James Boon: Appreciation and an Invitation

In the text that follows, I will attempt to appreciate the work of my former student James Boon by offering some reflections on three images or themes from his copious writings: the bride as widow, colonialists living in Bali, and "museums make me sad." I then expand on my interpretation of these three images, drawing on memory and connections to other themes in our field. Next, I invite Boon and his intellectual successors to consider one implication, namely how an ecological or "ecozoic" perspective could broaden the socio-cultural analysis Boon offers. I finish by framing Boon's perspective by biographical, personal, and historical reflections on the circumstances that informed his work and development as a scholar, at least to the extent that such circumstances intersected with my own.