Society
It may be stated as a general rule that if a given area of Indonesia was settled by Chinese in appreciable numbers prior to this century, Chinese society there is in some degree dichotomous today. In one sector of the society, adults as well as children are Indonesia-born, the orientation toward China is attenuated, and the influence of the individual culture is apparent. In the other sector of the society, the population consists of twentieth-century immigrants and their immediate descendants, who are less acculturated and more strongly oriented toward China. The significance and pervasiveness of the social line between the two sectors varies from one part of Indonesia to another. —G. William Skinner, "The Chinese Minority", Indonesia pp. 103–104Scholars who study Chinese Indonesians often distinguish members of the group according to their racial and sociocultural background: the "totok" and the "peranakan". The two terms were initially used to racially distinguish the pure-blooded Chinese from those with mixed ancestry. A secondary meaning to the terms later arose that meant the "totok" were born in China, and anyone born in Indonesia was considered "peranakan". Segmentation within "totok" communities occurs through division in speech groups, a pattern that has become less apparent since the turn of the 20th century. Among the indigenized "peranakan" segmentation occurs through social class, which is graded according to education and family standing rather than wealth.
Read more about this topic: Chinese Indonesians
Famous quotes containing the word society:
“And what is an authentic madman? It is a man who preferred to become mad, in the socially accepted sense of the word, rather than forfeit a certain superior idea of human honor. So society has strangled in its asylums all those it wanted to get rid of or protect itself from, because they refused to become its accomplices in certain great nastinesses. For a madman is also a man whom society did not want to hear and whom it wanted to prevent from uttering certain intolerable truths.”
—Antonin Artaud (1896–1948)
“I am prisoner of a gaudy and unlivable present, where all forms of human society have reached an extreme of their cycle and there is no imagining what new forms they may assume.”
—Italo Calvino (1923–1985)
“Hardly ever can a youth transferred to the society of his betters unlearn the nasality and other vices of speech bred in him by the associations of his growing years. Hardly ever, indeed, no matter how much money there be in his pocket, can he ever learn to dress like a gentleman-born. The merchants offer their wares as eagerly to him as to the veriest “swell,” but he simply cannot buy the right things.”
—William James (1842–1910)