings as persons is an amalgamation of cosmogonic and cosmologic concepts of the Dreaming and a “system of totemism” which govern the ‘social person’ and fluctuate according to variation in natural environment (Peterson, 1972:12). Conversely Balinese understanding of human beings as persons is a “depersonalizing” system, based on cosmologic concepts of cycles of reincarnation that influence naming orders, status, ceremony and religion, social structure, heavily constructed with a separation of human and animal and a domestication of the natural environment (Forge 1980, Geertz 1973). The differences arising between Australian Aboriginal and Balinese concepts of personhood are derived from variations in ecology, social organization and culture that stem from the distinctive diversity of their respective natural environments and cosmogonic and cosmologic conceptions.
Australian Aboriginal understanding of human beings as persons is closely linked to an intimate social and cultural relationship with their natural environment, which stems from cosmogonic and cosmologic concepts of the Dreaming. Bodley (2000:31) explains the Dreaming
The natural environment is a key influence in cosmogonic and cosmologic conceptions of human beings as persons among Australian Aboriginal people and to a lesser extent Balinese people. Meyers (1987[1973]) asserts that personhood is socially generated and defined by culture; the conception of personhood in a society is intrinsic to the very nature and structure of human society and social behaviour universally. The environment in which a society is found has particular influence over the social behaviour, structure and interactions of its inhabitants, and impacts on daily life and ritual observances. The Australian Aboriginal understanding of human beings as persons is an amalgamation of cosmogonic and cosmologic concepts of the Dreaming and a “system of totemism” which govern the ‘social person’ and fluctuate according to variation in natural environment (Peterson, 1972:12). Conversely Balinese understanding of human beings as persons is a “depersonalizing” system, based on cosmologic concepts of cycles of reincarnation that influence naming orders, status, ceremony and religion, social structure, heavily constructed with a separation of human and animal and a domestication of the natural environment (Forge 1980, Geertz 1973). The differences arising between Australian Aboriginal and Balinese concepts of personhood are derived from variations in ecology, social organization and culture that stem from the distinctive diversity of their respective natural environments and cosmogonic and cosmologic conceptions.
Australian Aboriginal understanding of human beings as persons is closely linked to an intimate social and cultural relationship with their natural environment, which stems from cosmogonic and cosmologic concepts of the Dreaming. Bodley (2000:31) explains the Dreaming