I have benefited from comments by Leif Jonsson, Tom Kirsch, Mike Montesano and Nikki Tannenbaum.

I am indebted to the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Luce Foundation, and the University of the South for funding; and to the Southeast Asia programs at Cornell, Michigan, Northern Illinois, Wisconsin and Yale who have welcomed my summer research.

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²³ In effect, as “society” stands above time, “custom” becomes how groups unfold. In contrast, modernthought treats “custom” as a past that is kept or lost and “society” as a present equilibrium of acts.

²⁴ On adat see Geertz, Local Knowledge, pp. 207–214; on chthonic cults see Mus, Paul, India Seen from the East: Indian and Indigenous Cults in Champa, trans. Mabbett, I.W. (Monash University Centre of Southeast Asian Studies, 1975).Google Scholar

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⁴⁰ Insofar as other regions have loci, likely candidates are the state in China, religious purity in India, exchange in Melanesia, and kinship in Africa.

⁴¹ O'Connor, Indigenous Urbanism.

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⁵⁴ Geertz, Clifford, “The Integrative Revolution: Primordial Sentiments and Civil Politics in the New States”, in Old Societies and New Societies: The Quest for Modernity in Asia and Africa, ed. Geertz, C. (New York: The Free Press, 1963), pp. 105–157.Google Scholar

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⁷⁵ McVey, “Faith as Outsider”, p. 219.

⁷⁶ Ibid., p. 204.

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⁷⁹ Aewsriwong, Nithi, “Watthanatham khong khonchanklang thai” [Culture of the Thai Middle Class], in The Middle Class and Thai Democracy, ed. Piriyarangsan, Sungsidh and Phongpaichit, Pasuk (Bangkok: Chulalongkorn University, 1993), pp. 49–65.Google Scholar

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