Lecture at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Vienna, (21 November 2025) Societies without a state in Sumatra, i.e. societies that organize themselves without needing distinct structures of dominance, all have a certain worldview in common, within which wild, uncultivated nature represents for them a numinous „source of blessing“ (Reimar Schefold). On closer inspection, it becomes apparent that this wilderness-related worldview can in turn be regarded as the basis of their ability to self-organize. In the planned lecture, this phenomenon will be described using the example of five Sumatran societies, all of which are organized in different ways, but share both the above-mentioned worldview regarding nature and the ability to self-organize, or have done so in the past.
