“L’etica protestante e l’economia del dono: note sull’incontro missionario nell’Indonesia orientale.”

This paper describes the early twentieth-century encounter between a Dutch Calvinist Mission and the Toraja highlanders of Sulawesi, in Indonesia. This encounter entailed a complex mixture of cultural adaptation to and rejection of the indigenous gift system, which was based on the sacrifice of large amounts of buffaloes and pigs and the subsequent distribution of their meat according to distinctions of rank. The missionaries’ evangelizing work focused on an economic reform of indigenous ritual practices, which – from a Calvinist standpoint – appeared irrational and anti-economic. To remedy these economic flaws, the missionaries inaugurated the practice of setting aside a number of pigs and buffalos, which instead of being ritually slaughtered were deployed in fundraising auctions to support local parishes. While discussing fundraising auctions as a cultural compromise between the Calvinists’ protestant ethics and the Toraja gift-system, the analysis opens a reflection on how religious conversion always entails a moral project for the transformation of the self.