Book Reviews - Freek Colombijn, Hisao Furukawa, Coastal wetlands of ; Environment, subsistence and exploitation. Translated by Peter Hawkes. Kyoto: Kyoto University Press, 1994, vii + 219 pp., tables, figures, index. - C. van Dijk, Virginia Matheson Hooker, Culture and society in Indonesia, Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1993, xxiii + 302 pp. - M.R. Fernando, Frans van Baardewijk, The , 1834-1880, Changing Economy in Indonesia 14. Amsterdam: Royal Tropical Institute, 1993, 327 pp. - Bernice D. de Jong Boers, Jacqueline Vel, The Uma-economy; Indigenous economics and development work in Lawonda, Sumba (Eastern Indonesia). PhD thesis Landbouwuniversiteit Wageningen, 1994, viii + 283 pp. Maps, tables, photographs, glossary. - Marijke J. Klokke, Lydia Kieven, Arjunas Askese; Ihre Darstellung im altjavanischen Arjunawiwaha und auf ausgewählten ostjavanischen Reliefs. Kölner Südostasien Studien Bd. 2. Bonn: Holos, 1994, 154 pp. - Marijke J. Klokke, Edi Sedyawati, Ganesa statuary of the Kadiri and Sinhasari periods; A study of art history. Verhandelingen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 160. Leiden: KITLV Press 1994. - Gijs Koster, Annabel Teh Gallop, The legacy of the Malay letter - Warisan warkah Melayu. With an essay by E. Ulrich Kratz. London: British Library for the National Archives of Malaysia, 1994, 240 pp. - Stephen Markel, Marijke J. Klokke, Ancient Indonesian Sculpture, Verhandelingen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 165. Leiden: KITLV Press 1994, vii + 210 pp., Pauline Lunsingh Scheurleer (eds.) - Anke Niehof, Ingrid Rudie, Visible women in East coast Malay society; On the reproduction of gender in ceremonial, school and market. Oslo: Scandinavian University Press, 1994, xi + 337 pp. - Peter Pels, Nicholas Thomas, culture; Anthropology, travel and government. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994, xi + 238 pp. - Peter Pels, Nicholas B. Dirks, and culture. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992, xiv + 402 pp. - Anton Ploeg, Roger M. Keesing, Custom and confrontation; The Kwaio struggle for cultural autonomy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992, x + 254 pp. - M.C. Ricklefs, Vincent J.H. Houben, Kraton and Kumpeni: and Yogyakarta 1830- 1870. Verhandelingen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 164. Leiden: KITLV Press, vii + 396 pp. In: Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 151 (1995), no: 2, Leiden, 294-318

Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 01:30:31PM via free access

This PDF-file was downloaded from http://www.kitlv-journals.nl

Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 01:30:31PM via free access Book Reviews

Hisao Furukawa, Coastal wetlands of Indonesia; Environment, subsistence and exploitation. Translated by Peter Hawkes. Kyoto: Kyoto University Press, 1994, vii + 219 pp., tables, figures, index. ISBN 4.87698.009.8.

FREEK COLOMBDN

The aim of Hisao Furukawa is to depict the environment and trans- formation of the Indonesian coastal wetlands, and the nature of culture there. He focuses his attention on the Batang Hari Basin in Jambi, and uses the Barito River Basin of South as a contrast. In the first chapter, Furukawa sets out this main line of reasoning, on which he elaborates in the remainder of the book. He starts with the natural environment; the most idiosyncratic aspect of the wetlands are the peat soils. The next step in his analysis is to show how the people living in the wetlands have found several ways to adjust to the environment in order to make a subsistence livelihood. The final step in his analysis is to characterize the Malay culture as a 'culture of transit'. This characteriz- ation is based on the illusory aspect of peat, which disappears when it is tilled. The people have to move on into the forest, and the wetlands form the frontier of the Malay world. This form of temporary land use, plus the geographical location of the wetlands at the gateway of the east-west trade route, has moulded the Malay way of thinking, and hence their culture of transit. The second chapter is devoted to a detailed description of the natural environment, based partly on the soil samples Furukawa took every 500 or 1000 metres along a straight line to the coast. The wetlands can be divided into three zones: a tidal zone on the coast, with a diurnal cycle of flooding, a flood zone inland, with a seasonal cycle of inundation, and a mixed, central zone in between. The tidal zone is a brackish water zone, which occupies the estuaries and coastline, and is covered by mangrove vegeta- tion. In the central zone, at high tide the incoming seawater does not mix with the fresh water, but, because of its higher specific gravity, burrows underneath it in a wedge. The fresh water is pushed upwards and over- flows the riverbanks, allowing tidal irrigation. The flood zone is located in the narrow basin of the middle reaches of the river. The basins flood deeply in the rainy season, and as a result natural levees develop with back- swamps.

Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 01:30:31PM via free access Book Reviews 295

The combination of the perhumid climate, the high watertable, and the tropical forest led to the deposition of peat. Furukawa states that in the central zone of the Batang Hari peat formation started during the Holocene transgression, 6800 years ago, and has attained a depth of 8 metres. In the tidal, or littoral zone, a two-metre deep peat layer was formed about 1500 years ago. The peat of the tidal zone overlies mangrove mud and this is a highly fertile soil. However, the mangrove mud is a potential acid sulphate soil; when the soil is drained, sulphuric acid is released and the soil becomes toxic. The third chapter deals with traditional forms of land use. This chapter is based on observation and interviews with male leaders in a number of local communities. One form of land use is to collect forest products (camphor, gaharu, rattan, wood, sago, and other products) for sale. Many kinds of fishes are caught with a wide variety of nets in front of the mangrove belt. The fishermen have designed the nets after keen observation of the environment, in particular of the tide and the habits of the fish. A labour relationship between entrepreneurs in the fishing industry and fishermen, which Furukawa calls 'Melayu symbiosis', has developed. It is character- istic of the culture of transit. Finally, there is rice cultivation in ladang and sawah. Furukawa treats these two kinds of cultivation wholly in terms of weed control and disregards the aspect of nutrients. Few weeds grow on newly cleared swiddens, but the fields are abandoned after two years when weeds begin to proliferate. The essence of ponded fields is to drown weeds. The wet fields are found mainly in the backswamps of the central and flood zone. Land reclamation is the theme of the fourth chapter in which Furukawa describes three forms of land reclamation. In the tidal zone land reclamation is based on the digging of drainage channels inland from tidal creeks, in order to drain toxic water and obtain rice fields irrigated tidally, which can be planted every year. Banjarese migrants brought the technique to East in the second half of the nineteenth century. From around 1950, Bugis entrepreneurs hired labourers for new reclamations. They did so primarily to sell the land, or to let it to tenants, not to cultivate themselves. This land reclamation was a speculative gamble, hanging on the problem of whether tenants could be attracted in the labour-short frontier. Finally, government and World Bank technocrats have planned large scale reclamations. These reclamations have shown poor results, because the best locations were already occupied by spontaneous migrants. Canals have been dug too deeply, causing the rapid drying out of the wetland, changing the peat irreversibly into a hard confetti, and the underlying mangrove mud rapidly releases toxic acidity. Instead of seeking to adjust to the environment as others had done, the technocrats have tried too rigorously to impose an alien cultivation on the land, with the result that they have destroyed the swamp forest. Furukawa returns to his theme that the Melayu world is a culture of

Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 01:30:31PM via free access 296 Book Reviews

transit in the last chapter, The Malay world is a mixture of cultures and peoples, who were essentially attracted by the gold deposits. This book, which makes Furukawa's long experience available to non- Japanese readers, is very welcome. The first four chapters are highly in- formative. The formation of the soil and the subsistence techniques are ex- plained in clear language. The abundance of attractive pictures, small maps and tables, and even a reading-cord, are very helpful in this respect. The lively accounts of the many case studies capture the reader's imagination. The details about the key informants, however, jeopardize the conven- tional anonymity of informants. The book would have profited from careful editing: the division into sections and subsections is not always logical and the frequent references backwards and forwards are ultimately confusing, especially since the terminology is not always consistent. The last chapter seems one too many. It is highly impressionistic and speculative. The meaning of the concept of a 'culture of transit' remains unclear. Although it is accepted wisdom to link subsistence techniques to environmental opportunities, it is too simplistic to draw the line from subsistence techniques on to a characterization of the culture as a whole. What was a minor flaw, namely that Furukawa apparently used only male leaders as key informants for his study of subsistence techniques, becomes a serious bias when he attempts to depict the culture as a whole. If Furukawa had left out the last chapter, his book would have ended with his strong and well-founded plea that the present imposition of an alien mode of exploitation destroys the wetlands and the accompanying culture. Or in Furukawa's words: 'The real problem that we should confront is the thinking that takes modern technological civilization as an absolute'.

Virginia Matheson Hooker (ed.), Culture and society in New Order Indonesia, Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1993, xxiii + 302 pp. ISBN 0.19.588618.6. Price: £ 27.50.

C. VAN DDK

It was very enterprising of the Research School of Pacific Studies of the Australian National University and the Australia-Indonesia Institute to convene in December 1989 a conference on 'The New Order in Indonesia, Past, Present and Future' dealing not with politics or economy, but with culture. In one conference, and now thus also in one book, the reader's attention is directed to a wide variety of cultural developments which have occurred since 1965, ranging from such rarely discussed subjects as the architecture of Indonesian mosques, with as one of its more interesting features the resurrection of the traditional Indonesian-style roof of

Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 01:30:31PM via free access Book Reviews 297 mosques built with government support, and 'New Order language' to more frequently debated topics as trends in Indonesian literature. As Virginia Matheson Hooker and Howard Dick explain in their introduction cultural developments cannot be isolated from their wider context. Prominent among these is the political control exercised by the government, which as they observe 'has resulted in much political comment appearing in cultural guise: in journalistic essays, drama, film, poetry, fiction and popular music'. Another influential factor is the rise of a new, mostly urban affluent middle class and its cultural tastes. Finally, there is the relationship between national and regional culture, a sensitive topic in view of Indonesia's past. These three phenomena all produce their idiosyncretic consequences and dilemmas in the cultural sphere, which rear their heads throughout the whole book, whether they affect literature, music, theatre and cinema or sculpture and architecture. It makes for interesting and stimulating reading. The urban middle class, as Hooker and Dick write, are contemptuous of the old ways, but as the same time are loathe to cast off the cultural past completely. With respect to the role of regional cultures in a Unitarian state, the Indonesian government finds itself caught on the horns of the dilemma that the Javanese still form the dominant political and cultural force, which somehow has to be balanced by the stimulation of non-Javanese culture by the government. Referring to the 'ologi' projects promoted by Jakarta, Hooker and Dick point out only that of Javanologi has really developed. From a scholarly point of view this is a correct assessment, but there is more. Since the second half of the 1970s, the Ministry of Education and Culture, through its project for the inventarization and documentation of regional culture has published a mass of descriptons of local customs, music, games, folk-tales, and so forth. And, as a number of the contributions to this volume show architectural forms and traditional art, specific to a certain region, are on the rise again. The fact that the government attention leads to misunderstandings and a bureaucratic tendency to 'standardize' performances is another matter. As Timothy Lindsey points out in his contribution about the New Order's monumental style, there is a distinct tendency to use elements of classic Javanese architecture, for which he adduces amongst other examples a description of Soekarno's tomb. Barbara Hatley, writing about Javanese theatre, also points to the re-interpretation of regional cultural tradition. Outside Java, traditional architecture and culture, too, serve as an assessment of regional identity. It is the subject of Kathryn Robinson's contribution about the 'platform house' as an expression of regional identity in South ; while one of the articles, that by Margaret J. Kartomi exclusively deals with the 'revival of feudal music, dance, and ritual' in Ternate and Tidore. The sections in the book include one on women in movies and on TV. David Hanan examines the movie Nji Ronggeng filmed in 1969; Krishna Sen discusses 'the feminine in New Order Cinema', while Saraswati

Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 01:30:31PM via free access 298 Book Reviews

Sunindyo writes about 'Gender discourse on television'. As the subjects indicate it is the only part of the book in which a gender analysis is explicitly chosen. It produces some interesting observations like that made by Krishna Sen that movie-making in Indonesia is still a largely male affair and that the participation of women in state censorship of films has markedly decreased since 1965. However, sometimes one is tempted to wonder whether the interpretations are not perhaps somewhat biased. Krishna Sen, for instance, concludes that representations of 'women as civilian nationalists, protesting workers [...], or champions of regional autonomy may not be due to any revolution of gender relations, but related rather to repression and resistance in the predominantly male sphere of political discourse in Indonesia'. Saraswati Sunindyo writes that 'the image of the "Indo" (Eurasian) woman's body in Indonesian films is to flatter the male spectator, to make him feel he "owns" and can "consume" the image of a feminine body- the body of a women from the former colonial race'. I agree with her conclusion that 'a specific study of the use of male and female Eurasians, or more film and television stars, generally with the "Indo" look, would be interesting and important', but this should not be done without complementary research into the position of that group in colonial society.

Frans van Baardewijk (ed.), The Cultivation System, Java 1834-1880, Changing Economy in Indonesia 14. Amsterdam: Royal Tropical Institute, 1993, 327 pp. ISBN 90.6832.660.0. Price: / 48.

M.R. FERNANDO

There is a vast published literature in Dutch, much of it a product of the acrimonious exchange of views between supporters and opponents of the Cultivation System. The sinister image of the Cultivation System invoked by its contemporary liberal critics requires serious reconsideration in light of historical studies based on contemporary official papers which have recently become more accessible. Van Baardewijk's compilation is conceived in this spirit of historical revision and adds a new dimension to the debate as it enables scholars to measure the economic impact of production of commercial crops on the indigenous peasant community. The Javanese peasants cultivated, and in some cases produced, a range of commercial crops, most important among which were coffee, sugar and indigo. The cultivation and production of commercial crops required a great deal of labour and land of peasants and in return provided them with a sum of money, known as the crop payment, assessed at a price set by the government. These variables - land, labour and crop payment - play a

Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 01:30:31PM via free access Book Reviews 299 crucial role in measuring economic impact of the expansion in production of commercial crops on the indigenous peasant economy in Java after 1830. Although some historians have selectively made use of these statistics in recent years, it has not been possible to undertake a large-scale analysis for all Java in view of the difficulties in collating all relevant statistics for all residencies. Van Baardewijk deserves praise for scrupulously compiling such a massive body of statistics, thereby greatly facilitating other scholars' work. The first part of Van Baardewijk's compilation contains residency tables in which data of the crop payment, the amount of labour and area of land occupied by commercial crops together with some other important variables such as the amount of land rent paid by peasants on all arable land and the price of rice are presented. In the second part organized by crop, the data of crop payment, labour and area under each crop and its production are given. Finally, we are also given the price of rice in each residency. The statistics are collated from two main sources - the annual cultivation report for the period 1834-1851 and from the appendices in the annual report on colonial administration for the years 1854-1880. Van Baardewijk could have compared the statistics in those sources with the statistics in little known compilations in archival holdings to establish the reliability of statistics, particularly as he quite rightly cautions us about it, and to fill some gaps as well. But that would have required more time and labour which may not bz justified by the end result. In any case, with Van Baardewijk's compilation in front of us, we can use other archival material to examine these statistics closely and refine them. I find some of Van Baardewijk's comments on the reliability of data unconvincing. The bulk of statistics were compiled by native local officials with little supervision from above and it is difficult to say, for instance, that the figures of area of land under commercial crops are more trustworthy than those of the amount of labour bestowed upon cultivating them. Van Baardewijk does not confine himself to presenting the raw statistics but interpolates them as well in such a way to answer some knotty questions raised by scholars studying the Cultivation System. The first interpolation is aimed at measuring the net income of cultivators by weighing the crop payment against the land rent and price of rice. A comparison between the crop payment and land rent is appropriate, for they are the most accessible and reliable indicators of income and expenses. Whether price of rice is a meaningful factor in this context is doubtful, for the vast majority of the rural population were not dependent on market for rice. The issue of real wage is meaningful only where the living standard of urban population and non-agricultural workers in and out of rural areas are concerned. The second interpolation deals with the net adjusted income for the area of land cultivated under commercial crops. The significance of this interpolation is not explained; it is presumably an effort to show what peasants earned from cultivating commercial crops in

Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 01:30:31PM via free access 300 Book Reviews proportion to the area planted with them. Incidentally, Van Baardewijk's estimates of the area of land cultivated under coffee - the original sources give the number of coffee trees - is problematic. In coffee cultivation it was the amount of labour and how it was deployed that are major issues, not the area of land planted with coffee as it is the case with indigo and sugar. The third interpolation yields the amount of labour as a percentage of indigenous population. Van Baardewijk differs with other scholars who express the amount of labour as a proportion of all agricultural households. In supporting his method, Van Baardewijk says that it is not clear whether households or individuals were employed (p. 30), a view difficult to support. There are instances when individuals as opposed to households are meant in official documents, but the two main sources used by Van Baardewijk consistently refer to the households and not to individuals. The household was the basic unit of production and consumption of Javanese peasants and there were differences between households with regard to the ways in which labour was allocated in production of commercial and subsistence crops. The obligation to cultivate commercial crops, furthermore, rested with the peasant households with farm land. By expressing the amount of labour utilized in cultivating commercial crops as a percentage of total population, Van Baardewijk is introducing a confusing unit of measurement which had little or no meaning in Javanese peasant economic life in the nineteenth century. Therefore all interpolated statistics should be used with caution and Van Baardewijk's conclusions based on them deserve further discussion. The historians working on Indonesia are notoriously wary about statistics, but we have to make the best use of them, which seems to be more meaningful when used in conjunction with descriptive information than on its own. And Van Baardewijk's compilation makes it feasible to undertake quantitative analysis of the magnitude of economic change brought about by the expansion in production of commercial crops in Java after 1830. This is a very useful addition to our slowly increasing corpus of statistics on the pre-1940 Indonesian economy.

Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 01:30:31PM via free access Book Reviews 301

Jacqueline Vel, The Uma-economy; Indigenous economics and development work in Lawonda, Sumba (Eastern- Indonesia). PhD thesis Landbouwuniversiteit Wage- ningen, 1994, viii + 283 pp. Maps, tables, photographs, glossary. ISBN 90.5485.308.5. Price: / 35. (Copies can be ordered by writing to the author, Molenstraat 79, 6721 WL Bennekom.)

BERNICE D. DE JONG BOERS

This dissertation by Jacqueline Vel is concerned mainly with the local eco- nomy of Lawonda, an area in the centre of the island of Sumba (Indonesia). Appointed by the Gereformeerde Kerken in the , Vel and her husband went to Sumba for a period of six years (1984-1990) as advisors to a rural development project, PROPELMAS (Proyek Pelayanan Masyarakat, Project for Service to the Community), organized by the Sumbanese Christian Church. The main aim of this project was to improve the welfare of the poor. It was Vel's conviction, however, that before any development programmes could be designed and implemented success- fully, PROPELMAS would need a thorough understanding of local economic behaviour. So it became her task to provide PROPELMAS with the relevant information. But it was only after her return to the Nether- lands, with the encouragement of academic friends, that she started to question her findings from a theoretical point of view, which eventually resulted in this dissertation. In the introduction Vel states the central problem of her thesis: 'how to analyse this economy from the viewpoint of the local population itself (p. 2). Every chapter contributes to the answer to this question and thus to an understanding of the local economy of Lawonda, an economy Vel has baptized the '£//wa-economy'. The word 'uma' literally means 'house' in the Sumbanese language, but it also refers to the smallest kinship unit - a man, his wife or wives and their descendants. Decisions concerning pro- duction, consumption and distribution are taken primarily within this unit. The dissertation is divided into three parts. The first part introduces the two villages where research (Prai Madeta and Maderi) was carried out, gives an overview of the local history and discusses local ideas and beha- viour with regard to 'land' and 'work'. Vel describes the Uma economy as a 'debt-economy'. This means that every person is involved in chains of reciprocal obligations. Reciprocity, involving gifts and counter-gifts, forms the dominant mode of exchange. The crucial concept of 'the morality of exchange' explains 'the reasons why people prefer one mode of trans- action over another, why they consider some people better exchange part- ners than others [and] why some material goods cannot be exchanged at all or only exchanged for specific goods' (p. 49). Put simply, the morality of exchange involves local norms and ideas about the proper way to

Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 01:30:31PM via free access 302 Book Reviews conduct transactions. This set of norms and ideas is the key to under- standing Lawondanese economic behaviour. Some examples of these ideas and norms are that food should be shared among Uma members, that cash transactions between relatives should be avoided and that debts are a sign of creditworthiness rather than of poverty. In Lawonda three categories of exchange partners are distinguished: 'us' (close relatives), 'no others' (other relatives and bride-giving and bride-taking clans) and 'others' (strangers). These three categories corres- pond roughly to particular modes of exchange: reciprocity (sharing of goods), redistribution (payments in kind), and market exchange (payments in money). In other words money is only used in transactions with strangers. Traditionally money was not very important in Lawonda, which was mainly a sharing and redistributing society. However, during the last century money has become more and more important. Nowadays the Lawondanese need cash for the payment of taxes and school fees and for medical treatment and consumer products. Part two of the dissertation is devoted to the increased need for money and what actions the Lawondanese take to fulfil this need. One of the strategies for obtaining money is 'networking'. People try to cultivate salaried officials, for example by lending them land. Then they try to de- crease the social distance between themselves and these people in order to integrate them into the 'no others' category. This possibility is only open to people who have something to offer in return (like land). So this is beyond the reach of people who do not possess anything. This implies that the poor are not appreciated as exchange partners. They have to look for other ways of obtaining money. One activity open to the poor is collecting birds' nests in caves, an activity which is forbidden and disapproved of because it implies contact with the evil spirits that are believed to lurk in the caves. Another way of earning money is cultivating mung beans (kacang ijo). This does not require too much labour in the already busy farming cycle of Lawonda. Besides, beans do not fall into the category of goods that have to be shared with relatives (like rice) and hence can be sold at the market. Cultivating and marketing mung beans is an especially appropriate strategy for the poor, because it provides them with both money and food. This is also the reason why PROPELMAS strongly advocated the cultivation of mung beans. The final part of the dissertation tries to establish a connection between the analysis of the Uma economy and the development activities of the PROPELMAS. In this part Vel criticizes the assumptions of neo-classical economic theory that farmers are resource optimizers and that the individual is a homo economicus. She also suggests a number of questions for future research and gives an account of the actions and methods used by the PROPELMAS. On the whole this dissertation makes worthwhile reading, providing a wealth of anthropological information about Sumba. Indigenous views and

Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 01:30:31PM via free access Book Reviews 303 ideas are heavily accentuated; they constantly remind the reader of the relativity of many concepts (such as poverty, wealth and work). Vel illustrates theoretical points with illuminating case studies, making the dissertation lively and realistic. The thesis does have some flaws. I wonder why Vel did not consult Rodney Needham's work on the slave trade in Sumba and the history and kinship structures of Mamboru, a neighbouring area adjacent to Lawonda. It might have been valuable to compare his work with her own; after all, the Uma is a kinship unit that also exists in Mamboru. Secondly, the activities and aims of the local development organization PROPELMAS are rather vague, and information on this is scattered throughout the book. Not until page 95 does Vel give the full form of the acronym PROPELMAS, while readers without any knowledge of the have to consult the Glossary for its English equi- valent. Furthermore, I would like to have heard more about the role of 'the gospel' in the development work of the PROPELMAS. For example, was being a Protestant a precondition for assistance or were non-Protestant poor also eligible candidates? Was the development programme accom- panied by a programme to spread the gospel? In other words, what made the PROPELMAS a Protestant organization and what did this mean for its aid programmes? Would a non-Protestant development project with the same aim (poverty alleviation) have designed the same kind of pro- grammes? These questions are not answered in the dissertation, although Vel explicitly labels her work 'missionary development work'. Apart from the fact that it was financed by the Protestant Church, I do not see much justification for this. One final point of criticism concerns the way Vel deals with 'gender'. Although she is quite sensitive to gender issues, she sometimes all too readily follows the dominant Sumbanese patriarchal perspective. When she describes the characteristics of a 'successful' person, it appears that she is describing a man: 'A successful man in Lawonda is surrounded by many people: several wives, many children and some slaves' (p. 57). On page 58 Vel states clearly that 'Lawondanese women depend largely on men for their social success'. Of course, I do not blame Vel for the androcentric views existing in Lawondanese society, but she could have said more about the subject. Her descriptions sometimes evoke an image of women as passive victims, which was probably not her intention. Undoubtedly, after a six-year stay in Lawonda, Vel knows a lot more about women's opinions, options, strategies and modes of opposition than she reveals in her thesis. If she has considered a more detailed discussion of gender issues beyond the scope of this study, I hope she will publish an article on the subject. These imperfections aside, Vel's dissertation remains a valuable study especially for students of (economic) anthropology and readers interested in indigenous knowledge systems and the daily life of poor people in an eastern Indonesian community.

Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 01:30:31PM via free access 304 Book Reviews

Lydia Kieven, Arjunas Askese; Ihre Darstellung im alt- javanischen Arjunawiwdha und auf ausgewdhlten ostja- vanischen Reliefs. Kolner Siidostasien Studien Bd. 2. Bonn: Holos, 1994, 154 pp. ISBN 3.86097.121.2.

MARIJKE J. KLOKKE

This publication was originally written as a MA thesis (Magisterarbeit) for the University of Cologne. It explores an episode in the Old Javanese Arjunawiwdha both in the Old Javanese text itself and on a number of East Javanese reliefs, the main focus being on the reliefs. The author has succeeded in bringing together all the earlier material on the subject analyt- ically. Her use of the sources is accurate and quite extensive due to her knowledge of Dutch, Indonesian, and (Old) Javanese besides English and German. Moreover, while providing some new insights she also raises a fair number of questions which could be taken up as starting-points for future research. After a preface, a note on spelling conventions, and an introduction which defines the scope of research, her chosen research methods, and her personal standpoint, the author introduces the history of the eleventh to fourteenth century - the period during which the text and reliefs were created. Having set them in their context, she passes on to a discussion of the text and the reliefs, which forms the principal part of the publication, ending with a conclusion. A bibliography (from which unfortunately twelve references are missing), a glossary, a map of Central and , two groundplans, and 40 photographs of reasonable quality complete the publication. The author has chosen to focus on the episode of Arjuna's meditation on Mount Indrakila, which makes up almost one-third of the Arjuna- wiwdha text. While she does sketch the literary and historical context of the text briefly, she devotes more time and space to the importance of a number of concepts: namely, sakala, sakala-niskala, and niskala; the concepts of mdyd and sakti; and finally, the yogi ideal as opposed to the ksatriya ideal. This last pair of concepts appears of crucial importance in her analyses of the reliefs of the eleventh-century cave Selomangleng near Tulungagung and the fourteenth-century temple Surowono near Kediri. She finds that it is the yogi ideal which is highlighted at Selomangleng, a cave for meditation situated in a mountainous area, while the ksatriya ideal predominates at Surowono, which was the focus of the cult of a deified ruler and is situated in the lowland. Her study thus confirms other recent research which has argued forcibly that the order and selection of reliefs was meaningful and related to the geographical and functional context of a religious structure. Although the author has rigorously limited her subject, she touches on many related issues in passing. These have not been worked out in more

Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 01:30:31PM via free access Book Reviews 305 detail because of the limited scope of a Magisterarbeit. As a consequence some of the author's reasoning remains up in the air. For instance, the relationship between the Arjunawiwdha (in text and reliefs) and Tantrism fails to emerge clearly due to the fact that Tantrism is explained only in very superficial terms. There are also a few mistakes. Amoghapasa is not a Buddha but a Bodhisattva (p. 15); the bathing-place Belahan does not contain the inscription of a date (p. 14); and East Javanese kdla have a lower jaw, while Central Javanese kdla may or may not have a lower jaw, not the other way round (p. 59; compare p. 74). Finally, it does not seem likely that the reliefs of Candi Jago date from the thirteenh century (p. 9, 61); a date of the fourteenth century ( period) is more likely, as Stutterheim has suggested. These are, however, but minor flaws. Hopefully this publication will set a trend for future research on ancient Javanese art in Germany, also beyond the level of Magisterarbeit.

Edi Sedyawati, Ganesa statuary of the Kadiri and Sirjhasari periods; A study of art history. Verhandelingen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 160. Leiden: KITLV Press 1994. ISBN 90.6718.066.1. Price:/60.

MARIJKE J. KLOKKE

Originally a dissertation submitted to the University of Indonesia in Jakarta in 1985, this book forms an important contribution to the study of ancient Javanese art. It examines statuary art, a neglected field of study; it is innovative in its approach and original in the problems it sets out to tackle. It has a much broader scope than the title suggests: it includes all known Indonesian Ganesa images in stone, not only those of the Kadiri and Sirjhasari periods, it traces all references to Ganesa in ancient Javanese inscriptions and literary texts, and it attempts to contextualize socially the visual and textual images of Ganesa prevalent during the Kadiri and Sirjhasari periods. A detailed classification of Ganesa images, made with the help of a useful descriptive framework (Appendix 3) and various computer pro- grams, form the groundwork of the study. For this purpose the author has drawn inspiration from methods of classification developed in prehistoric archaeology and statistics. She has also extensively documented the measurements of the images, assuming that iconometric directives for holy images existed in Indonesia as they did in India. Based on a detailed analysis of these data, previous assertions are substantiated and new observations made. Important conclusions are, for instance, that traditions known from Indian literary sources are not always followed and that

Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 01:30:31PM via free access 306 Book Reviews

culturally Kedu is the most uniform area, showing the strongest relations with Indian traditions. The author's attempt to define the aesthetic qualities of the images quantitatively (pp. 79-86) is less convincing. The choice of Ganesa is partly inspired by the fact that he is the most frequently represented god in ancient Javanese art, a solid argument in a study relying so heavily on quantative data. One hundred and sixty-nine images from all over Java, and also from Sumatra, have been analysed. Among them, however, only five could be attributed to the Kadiri period (1049-1222) and eight to the Sinhasari period (1222-1292). One may won- der whether quantitatively these numbers provide a sufficient sample for all the issues raised in the book. The focus on the Kadiri and Sinhasari periods, usually separated because of their dynastic discontinuity, also has a theoretical basis. It enables Sedyawati to question whether and to what extent political changes affected cultural changes. The author emphasizes that she will concentrate on the Indonesian con- text of the images and will not discuss Indian influences. This standpoint has resulted in new insights, especially as regards the Sirjhasari Ganesas. The author argues that the fierce, violent aspect of these Ganesas, previ- ously interpreted as an expression of Tantrism, can be attributed to their association with the battlefield. The image of Ganesa as vanquisher of enemies on the battlefield occurs for the first time in the Smaradahana, a literary court text dating from the Kadiri period. Sedyawati argues that the fully-fledged visual form evolved later, at the Sinhasari court. The relation- ship between Ganesa and the battlefield in a court environment is inter- esting and convincingly construed. However, indigenous sources also indicate the importance of Tantrism at the Sinhasari court, which makes former interpretations plausible as well. Unfortunately the author ignores these previous interpretations. In fact she does not pay much attention to the religious context of the images, her primary focus being their social context. Accordingly, one of the principal assumptions of the study is that, besides temporal and regional variation, different social environments, too, can contribute to distinctive depictions. Sedyawati thus differentiates between art inspired by the court and art originating from outside the court. Although this distinction has, in my opinion, been maintained too forcibly throughout the latter part of the book, it has led to the interesting conclusion that Ganesa's heroic character, connected with the battlefield, is highlighted in court art, while his mystical aspects receive more attention outside the immediate influence of the court. The occurrence of a few inaccuracies (the mysterious omission of numbers 99, 100, 161, and 204 in Appendix 1, for instance) and a number of printing errors (the most annoying being AD 43 instead of AD 943 on p. 109) does not detract from the overall value of this book. It is to be

Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 01:30:31PM via free access Book Reviews 307 deplored that it has taken almost ten years to publish this volume in the Verhandelingen series of the KITLV.

Annabel Teh Gallop, The legacy of the Malay letter - Warisan warkah Melayu. With an essay by E. Ulrich Kratz. London: British Library for the National Archives of Malaysia, 1994, 240 pp. ISBN 0.7123.0376.6.

GIJS KOSTER

Although this book was primarily devised as a catalogue for an exhibition, it has not turned out to be a mere chronological enumeration and description of exhibited objects. In a highly readable manner and with the copious use of well-chosen illustrations it presents what really amounts to the first full-fledged study of the Malay letter, both as a much neglected source of history and as a still largely unresearched art that was strongly inspired and shaped by Islamic thinking. From the earliest letter discussed in the book - a letter from the Sultan of Ternate to King John III of Portugal (1521) - to the last one - from the Raja Muda of Patani to W.W. Skeat (1899) - Malay epistolary style can be seen to show a remarkable formal similarity, so much so, that one may say that the Malay letter - like the other genres of traditional Malay literature - was structured according to a common system of literary conventions that not only transcended regional boundaries but also remained practically unchanged over this long period of time. In Part I of this book the sources for the study of Malay epistolography are discussed. The most important of these are the kitab terasul, manuals for the correct practice of letter writing, that were compiled for use by professional scribes in royal chanceries. What may well have been the last of these kitab terasul was printed in 1937 in Kedah. Although these manuals may seem disappointing material to the researcher because they instruct by providing collections of examples for imitation rather than by giving abstract theoretical explanation, they may nevertheless provide useful clues for a study of the conventions governing the writing of the Malay letter, as can be seen in Part II. Part II, which focuses on the art of the Malay letter, gives a description of these conventions, with constant reference to the prescriptions found in the kitab terasul. In a series of separate chapters it treats the letter's design and decoration, the seals that were to be used on it, the headings that were customary, the compliments that had to be included, the presentation of the actual contents, the reference to gifts that would accompany it, the closing formula to be used, the way the address was to be written and the type of envelope in which it was to be sent. Finally it also contains a chapter on

Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 01:30:31PM via free access 308 Book Reviews

the envoys to whom the letter was entrusted and a chapter on its ceremonial delivery and reading out aloud to its audience. Part HI is devoted to the Malay letter as a source of history. After an examination of early letters from the period 1500-1750 three collections are discussed, the Light letters (1786-1794; this essay was written by E.U. Kratz), the Raffles letters (1810-1824) and the Farquhar letters (1818- 1822). Part III is rounded off with an examination of later letters from 1840 until the end of the . The value of the Malay letter as a source of history is shown to be that it may augment and at times correct our knowledge of the past, may throw a fuller light on the economic, political and social state of the regions concerned, and may also provide an excellent insight into the processes of diplomacy, trade and conflict- resolution. The book closes with two appendices. In the first of these the transcriptions are given of 100 letters, that are discussed and displayed in excellent colour-reproductions in the main text. The second appendix contains the text of Munshi Abdullah's attack on the stupidity of the praises customary in Malay letter writing (first printed in 1845) and a fragment of instruction on letter writing taken from Raja AH Haji's Bustan al Katibin (1857). It may be said that the book completely succeeds in its two main aims of introducing the reader to the niceties of the art of the Malay letter and making him or her aware of the letter as a hitherto untapped but important source of history. As a study of a literary genre it also fills in one of the still many blank spots in our knowledge of the traditional Malay literary system. The book is somewhat less satisfactory if it really purports to offer a history of the Malay letter, as is seemingly suggested by the structure of Part III and its closing off with some remarks about 'the end of an era' under the impact of the spread of printing. If the end of an era has to be demonstrated, then why does Part III close by discussing a letter that precisely demonstrates the persistence of the tradition even as late as 1899. If the era of the Malay letter really ended then, why, one may wonder, could as late as 1937 the need still be felt for the publication of a kitab terasul? As to the origin of the Malay practice of letter writing - the beginning of its history - the book points to Persian and Arabic letter writing. It need not be doubted that Malay letter writing has borrowed most of its features from this source. And there are good reasons for saying that 'turning to look at Persian works on correspondence having just examined Malay kitab terasul is like seeing a reflection in a mirror, so familiar are many of the shapes and forms' (p. 21). But is there not the danger that this angle of vision will preclude one from paying attention to the particular ways in which the Malays have contributed to and perhaps also somewhat changed the genre?

Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 01:30:31PM via free access Book Reviews 309

The book has been produced with great care. If the reviewer is nevertheless permitted to suggest one correction, it would be in respect of the authorship of letter no. 76 in the list of 100 Malay letters (p. 196), which is dated 14 April 1823. This letter is erroneously ascribed to Sultan Mahmud Badaruddin of Palembang. However, Mahmud Badaruddin had actually been in exile on Ternate since 1822. From the letter itself it can be seen that the author was Susunan Hussain Diauddin, a son of Mahmud Badaruddin's younger full brother Sultan Muhammad Baha'uddin.

Marijke J. Klokke and Pauline Lunsingh Scheurleer (eds), Ancient Indonesian Sculpture, Verhandelingen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 165. Leiden: KITLV Press 1994, vii + 210 pp. ISBN 90.6718.076.9. Price:/60.

STEPHEN MARKEL

Ancient Indonesian Sculpture contains nine papers presented at an international symposium held at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam in May 1988 in conjunction with the exhibition, Divine Bronze: Ancient Indonesian Bronzes from AD 600 to 1600. First, ' "Rules" for change in the transfer of Indian art to Southeast Asia', by Robert L. Brown, proposes six general guidelines that governed the iconographic and stylistic changes in Hindu and Buddhist religious imagery produced from India to Southeast Asia. Instances include the role of imported models and their related artistic diffusion from cultural or economic centres, the misunderstanding and/or reinterpretation of foreign sources, the adaptation to local traditions, and perhaps most interestingly, the 'self-conscious' reworking of Indian prototypes to alter imported images to suit their own cultural circumstances. Next, Sara Schastok, in 'Bronzes in the Amaravafl style; Their role in the writing of Southeast Asian history', reexamines certain 'export' or 'Amaravati-style' bronzes and suggests that redating them to the 6th through 8th century accords better with our current notions of Southeast Asian history and that 19th-century scholars were adversely affected by their own cultural 'baggage'. 'Some connections between metal images of Northeast India and Java', by Susan L. Huntington, examines specific images from both cultures and concludes that while there is a strong degree of similarity, very few Javanese images can actually be said to have been specifically copied from known Indian examples and that only certain subregions and periods of Pala India were influential for Indonesian sculptors. Next, Pauline Lunsingh Scheurleer's article, 'Bronze images and their place in ancient Indonesian culture', expands upon the discussion in the aforementioned

Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 01:30:31PM via free access 310 Book Reviews exhibition catalogue by dividing the history of Indonesian bronzes into three phases incorporating the seven groups delineated in the catalogue. A minor correction herein offered is that the 'silver' Surya in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art that is mentioned in her footnote no. 1 (p. 78) is actually made of copper alloy. 'An aspect of the Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara in ancient Indonesia', by Nandana Chutiwongs, briefly discusses an important form of the bodhi- sattva known as Mahakarunika, the Great Compassionate Lord, which was popular across Asia. Next, A. de Vries Robbe in 'A khakkhara fragment from Java', examines six Javanese examples of a Buddhist monk's sistrum or staff finial to identify the previously unknown function of a Javanese bronze fragment. In terms of resolving long-standing disputes, perhaps the most significant article in the volume is by John C. Huntington, 'The icono- graphy of Borobudur revisited: The concepts of slesa and sarvafbuddha]- kdya', which convincingly reinterprets the great monument as a three-di- mensional mandala of the Avatamsakasutra. Next, J.A. Schoterman, in 'A surviving Amoghapasa sddhana; Its relations to the five main statues of Candi Jago', connects the five main statues of Candi Jago with the icono- graphic prescriptions of the Amoghapasasadhana written in northern India around 1200. Finally, Marijke J. Klokke, in 'The so-called portrait statues in East Javanese art', reexamines a controversial group of sculp- tures and concludes that they represent kings and queens deified after death.

Ingrid Rudie, Visible women in East Coast Malay Society; On the reproduction of gender in ceremonial, school and market. Oslo: Scandinavian University Press, 1994, xi + 337 pp. ISBN 82.00.21919.4.

ANKE NIEHOF

The Norwegian anthropologist Ingrid Rudie was given the enviable oppor- tunity to return to the site of her first fieldwork in Kelantan, Malaysia, to do a restudy. She made the most of her opportunity. The longitudinal invest- igation and her long acquaintance with the people of rural Kelantan, particularly the women, has produced an inspired study which has both ethnographic and theoretical depth. The book covers a period of more than twenty years (1964-1988). During this period Malaysian society underwent profound political, socio-economic and cultural changes, one of the most important being the Islamic resurgence. The impact of the latter on politics and culture can be felt throughout the book. But also the nuclearization of extended households, women's employment and educa- tion, and the emergence of privacy as a social value, are changes which

Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 01:30:31PM via free access Book Reviews 311 have affected women at the local level. From an anthropological point of view the period is significant as well. In it the concept of gender came to the fore and gender studies became an established field in anthropology. During her first fieldwork (1964-65) women were already very much visible because of their important tasks in the economy and local community, but the conceptual framework then used by the author emphasized kin and family rather than gender, as was conventional at that time. The concept of gender had not yet been invented in anthropology. Reflections triggered by both the paradigmatic changes in anthropology and by social change in Malaysian society are integrated into the discussions of the various themes in the book and add to its dynamic character. After laying the theoretical ground by discussing various (etic) concepts and viewpoints, the authors sets out to map in time and space the lives of rural Kelantan women. At this point, 'emics' are infused, which enriches the ethnographic tapestry. Time, of course, is a complex notion. There is historical time and there is time as a phase in the life course, to name only two meanings. In the mapping of women's lives the author applies both, reminding me of Ryder's use of the concept of cohort in the study of social change. Space is mapped in spatial and social terms. Women's spaces are households, family, kampung, ceremonial, market (trade) and school. Their roles in these spaces are described, taking the time dimension continuously into account. School is an unusual subject in an anthropological mono- graph. Nor can I think of a study on gender in which the subject gets the attention it is given here. However, the author convincingly shows the increasing relevance of school to rural women's lives. The chapter on trade is original and full of insights, the part on gender and territoriality in the market-place in particular. It makes one wonder to what extent gendered descriptions of market-places in Indonesia would yield similar pictures. A restudy of Alice Dewey's work using a gender-based conceptual frame- work would be interesting. All dimensions come together in the description of real-life women at the end of the book, in a section aptly called 'a type gallery'. The portraits in the gallery represent three types of women: 'mothers', 'working daugh- ters', and 'home daughters'. The latter represent a female role model that is gaining ground in modern Malaysia: the housewife. 'These women fill their time with housework of a new standard' as the author explains (p. 270). The 'mothers' never were such housewives and will never be. The 'working daughters' are not going to fulfil the role either. These are intriguing findings. The only critical note I would like to express at the end concerns the absence of any reference to literature on women in Indonesia, while there is so much scope for comparison. Was the author not aware of the growing body of Indonesian women studies or was it too complicated to integrate the comparative angle into the book? I shall ask her.

Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 01:30:31PM via free access 312 Book Reviews

Nicholas B. Dirks (ed.), Colonialism and culture. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992, xiv + 402 pp. ISBN 0.472.09434.3, 0.472.06434.7 (paperback).

Nicholas Thomas, Colonialism's culture; Anthropology, travel and government. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994, xi + 238 pp. ISBN 0.7456.0071.X, 0.7456.1215.6 (paperback).

PETER PELS

These books mark the coming of age of a research programme for anthropologists, historians and students of culture in general. This type of research has a long history, in which the theoretical contributions of French thinkers like Bourdieu, Derrida and Foucault loom large, but its point of no return is the publication of Edward Said's Orientalism (1978), and both books engage with this work, either reverentially or critically. The approach can be summarized as follows: it takes colonialism in the first place as a cultural process; it declares colonialism and its 'culture' to be internally fragmented and contradictory; and it points out that coloni- alism's culture cannot be limited to a specific historical period distant in time, in other words, that the cultural side of colonialism is with us here and now. This approach implies that most writings about the topic display both anxiety and enthusiasm about their lack of 'objectivity'. If both 'colo- nialism' and 'culture' are defined as internally fragmented and if they can no longer be located away from the here and now, in other times and places, they lack the status of 'object', of a thing that can be unequi- vocally defined and dispassionately viewed from a distance. The titles of both books are therefore ironic: while Dirks boldly asserts the existence of 'colonialism' and 'culture' on the book's cover, his introduction imme- diately confuses these seemingly discreet objects by saying that colo- nialism is a cultural project of control and that culture is a colonial product (p. 3), implying that culture is both an object and a theory of colonialism. Thomas goes even further by putting the singular object 'colonialism's culture' on the cover, but arguing, in the first sentence of the book, that while colonialism needs to be theorized and discussed, this discussion is hampered by the assumption that the word relates to any meaningful category or totality (p. ix). The book's subtitle implies that anthropology is part of colonialism's culture, but in the book it is argued that 'culture' as a concept is part of the naturalization of human types produced by (colonial) anthropology (Thomas, Ch. 3). In both cases, subject and object are hopelessly intertwined, and, what is more, their entanglement is declared to be inescapable. This entanglement was forcefully put on the agenda by Edward Said, when he argued that orientalism produced the Oriental as an object, and

Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 01:30:31PM via free access Book Reviews 313 that one cannot dissociate colonial or neocolonial representations of 'others' from politics. Yet, both books display suspicion towards some of the tendencies of the literary criticism of Said and others, particularly where literary criticism seems to posit a unified 'orientalism' or 'colonial dis- course'. Instead, they opt for a 'historical anthropology' that in taking colonialism as culture and culture as colonial, unmasks their representations of others as irrational, constructed and contingent, a bricolage of strategies and tactics rather than the object of dispassionate social engineering. Thus one sees, for example, that Spanish projects of conquest by Christian conversion and confession are subverted by the necessity to translate and adopt an indigenous Philippine language (Rafael, in Dirks); that a rational process of recruiting labour for capitalist rubber production is subverted by the exchange of violence, rumours and fears between South American Indians and rubber buyers (Taussig, in Dirks); or that the racist confidence of some colonizers is offset by the uncertainties and fears of others (Thomas, Ch. 5). The collection of essays by Dirks is, in its scope and variety of argument, the more intriguing of the two books, although Thomas' argument has a coherence that is, of course, lacking in the collection. This means that the latter is better capable of bringing across the reflexive part of the argument, an important achievement at a time when many scholars still struggle with the fact that studying colonialism means studying one's own history. Thomas clearly shows that there is a present-day politics to studying colonialism, and that we often have to deal with colonial legacies in present-day life (like the primitivism of the film Dances with Wolves or of 'new age' ecological romanticism: Thomas, Ch. 6). He is, however, less successful in showing the relevance of this perspective in present-day politics (for a better example, see Ludden's essay on the colonial roots of the Indian development regime in Dirks). The collection by Dirks contains some of the best papers written on the topic (especially the essays by Frederick Cooper, Vicente Rafael and Ann Stoler stand out as lasting achievements), but also incorporates a bewildering variety of perspectives. Some are as radically reflexive as Dirks' introduction (Taussig, Prakash); others clearly exemplify the 'colonialism as culture' perspective, but do not doubt their capacity to represent culture as the former two do (Helgerson, Ludden); yet another elaborates on Said's work without much critique (Mitchell) while one paper seems to belong to a style of writing predating the advent of the 'culture and colonialism' approach (Adas). It is hard, therefore, to say which of the books is the more useful. If one wants to teach students the subjects' importance, Thomas may be the better, because more straightforward book. For generating discussion, however, one should opt for Dirks.

Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 01:30:31PM via free access 314 Book Reviews

Keesing, Roger M., Custom and Confrontation; The Kwaio struggle for cultural autonomy. Chicago: Univer- sity of Chicago Press, 1992, x + 254 pp. ISBN 0.226. 42919.9, 0.226.42920.2 (paperback).

ANTON PLOEG

Sadly, this book is likely to be Keesing's last sizeable publication dealing with the Kwaio. His association with this group of people lasted for 30 years, and would have continued, had not his sudden death intervened. Custom and Confrontation analyses the history of Kwaio resistance against colonial and post-colonial invasions of their lifestyle over the last 120 years. It sums up and adds to many of Keesing's earlier Kwaio writings. Keesing cautiously divides this period into three. During the first the Kwaio resisted by means of violence which culminated in the killing of a tax collecting party, headed by District Officer Bell. With the exception of one policeman, the entire party, consisting of two European officials and fourteen Solomon Islanders, was wiped out. The colonial government retaliated with a brutal punitive expedition, made worse since the Solomon Islands police, many from elsewhere in Malaita, got the opportunity to revenge the death of kin whom the Kwaio had killed in their attack. Moreover, they had still outstanding scores to settle. Men, women and children were killed, settlements destroyed and shrines desecrated. The events have coloured relations between Kwaio and the outside world ever since. At least until very recently, pagan Kwaio were demanding stag- gering sums of compensation - sizes reminiscent of the compensation which Bougainvilleans, in the Papua New Guinean North Solomons, have demanded for damages resulting from the mining operations on their island. The devastating defeat started the second phase during which the Kwaio resisted by turning to religious movements, and World War II the third phase, marked by political resistance. The best known among these attempts is the Maasina Rule. As in earlier publications, Keesing stresses the practical aspects of the Rule, while acknowledging that it gave rise to cult behaviour. One of the planks in Maasina Rule's programme had been the codification of 'custom', to provide a viable counterpart to the laws and rules which the colonial government had imposed. This project survived the demise of the Rule and the Kwaio made Keesing part of it after his arrival among them in 1962 announcing that he had come to write down their customs. To safeguard the reproduction of Kwaio cultural practices he helped them set up a cultural centre staffed for several years by Peace Corps volunteers. In the course of the colonial period, a number of Kwaio converted to Christianity. They left their lands in the mountainous interior of Malaita and settled on the coast. Keesing worked primarily among the pagan

Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 01:30:31PM via free access Book Reviews 315

Kwaio, who had remained mountain dwellers. Throughout the book he stresses pagan Kwaio insistence on remaining culturally and politically autonomous. This is the reason that their resistance has not stopped with the Solomon Islands gaining independence in 1978. Maasina Rule, how- ever, provides a significant exception, since the movement united Ma- laitans and some Solomon Islanders beyond Malaita into a single, homo- geneous political structure, despite previous hostilities, including the excesses during the punitive expedition. It also united pagans and Christians, notwithstanding the pagans' opining that the Christians caused pollution and disease by their ignoring ancestral rules and taboos. In recent years resistance has again taken violent forms with Kwaio 'foraging in the urban jungle' (p. 175), id est shoplifting, housebreaking and so on, and engaging in fights and killings. This is one reason for Keesing's caution in his dividing the Kwaio history of resistance into three phases. In addition, he finds that periodization exaggerates the differences between the forms of resistance: violent resistance was and is underpinned by ritual and by other religious means; and recourse to cults did occur during political confrontations. His reservations with regard to periodiz- ation are part of his general caution in analysing and interpreting the course of events. For instance, Bell's murder was not simply a case of resisting the imposition of a colonial tax regime. The killers had their own agendas. Two key concepts in Keesing's analysis are 'compartmentalization' and 'resistance'. By compartmentalization he refers to pagan Kwaio efforts to mark off their own geographic and cultural domain in an alien world. 'Resistance' is for Keesing an analytic concept referring to any conscious, collective form of opposition against a common subordination (p. 214). He hesitates to gloss as 'resistance' accommodation with the power holders, or any form of action which the actors themselves do not see as resistance, as defined above. In a painstaking analysis he documents Kwaio action as measured against this definition, pointing to the individual agendas and mutual dissensions. Keesing fully supports, indeed admires, Kwaio efforts to maintain their autonomous way of life against unasked for and unwanted encroach- ments. In the Solomon Islands, they are exceptional in their opposition and Keesing is concerned that they may fail. He is scathing about the ineptitude and indifference of government authorities in dealing with the Kwaio. Simultaneously, while he denies the charges of the colonial author- ities about cargoist delusions and despotism prevalent in Maasina Rule, he condemns the irrealism of compensation claims for billions of dollars and the overbearing actions of the main Kwaio leader during the 1970s and 80s. The 'urban foragers' of p. 175 he calls 'thugs and hoodlums' on p. 182. Quite candidly, he admits that the present book is not the one the Kwaio wanted him to write, namely a compilation of custom. Although he demonstrates that Kwaio custom hardly lends itself to a codification, it

Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 01:30:31PM via free access 316 Book Reviews

must have been hard for him to disappoint his collaborators. He points out that codification is a job for the Kwaio themselves; however, he is no longer there even to assist them with it. Soundly, he argues that the question of why the Kwaio have resisted so much is unanswerable. Their living in the mountainous interior of Malaita was merely an enabling condition. Although in his view Kwaio were less open to exogenous ideas than other Malaita peoples were, he yet posits that an explanation referring to 'culture' does not do. He does not explore the possibility of cultural totemism in Malaita, with the Kwaio living in antagonistic other-ness to the other peoples, so they resisted where others did not. But when they killed Bell and his party, relations with the representatives of colonialism hardened and the terms were set for further resistance. One other cause for resistance may be their perception that their health and longevity were impaired by the punitive desecrations and by their inability to live according to cultural rules once they left their moun- tain homes. By contrast, the Western Dani, in the Irian Jaya Highlands, and the Kowai, on Umboi in the Siassi Archipelago, where I did field work in the 1960s and the 1970s respectively, were far more accommodating towards the colonial authorities. But they thought that their health had improved in the course of the colonial era. History is for Keesing a motley phenomenon, consisting of the, often multiple, perceptions of the participants, combined with those of later observers. His concern is to document Kwaio history as the Kwaio, at least the pagan Kwaio, perceive it, while adding his own comments. That requires multiple perceptions, often recorded in long verbatim statements. Even so, Keesing is aware that, by his authoring the book, readers learn about Kwaio perceptions by means of his authorship. The procedure has led to a book which is both richly documented and fervently argued, showing clearly how great a loss his death is both for the Kwaio and for us, anthropologists.

Vincent J.H. Houben, Kraton and Kumpeni: Surakarta and Yogyakarta 1830-1870. Verhandelingen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 164. Leiden: KITLV Press, 1994, vii + 396 pp. ISBN 90.6718.077.7. Price:/ 60.

M.C. RICKLEFS

This is a modified version of the author's Leiden doctoral thesis submitted in Dutch in 1987. At that time, specialists in Indonesian history of the pre- independence period could recognize that Houben's work was a major contribution to filling in one of the lacunae of Indonesian history - the

Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 01:30:31PM via free access Book Reviews 317

Javanese Principalities in the period after the and before the era which is the principle focus of C.Ch. van den Haspel's Overwicht in overleg; Hervormingen van justitie, grondgebruik en bestuur in de op Java 1880-1930 (VKI 111, 1985). With Houben's book now available in English, those who are unable to read Dutch will also have access to it. The book rests upon a wide range of primary source materials in Dutch and Javanese found in the Netherlands and Indonesia. Because the book addresses matters of which so little was previously known, Houben clearly accepted an obligation to provide his readers with much basic descriptive material. He thereby to some extent denied himself the opportunity to construct a volume along tightly argued lines - as is reflected in the title, which is descriptive in character. His readers will be grateful to him for the information presented here. This book will long remain the standard reference on the Javanese Principalities in this period, and the essential foundation upon which further analyses by Houben and others will rest. The book is organized topically rather than chronologically. This reflects the vast amount of material handled by Houben, which could hardly be presented in any other way, and an implicit argument that there was not great change within the period 1830-70. He certainly writes of important developments, but nevertheless the period is treated as being one of essential unity in social, economic and political terms. A certain price is paid for this organization, of course, for the interconnectedness between devel- opments is sometimes obscure. For example, in the chapter on economic changes, Houben writes of opposition by European businessmen in Yogyakarta to the Dutch Resident De Kock ca. 1848-50 (p. 275). But he does not connect this with his earlier discussion (in the chapter on the Javanese response to the Dutch presence) of the setting up of a conspiratorial club for European leaseholders and Javanese princes in Yogyakarta in the same period (p. 246), although the two matters were evidently aspects of a single phenomenon. The book abounds with sound judgements, revealing portraits of people and descriptions of developments, and valuable information. It per- suasively sets out the complex relationships between Dutch and Javanese authorities in the Principalities. Houben observes that 'the Javanese court elite ultimately became more dependent on Dutch money than on Dutch power' (p. 360). Each chapter is provided with a useful summary section. The Conclusion of the book both surveys the entire work and suggests some broader contexts in which the history of the Javanese Principalities in this period should be seen - those of the Indonesian Outer Islands, of British India and of the colonial government-ruled parts of Java. The translation is of good quality, with very few lapses (mainly of dis- agreement of subject and verb, e.g. p. 150: 'The restricted formal expansion of Dutch colonial authority in the Principalities were paralleled by an informal expansion of European influence after 1830.'). The book is

Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 01:30:31PM via free access 318 Book Reviews refreshingly free of all but a few typographical errors. Notes are at the bottom of the page, where they belong. The two indexes of names and subjects are good, but they fail to break long entries into subheadings. For example, the entry for Resident gives forty page references covering much of the book, and is of little value as it stands. Houben has made a major contribution to the study of Indonesian history in this important volume. The Principalities of nineteenth-century Java are now open to serious historical discussion and study, resting upon the foundations laid by Houben.

Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 01:30:31PM via free access