A Contemporary Locality Rooted in the Past: Social Practice Centered on the Paiwan ‘House’

This article examines how Indigenous communities adapt traditional relational systems to contemporary political and spatial conditions through a case study of the Lalebaq Paiwan tribe in southeastern Taiwan. Drawing on long-term action research (2019–present) conducted as part of the NTTU-HISP program, the study investigates kakudan—a house-based system of relationality—as both a cultural foundation and a mechanism of social elasticity. While previous work on “articulation” has emphasized the outcomes of heterogeneous linkages between local and external forces, this study proposes the concept of articubility, defined as the situated capacity that enables communities to initiate and sustain meaningful reconnections amid fragmentation. Through genealogical reconstruction, ritual practices, and youth organization restructuring, this research reveals how kakudan functions as a dynamic infrastructure for negotiating lineage politics, reconstructing publicness, and resisting ongoing processes of state segmentation. Rather than treating community as a pre-existing unit, the analysis highlights how articulatory capacities emerge from contentious, situated negotiations among actors who draw upon inherited traditions while responding to contemporary challenges. By positioning kakudan within the theoretical lineage of “house societies” (Lévi-Strauss 1983; Carsten & Hugh-Jones 1995), the study offers a relational model of place-based practice that speaks to broader debates on cultural governance, regional revitalization, and Indigenous autonomy. This research argues that articubility—not articulation alone—is the generative condition for Indigenous-led social praxis. It invites comparative inquiry across diverse Indigenous and rural contexts, suggesting that the reactivation of relational infrastructures may serve as a pathway to responsive, adaptive, and relational futures.