Social Criticism in Pamona Karambangan Poetry: A Sociology of Literature Perspective

Abstract

This study examines social criticism in the Karambangan poetry of the Pamona people as an oral tradition that represents the community’s cultural values, worldview, and collective consciousness. Studies of social criticism from the perspective of literary sociology have thus far focused primarily on modern literary works, while oral traditions based on regional languages have received less attention as representations of a community’s social and cultural reality. This study aims to analyze social criticism in Karambangan poetry by integrating Swingewood’s sociological perspective on literature with Hoed’s (2006) theory of cultural translation. The study employs a qualitative descriptive method, utilizing data consisting of ten Karambangan poetry titles along with relevant data units and their translations into English. Data were collected through documentation and analyzed to identify social issues and cultural meanings contained in the texts. The results indicate that social criticism in Karambangan poetry addresses moral, religious, and educational issues through direct and indirect expressions in reflective, symbolic, normative, persuasive, and pedagogical forms. This criticism is not merely an expression of normative values, but reflects the structure of social relations, collective experiences, and the mechanisms of value transmission within Pamona society. Hoed’s perspective on cultural translation demonstrates that the translation of poetry into English involves negotiating the meaning of cultural expressions and concepts that do not always have direct equivalents in the target language. The integration of literary sociology and cultural translation perspectives constitutes the interdisciplinary contribution of this study by expanding the scope of social criticism to the realm of regional-language-based oral traditions and demonstrating that the interpretation of oral literature requires an analysis of the relationships between text, language, culture, and the social reality of the community that sustains it.