J. Fox In memoriam Professor Koentjaraningrat (15 June 1923 - 23 March 1999)

In: Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 157 (2001), no: 2, Leiden, 239-245

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Professor Dr Koentjaraningrat was born on the 15th of June 1923 in Yogya- karta, the only son of R.M. Emawan Brotokoesoemo and R.A. Pratitis Tirto- tenoyo. Since his father served as a member of the Paku Alam court, Koentjaraningrat was raised within the intimacy of court circles with a deep sense of the Javanese language. Yet, at home he was expected to speak Dutch with his parents. His mpther, who took responsibility for his initial schooling, was intent on his obtaining a Dutch edücation and for some years tried to limit his involvement with the traditions of the court. He began school at the Europeesche Lagere School in and went on through Middelbare Uitgebreid Lager Onderwijs and Algemeen Middelbare School. During the Japanese occupation, he moved to to finish the last year of high school but returned to Yogyakarta to escort books from the National Library in Jakarta, where he worked, for safekeeping in Yogyakarta. Because of the political situation, he was forced to remain in Yogyakarta. He enrolled as a student at the University of Gadjah Mada and did various teaching assign- ments, including a brief spell at Taman Siswa. At Gadjah Mada, he studied Indonesian literature. . . Koentjaraningrat had a great love of the arts and a personal interest in Javanese dancing. When his parents moved to Jakarta, he was able to take up Javanese classical dancing at the Sanggar Tari in.Tejokusuman, Yogyakarta. He became both a choreographer and a noted dancer. Friends remember his performances. As a student at Gadjah Mada during the independence struggle, Koentja- raningrat joined the Corps Mahasiswa and was sent to assist Brigade 29 first in and then in Mojoagung. His main assignment, while with Brigade 29, was to teach English and history. Shortly after his return to Yogyakarta, Brigade 29 joined the side of the communists in Madiun and everyone whom he had taught was killed in the battle with Siliwangi. After his graduation, Koentjaraningrat moved to Jakarta, where he taught cultural history at SMA Boedi Oetomo and continued his study at Uni- versitas for the doctorandus degree in Language and Literature. He graduated in 1952 and stayed on in the Faculty of Arts as an assistant to G.J. Held, who was, at the time, Professor of Anthropology.

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In 1954 Koentjaraningrat was offered a Fulbright Scholarship to study anthropology at , but before leaving for the , he became formally engaged to Kustiani Sarwono, the woman with whom he would spend the rest of his life. His wife to be was a graduate of Boedi Oetomo whom he later met in the Faculty of Arts in Jakarta. They were engaged on the 29th of April 1954, before Koentjaraningrat left Jakarta, and were married, in a formal Javanese ceremony, in Jakarta on the 13th of August 1955, while Koentjaraningrat was already in New Haven. Koentja- raningrat was represented at his wedding by a keris he had received from his father. 'Stien' then joined 'Pak Koen' in the United States and the two became an inseparable pair in life and work. On her arrival in the States, Pak Koen arranged a week's honeymoon in New York which, as Stien recalls it, con- sisted of a succession of concerts and operas, including Wagner's Parsifal. At Yale, through the prompting of G.P. Murdoch, Koentjaraningrat was put to work on adding information on Indonesia to the Human Relations Area Files. In 1956, Pak Koen received an MA degree. His thesis, A Prelim- inary Description of the Javanese Kinship System, which Stien typed, was pub- lished the following year as a Cultural Series Report by the Southeast Asia Studies Program at Yale University. In the samè year, Koentjaraningrat also published a long forty-page paper on 'Artistic and Intellectual Expression in Indonesia' in the Area Handbook on Indonesia. These defining publications were the first in a long and productive career of anthropological writing. On his return from Yale, Pak Koen began work immediately on his PhD . under the supervision of Professor Elisabeth Allard. He completed his thesis, Beberapa Metode Antrhopologi dalam Penjelidikanl Masjarakat dan Kebudajaan di Indonesia (Various Anthropological Methods in the Study of Indonesian Society and Culture), in 1958 and immediately took up a position as lecturer in anthropology at the . At the same time, hè was made an 'extraordinary' lecturer in anthropology at . His life's task of establishing - and indeed creating - the discipline of anthro- pology in Indonesia had begun. In 1962, after a year's sabbatical at the Uni- versity of Pittsburgh, Pak Koen was made professor of anthropology at the University of Indonesia. From the outset, Pak Koen set himself the task of establishing the discip- line of anthropology in universities throughout Indonesia. The University of Indonesia became the base for his training program, with the most promis- ing students at other universities invited to Jakarta to continue their anthro- pological study. Pak Koen would regularly travel to other universities to lec- ture, but he would also send his graduates to teach the basic anthropology curriculum they had learned at the University of Indonesia. The universities included in this network were the University of North Sumatra in , Padjadjaran in , Gadjah Mada in Yogyakarta, Udayana in ,

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Hasanuddin in Ujung Pandang, Sam Ratulangie in Menado; and Cendera- wasih in . Development of an ethnographic understanding of Indo- nesia's diverse cultures with an emphasis on> their contemporary situation was at the core of Pak Koen's curriculum. Anthropologists in each of the uni- versities where he taught were encouraged to develop their distinct character and regional ethnographic specialization. His view of the discipline reflected his experience in the United States. He was particularly concerned to foster the development of a broadly based dis- cipline. He thus went to considerable lengths to see that students were sent overseas for further study and he was determined that they obtain specific training in different anthropological subdisciplines in order to enrich the field as a whole. He also sent his students to study in Japan, Thailand, Malay- sia and the Philippines, to return to Indonesia to teach on the cultures of these countries. When he began his teaching career, there was a great need for introduct- ory books on anthropology in the . Pak Koen's first undertaking was tp produce the material he needed for teaching. In a period of just over fifteen years, while teaching at several universities across the country, Pak Koen produced a succession of major textbooks for anthropo- logy and social science research in general: Pengantar Antropologi (1959), Tokoh-Tokoh Antropologi (1964), Beberapa Pokok Antropologi Sosial (1967), Atlas Etnografi Sedunia (1969), Metodologi Penelitian Masyarakat (1973), and Bunga- Rampai Kebudayaan, Mentalitet dan Pembangunan (1974). Most of these publications were frequently reprinted. Often for the new reprint, Pak Koen would revise, expand and update his work. Thus his Pengantar Antropologi (Introduction to Anthropology) was only 115 pages when it was first published in 1959, but by the time of the fifth reprint, which appearedin 1974, the volume had grown to 223 pages. The volume was then revised and published under the title Pengantar Ilmu Antropologi. It continued to grow, so that by the time of the eighth reprinting of the new edition in 1990, it came to 391 pages. In 1996, Pak Koen did a further revision and changed the name of his text to its original, Pengantar Antropologi. This new edition was published in two volumes with a total of over 430 pages. Beberapa Pokok Antropologi Sosial (Fundamental Topics in Social Anthro- pology) began with 278 pages when it was published in 1967, but grew to 317 pages by the time of the 7th edition in 1990. His Metodologi Penelitian Masya- rakat (Methodology for Social Research), first published in 1973, had gone through fourteen reprints by 1997 and is likely to continue to be reprinted. Pak Koen's Sejarah Teori Antropologi (History of Anthropological Theory) was published in stages: Volume I in 1980 as a substantial revision and expansion of Tokoh-Tokoh Antropologi (1964); Volume II a decade later in 1990. , Many of the volumes that Pak Koert edited were also of considerable sig-

Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 06:08:43AM via free access In Memoriam Professor Koentjaraningrat 243 nificance for the development of anthropology in Indonesia. Earlyin the 1960s Pak Koen took the initiative to promote an understanding of the local populations of Irian Jaya. He himself did fieldwork in Irian and, throughout his career, he continued to publish and support anthropological research on Irian. Together with his close colleague Harsja Bachtiar, he published the vol- ume Penduduk Irian Barat (1963). Later he collaborated with colleagues in the Netherlands, J. van Baar and K.W. Galis, in producing West Irian; A Biblio- graphy (1984), and in his retirement he edited a large compendium volume, Irian Jaya; Membangun Masyarakat Majemuk (1994). In 1964, he edited Masjarakat Desa di Indonesia Masa Ini, which is a collec- tion of specific village studies by Indonesian, Dutch and American re- searchers (thisbecame Masyarakat Desa di Indonesia when it was reprinted in 1984). Villages in Indonesia, which he edited for publication by Cornell Uni- versity Press in 1967, is the English version of this volume, with only minor changes. For the English version, Pak Koen retained his study of the Javanese village of Celapar but replaced his study of a village in Irian with another study of an Irian village written by the Dutch researcher G. Oosterwal. Prompted by the successful production of Masjarakat Desa, Pak Koen went on, in 1971, to edit Manusia dan Kebudajaan di Indonesia, which can be con- sidered a landmark in the anthropology of Indonesia. The volume consists of sixteen substantial ethnographic accounts of various cultures of Indonesia, from Aceh to Irian Jaya, put together by Pak Koen and a dozen of his stu- dents and colleagues who were by then teaching anthropology at other uni- versities in the country. It is' reported that Pak Koen brought all of the volume's collaborators together in Tugu in the Puncak for two weeks of intensive writing. Interestingly, for this volume he wrote on the peoples of the north coast of Irian, leaving the section on the Javanese to one of his stu- dents from Gadjah Mada. The volume provides ample evidence that, in just over a decade after embarking on his teaching career, Pak Koen had indeed succeeded in training an entire generation of committed students with a sophisticated ethnographic understanding. By 1999, this volume had been reprinted no fewer than eighteen times. Another important publication was the volume Aspek Manusia dalam Penelitian Masyarakat (1982), which Pak Koen edited with Donald Emmerson. The volume is an exceptional collection of essays on the personal involve- ment of researchérs from a variety of disciplines in Indonesia, Australia, the Netherlands and the United States working in different parts of Indonesia. • Pak Koen's publications in English and in Dutch were equally a credit to his remarkable productivity. His 'preliminary' thesis-monograph on Javanese kinship is still the best single account of the subject. His Anthropology in Indonesia, which is a judiciously selective bibliographic review'of some two hundred and fifty years of research on Indonesia, is a consummate display of

Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 06:08:43AM via free access 244 James J. Fox his erudition and one of the best possible introductions to the broad field of Indonesian studies. His , prepared first in English but. pub- lished both in Indonesian (1984) and in English (1984), is a compendium analysis, itself the by-product of immense personal knowledge, and an annotated bibliographic survey of previous research on Java. A steady stream of journal articles, book reviews, and papers for symposia and other aca- demie gatherings made him an active participant in international circles. Pak Koen dedicated his major opus, Javanese Culture, to his wife, Stien. This was particularly appropriate. Throughout his career, Stien was his sup- porting editor and constant assistant, from the typing of his thesis at Yale through the preparation of virtually all his publications. All those who knew Pak Koen recognized the role that Stien played in his many accomplish- ments. Pak Koen officially retired on the 15th of June 1988. Although he con- tinued to publish regularly, he avowed that his retirement would offer him more time for his painting, particularly of portraits, an avocation which he had previously put to good use in various of his publications. His Tokoh-Tokoh Antropologi and his later Sejarah Teori Antropologi are filled with marvellous sketches of the important figures in anthropology, from Herbert Spencer and Lewis Henry Morgan to those of the contemporary era. In fact, some years before his retirement he had begun to spend much of his time painting and already held his first exhibition. He was as remarkably productive with drawings and paintings as he was with his publications. In total, his works were displayed in no fewer than eight exhibitions, four of them devoted solely to his paintings. In 1997, Pak Koen and his wife Stien were able to undertake the haj to Mecca. By this time, Pak Koen had suffered several strokes, yet he succeeded in carrying out all the strenuous duties of the pilgrimage. In August 1997, the first National Congress of Anthropology was held in Jakarta. The Congress provided an opportunity for anthropologists from all parts of Indonesia, many of whom were Pak Koen's students, to honour him as the founding father of anthropology in Indonesia. In 1998, the Asosiasi Antropologi Indonesia (AAI) presented him with two volumes in his honour, the first a personal biography, Corat-Coret Koentjaraningrat, written by Frieda Dharmaperwira-Amran and based on the recollections of students and colleagues, and the second a collection of twen- ty-three anthropological essays from students and colleagues, Koentjara- ningrat dan Antropologi di Indonesia, edited by E.K.M. Masinambow. These two volumes give some idea of the esteenvin which he was held by all of those who learned from him. During his career, Pak Koen was the recipiënt of many honours: he was twice awarded the Satyalencana Dwidja Sistha (1968 and 1982) and the Bin-

Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 06:08:43AM via free access In Memoriam Professor Koentjaraningrat 245 tang Jasa Utama (1994). He was given an Honorary Doctorate by the Uni- versity of Utrecht in 1976, was named 'Lecturer of the Year' by the Associ- ation of Southeast Asian Institutions of Higher Learning in 1968, and was awarded the Penghargaan Ilmu-Ilmu Sosial by the Indonesian Association for the Development of the Social Sciences in 1997. In 1995, he was awarded the Fukuoka Asian Culture Prize. Sri Paduka Paku Alam VIII conferred upon him the title of Kanjeng Pangeran Haryo in 1990. Posthumously, in 1999, he was awarded the Bintang Mahaputra Utama. In 1964, Pak Koen and Stien moved to Jl Daksinapati Timur No 9, a house on the University of Indonesia campus in Rawamangun. His presence there for virtually the whole of his career made that house the centre of anthropo- logy in Indonesia. It was his workplace, where he met with students and col- leagues. It was also the home where he and Stien raised their children and where grandchildren could gather. It was in this house that Pak Koen died and from there that he was eventually taken to be buried. All who knew him recognized him as a remarkable scholar, teacher, colleague, artist and friend, but above all as a refined and gentle prince among men.

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