Tappan-Pelepai Woven Fabric, Social Status and Caring for Local Culture in a Multicultural Society at Lampung, Indonesia

Abstract

This paper examines the tappan and pelepai woven fabric, a kind of woven cloth that shows the social status and position of a person in an ethnic group, as well as the preservation of the woven fabric in the Lampung Sanggi Unggak Museum which is now almost extinct. In fact, tappan woven fabric is an important symbol of identity for indigenous people of Lampung. Its extraordinary beauty is almost unrecognizable.The research method used is ethnography, by conducting in-depth interviews and engaging observations. The results of the study show that the tappan cloth was not known by the people of Lampung in general.However, one of the pioneers of local cultural preservation in the village of Sanggi Unggak Tanggamus, built a museum that collects various kinds of traditional objects, one of which is tappan cloth. The effort to preserve local culture is a form of concern of traditional leaders for extinction of Lampung culture, one of which is tappan cloth. The symbolic meaning becomes shifted or even extinct. This shows that this fabric attribute is a culture that is easy to change as indicated by Linton (1977) that there is a culture that is easy to change because it is no longer considered effective and efficient.