a sense of joy and then a panic

meh, not all anthropologists are the same. and i didn't do much reading for the class, but...focus of SE Asia course (wrt indonesia): spirits and ghosts, death and murder, trances, the media, politics and elections, power, nationalism, java (where i guess hierarchy fits in, but we read Pemberton, and he wanted to get away from that, even while looking at ritual and custom and history and relating it to political events...i think), colonialism and changing social organizations, trade, factory work, foreigners, islam and women. but the point is more, i guess, that it's been a very long time since any good anthropologist would say that any given people have a particular sort of character (which i guess is a simplified ruth benedict sort of understanding, but people don't do that anymore), or that ideals and values can be taken at as directly indicative of practice (though the relationship between those is a theoretical stumbling block), or that roles determine the behavior of individuals (not sure if anyone ever thought that...).