Alan,
I found myself in front of the computer and felt that I had to answer you.
Yes, there are as many collections as there are collectors, and we all have our own ways to engage in this mild form of insanity. I can imagine a person whose ethnographic interests lead him to collect weapons of the culture of his original interest. I may even know one. But I bet that for every such sequence of events there are 1000 people who started as collectors and only later on began digging into history, ethnology, beliefs erc of the original owners of his wll hangers. You yourself, - what would have happened to you had it not been for your politically-incorrect uncle? :-)
As to the degree of involvement... I still find it mildly amusing to see perfectly normal Mid-Western guys trying to act Persian, Japanese ( ninja, here I come:-)) or Indonesian as if they have a hope in the world to pass for the legitimate inheritors of totally foreign traditions. Perhaps you, who spent a lot of time in Indonesia, may feel some understanding and involvement with the Javanese "society and culture", but for the rest of collectors it is a pretend game. As you have seen from the answers, most people here prefer to maintain their sanity and be "involved but not committed": the difference between the chicken and the pig in the process of creation of scrambled eggs and bacon:-)
So, I am perfectly happy to leave all esoteric functions and fearures to the native collectors of all ethnic swords: it is their patrimony and they are the legitimate owners of it. Most of us are just outsiders and enjoy purely military, historical, metallurgical or decorative components. More than enough, to my taste.
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