Book Reviews - Anne Booth, W.L. Korthals Altes, Changing economy in , Amsterdam: Royal Tropical Institute (General trade statistics, 1822-1949; volume 12a). - Wim van den Doel, Robert Cribb, Historical dictionary of Indonesia. Metuchen, N.J.,

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W.L. Korthals Altes, Changing Economy in Indonesia, Amsterdam: Royal Tropical Institute (General Trade Statistics, 1822-1949; volume 12a).

ANNEBOOTH School of Oriental and African Studies, London.

Changing Economy in Indonesia is the second volume in this series prepared by Dr. Korthals Altes. His other contribution was a reconstruction of the balance of payments of the Netherlands Indies from 1822 to 1939, a formidable challenge in that both the figures on commodity trade and inward and outward financial flows had to be painstakingly assembled from a number of sources. In this volume the emphasis is on trade statistics only, which were well documented in successive colonial statistical publications, and summarised in several of the pre-war compilations of data prepared by W.M.F. Mansvelt. Thus the volume covers material with which students of colonial Indonesian economic history are probably largely familiar, although it is still of great value to have all the data between two covers and annotated to the high standard we have come to expect from this series. The introduction contains a brief description of the development of Indonesian trade from 1822 to 1940, a discussion of the organization of trade statistics over those years, and a useful summary of changes in import and export duties. There is also a section on entrepot trade, free ports and free zones. We thus have much of the raw material for a study of changes in the colonial trade regime for the 120 years covered by the volume. The individual tables show 's imports and exports from 1822 to 1873, and Netherlands Indies' imports and exports from 1874 to 1940. The data are then broken down according to the major countries of origin and destination, and major commodities. There are also tables on domestic trade from 1916 to 1940, broken down by commodity, import and export duties and total imports into, and exports from different island groups between 1879 and 1940. It is perhaps regrettable that the author did not present any tables on exports and imports of major commodities broken down by countries of destination and origin. For example, to find out how much of the rapid growth in imports from Japan after 1920 was accounted for by textiles as opposed to other trade sectors, we must still turn to the actual trade statistics, available only in very few locations outside the Netherlands. Similarly, more data on major exports by country of destination might have been useful, so that we could see more clearly just which commodities were responsible for the rapid increase in trade with other parts of Asia that occurred over the last five decades of the colonial era. Another gap is the

Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 05:34:46PM via free access Boekbesprekingen 375 lack of quantitative data. This means that the data in the volume on non-rice prices will provide more information on export and import price movements. In spite of these gaps, like the previous volumes, this will be an invaluable reference for Indonesian economic history students. Its companion volume (12b), presenting data on regional patterns in foreign trade from 1911 to 1940, will be eagerly awaited.

Robert Cribb, Historical dictionary of Indonesia. Metuchen, N.J., & London: The Scarecrow Press, 1992. ISBN 0.8108.2542.2.

WIMVANDENDOEL

Since the discipline of Indonesian history still lacks a useful and reliable handbook, the publication of the Historical dictionary of Indonesia by Robert Cribb should be welcomed by everyone interested in the history of Indonesia. It is the 9th volume of the Asian Historical Dictionaries, edited by Jon Woronoff. The first volume of the series (on ) was published in 1989, and dictionaries on the history of Bangladesh, Pakistan, Jordan, Afghanistan, Laos, and Israel rapidly followed. As the series editor explains in the foreword, the historical dictionaries are meant for both the beginner and the specialist. By and large Robert Cribb has succeeded in making a functional dictionary for a certain group of users, with over 800 clear and concise entries, a chronology of Indonesian history, maps, and six appendices which deal with the governors-general of the Netherlands Indies, the Dutch ministers of the Colonies, the rulers of early states, the cabinets of the Republic of Indonesia, the most important office holders of Indonesia and election results. Very practicable and important is the rather extensive bibliography, which consists of more than 1100 titles and also lists the most important journals on Indonesian history. 'Indonesian history', by the way, is defined as the history of those areas which are at present governed by the Indonesian government. This means that (even rather extensive) attention is paid for instance to East Timor. With only 800 entries, Cribb had to narrow down his selection of topics. The choices he made have resulted in an emphasis on post-1800 political and economic history. Also, only by way of exception are personal names considered important enough to merit an entry. Sometimes the selection seems a bit arbitrary. For instance, Clifford Geertz is listed as an 'American anthropologist who formulated a number of important concepts for the understanding of Indonesian society'. This may be true, but why not also mention, then, exactly fifty years after his death, J.C. Van Leur, who

Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 05:34:46PM via free access 376 Boekbesprekingen revolutionised Indonesian historiography? Similarly, why mention Cornell University and not Leiden University or other important institutions which deal (or have dealt) with Indonesian studies? It is easy to criticize details of a work which covers the entire expanse of Indonesian history like: that the name of governor-general Van der Capellen is constantly spelt the wrong way (C&pellan), that the controleur was certainly not an 'elder brother' to the bupati (this was the resident, a colonial civil servant of a rather different standing), that the novel Max Havelaar does not describe 'the oppressive practices linked with the cultivation system', that there is no entry 'Indie verloren, rampspoed geboren' on page 206, or that everyone will find some inaccuracies in the entries of her or his speciality. More serious is the impression that the information in Cribb's dictionary is rather superficial, that the 'specialists' for whom the dictionary was also made will find no more in it than they already know and will find many examples of careless editing in the text - in a way inevitable in the production of such a book but also rather annoying in a work which pretends to be a reference guide of high standard. Robert Cribb's dictionary is, however, still useful, but mainly as an aid for people who are not acquainted with Indonesian history.

Kingsley Bolton and Helen Kwok (eds), Sociolinguistics today; International perspectives. London and New York: Routledge, 1992, 383 pp. ISBN 0.415.06410.4. Price £ 50.- hb.

CD. GRIJNS

This volume was developed from the First Hong Kong Conference on Language and Society (held 24-28 April 1988). It represents a first major endeavour to intensify the contact and exchange between sociolinguists working in Asia and in the West. The 64-page Introduction is written by Editor Kingsley Bolton. It opens with a short discussion of the present situation in Hong Kong as a very appropriate background for the conference (both the Editors teach linguistics at the University of Hong Kong). The first main section of the Introduction offers a well-balanced treatment of 'Sociolinguistics today' (development and scope; objectives and current per- spectives; recently published surveys of sociolinguistic studies; 'western sociolinguistics' versus 'Asian sociolinguistics'). The next section com- prises a survey of sociolinguistics in Asia with subsections on , Hong Kong and Macau, India, Japan, , The , Singapore, Thai- land, and some other Asian countries, including Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Vietnam, Indonesia, , Korea, Australia and . The two final, shorter sections deal with future directions and international

Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 05:34:46PM via free access Boekbesprekingen 377 perspectives in sociolinguistics. The bibliography contains some 400 items; together with the separate lists of references after each essay these make up a rich fund. There are thirteen conference papers and an additional one, contributed by R.B. Le Page. The papers are grouped under four headings: 'Sociolinguistic theory' (Peter Trudgill, Ruqaiya Hasan, Le Page); 'Language variation, cul- ture and society' (James Milroy, Lesley Milroy, Ping Chen, Peter Davies, Yat-Shing Cheung, Howard Giles-Nikolas Coupland-John Wiemann, Charles Macdonald); 'Multilingualism' (Andree Tabouret-Keller, Ralph Fasold, Andrew Gonzalez, Anthea Fraser Gupta); and 'Current perspectives in sociolinguistics' (Fasold, James Milroy, Giles). Each group of papers is preceded by another short introduction written by one or both of the Editor(s). With their careful and professional way of editing, the editors set a model for other congress volumes, and it is-for a good deal their merit that the book deserves its general and somewhat ambitious title. The Introduction and the additional introductory comments make the book quite recommendable as a textbook for courses of sociolinguistics in Asia departments (except for its price, no paperback edition being available). For lack of space I can only, very eclectically, mention a few topics which I think are of particular interest for Southeast Asianists. James Milroy suggests reinterpreting 'traditional' social variables such as class, rank and status as social identity variables, where the more comprehensive idea of social network would be the basis for the analysis. This seems to me a step forward in situations where ethnic background plays a part. - Lesley Milroy criticizes the stereotyped (Labovian) notion of the status conscious- ness of women. She makes a convincing plea for separating the variables of class and sex in sociolinguistics. - Ping Chen argues that the Chinese language 'displays an internal consistency strong enough to warrant its . description in terms of a single Chinese grammar' (p. 186). His 'scalar parametric' approach is based on the description of (ideally) all the major syntactic structures of Chinese. Next the parameters of semantic content that underlie each syntactic structure are identified. Following that, it is attempted to determine how many intermediate points along a given parameter can be identified along a continuum (p. 187). - Davies discusses loans from regional (i.e., non-Beijing) varieties in Modern Standard Chinese. - Cheung writes on digraphia, i.e., the simultaneous use of two or more writing systems, and its implications for the relationship between literacy, standard languages and vernaculars. - Tabouret-Keller's essay on the sociolinguistic situation in Europe, Fasold's essay on vernacular-language education and Gonzalez' essay on reconceptualization, translation and the intellectualization of Philippino are all highly relevant for language planning in probably all countries in Asia. Finally, Gupta writes on Singa- pore Colloquial English as a rather stable linguistic variety in its own right, the 'Low-form' of English in Singapore, where the youngest generation has English as a native language. The topic is highly relevant for many cities in

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Asia where a local low variety of the national language exists. In contrast to the wealth of information this book offers, the reportage on Indonesia is regrettably poor. Indonesia was not represented at the conference, but more complete and recent references could have been acquired easily. This deficiency is perhaps symptomatic of the fact that sociolinguistic studies as carried out by Indonesianists in many countries seem to belong to a somewhat different network of scholarly communication. A comprehensive survey of sociolinguistic studies going on between Singapore and would be a desirable complement to the volume under review.

Ole Bruun and Arne Kalland (eds), 1992. Asian perceptions, of nature: Papers presented at a Workshop, NfAS, Copenhagen, Denmark, October 1991. Copenhagen: Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (Nordic Proceedings in Asian Studies No. 3), 261 pp. ISBN 87.87062.12.7.

DAVID HENLEY

Western environmentalist writers, appalled by the behaviour of their own societies toward the natural world, have often credited Asian cultures with greater ecological wisdom and sensitivity. In 1991 the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies in Copenhagen organised a workshop to test this proposition against empirical studies of the relationships between man and nature in a number of Asian cultures. The fourteen contributions reproduced in the resulting anthology include pieces on Indonesia, Laos, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, China and Japan. An immediate difficulty with this book is that it supplies no consistent definition of 'nature' - a word which, as Raymond Williams once observed, may well be the most complex in the . The result is that the various contributors are often discussing quite different phenomena, ranging from wildlife parks to crosscultural variations on the abstraction 'that which comes of itself. A further peculiarity of the collection is the inclusion of some material which seems to fall outside even the very loose parameters set by the title. Roland Anrup's essay on Levi-Strauss, for instance, is clear enough about culture and nature but contains no mention of Asia. Fortunately, however, there are also a number of very interesting chapters on how specific Asian cultures view, and treat, nature in the concrete sense of the nonhuman organic environment. It is the East Asian cultural traditions which, ironically (and perhaps not accidentally) in view of their considerable influence upon some sections of the ecology movement in the West, receive the sharpest critical attention here. In a chapter on 'culture in Japanese nature', for instance, Arne Kalland

Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 05:34:46PM via free access Boekbesprekingen 379 enthusiastically debunks the myth that a special love for nature exists in Japan. The stereotype of the nature loving Japanese is, Kalland argues,

'a misconception, which is created by taking Japanese praise of nature - as expressed in literature and the visual arts - at face value and not as metaphors for something else' (p. 218).

Brian Moeran, writing on 'ecology advertising' in contemporary Japan, also highlights the superficiality of Japanese interest in environmental issues. Ole Brunn's essay on geomancy in China concludes that nature, in the Chinese view,

'not only contains resources, it is resources per se. The world that matters embraces that untouched nature which has an aesthetic function. Beyond the narrowly visible, where nature is dressed to fit into a picturesque scenery, nature is only potential resources to be drawn in as culture expands.' (p. 247)

The perception of nature as a set of resources, of course, does not in itself preclude a cultural concern for ecological sustainability - indeed, it is a necessary precondition for such concern. But contemporary China faces massive pollution and desertification problems, while Japanese forests and marine resources, as Kalland notes, were sometimes mercilessly stripped even in premodem times. If East Asian philosophies do promote the sustainable exploitation of nature, then there is clearly a major discrepancy between cultural theory and social practice here. Southeast Asia is represented in this collection by three articles, two of them concerning Indonesia. Peter Boomgaard, in a piece called 'sacred trees and haunted forests', gives a lucid and well documented account of the obstacles to deforestation provided by indigenous cultural beliefs and taboos in colonial Java. His conclusion, however, is that such obstacles became steadily less effective over time. Population growth and the increasing power of the government were not the only reasons for this. Another was the declining relevance of beliefs concerning an ever more distant forest frontier, coupled with the demonstration effect of sacred trees felled with impunity - a sort of positive feedback mechanism. Boomgaard also notes that the circumvention of protective rules had actually always been possible with the help of ritual specialists and propitiative offerings. Religious reverence for living things does not necessarily keep them alive; Japanese whalers, as Kalland blackly remarks elsewhere, were always careful to perform memorial rites for the creatures they hunted to the edge of extinction. The other contribution with an Indonesian - this time mostly Sumatran - focus, 'Socio-political structures and the Southeast Asian ecosystem' by J. Kathirithamby-Wells, is altogether less critical in character. In fact, it

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seems dedicated to upholding precisely the kind of stereotype which other essays in the collection bring into question. The precolonial period in Southeast Asia, for instance, is characterised by Kathirithamby-Wells as one of 'symbiosis between the riverine ecosystem and human development' (p. 19).

"The mandate for political authority was contingent upon the harmonious management of spiritual and material affairs within the cosmological unit, defined as a mandala and congruent with the ecosystem. Calamities in the form of floods, famines, volcanic eruptions and disease were interpreted as symptomatic of the disruption in the harmony of the natural world and loss of the ruler's divine mandate. Resulting succession and dynastic conflicts were meaningful expressions of the irrevocable link between man and the environment and the inherent checks and balances within the system.' (p.32)

Is the author suggesting here that manmade ecological disturbances in precolonial Southeast Asia were automatically corrected by political crises? If so, then she gives no clear historical examples to prove it (assuming, indeed, that such a functionalist argument could be proved at all). If not, then it is hard to know what she means by 'inherent checks and balances'. Certainly there is no clear acknowledgement that ecological stability in the precolonial period may have been a function of high death rates. It is striking that in her analysis of the subsequent colonial impact on the Southeast Asian environment, she stresses commercial exploitation to the virtual exclusion of population growth. Kathirithamby-Wells has written an interesting and provocative article, but also an unbalanced one which cannot serve as more than a foil for future environmental historians of Indonesia. A more credible face of ecological functionalism is presented by Damrong Tayanin in his chapter on 'environment and nature change in northern Laos'. Himself a Laotian swidden fanner until leaving for Sweden at the age of 35, Tayanin can hardly be accused of idealising an exotic lifestyle. His description of the intricate Kammu swidden cycle illustrates the intimate knowledge of nature's limitations built up by generations of dependence upon soil and forest regeneration. When the dangerous spirits which the Kammu believe inhabit large trees are described as 'ecology police', however, the point still seems'rather stretched.

'The western ecologist would say that he hopes people will listen to reason before an irrevocable catastrophe is a fact. We Kammu would say that we hope that people will not behave in such a way that the area spirits take a severe revenge and let all the people die. Perhaps we mean the same thing?' (p. 147)

Well, perhaps.

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Jonathan Falla, True Love and Bartholomew: Rebels on the Burmese Border. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. ISBN 0521.380.192. Price: £ 16.95/USS 37.50.

WARDKEELER

The Karen in Burma have been struggling for independence, or at least some form of autonomy, since 1948. Jonathan Falla, sent by a London-based NGO interested in setting up health-care in the region, spent 1986-1987 in the 'Karen Free State of Kawthoolei' on the Thai-Burmese border. He has written a fascinating and moving account of the people he met there, people who are trying to live orderly lives on the edge of war and chaos. His book consists largely of a series of character portraits, but through it all run comments on the Karen rebellion that defines everyone's lives. The book is not written for an academic audience. The disadvantage is that it exhibits no clear internal organization other than the author's deepening knowledge of the area: it lacks analytic categories and will defeat all efforts to mine it for quick takes on 'the Karen'. The advantage is that Falla writes it as a vividly personal - though never self-centered - account. He begins by describing the particular settlement in which he lived, slowly peopling it in his descriptions with the individuals who stayed in or near it. He is ready at any time to interrupt his stories about particular people with more general remarks about whatever strikes him as germane, whether it be about river transport, or the workings of the Karen government, or the Karen language, or Karen music (mostly pop). His pace is deliberate, his eye for detail telling, his lone judicious although occasionally wry. What is masterful about the book is Falla's ability to convey the almost surreal combination of matter-of-factness and anxiety that pervades a settlement where war, like the landmines that make the jungle treacherous, conditions all events and yet only occasionally blows up in people's faces. Indeed, the organization of the book finally turns out to lie in the constant approach of the war zone, as Burmese soldiers turn what was a backwater into a village steadily closer and more exposed to war. Remarkably, Falla does not glorify the Karen National Liberation Army. Nor does he deprecate it. Clearly sympathetic to his friends' ideals, he nevertheless shows the contradictions that inhere in a revolutionary struggle directed largely by formerly urban or semi-urban Karen who have come to the Karen 'homeland' in the forests to wage war. Their reformist conceptions of government hierarchy, modernity, and efficiency clash both with their own romanticized notions about Karen 'traditions', and with the acephalous nature of Karen forest settlements. These are the people Falla stayed with and knows best. He notes their confusions and contradictions sympathetically, even while pointing out their personal quirks and virtues, their rivalries - and the ultimately quixotic nature of their efforts. The end result is a book far more powerful than any simple account of

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the Burmese military attacks on ethnic minorities could be, since it is so much more complex and so much more vivid than the recitation of horrifying statistics about Burma's near half-century of civil war.

Mary F. Somers Heidhues, Bangka Tin and Mentok Pepper; Chinese Settlement on an Indonesian Island. Singapore: Institute of South-East Asian Studies, 1992, 296 pp. ISBN 981.3035.99.4/981.3016.00.0.

ELSBETH LOCHER-SCHOLTEN Utrecht University

As indicated by the title, three themes are closely intertwined in this study: tin exploitation, pepper cultivation and Chinese settlement. Tin exploitation, starting in the 18th century, was impossible without a labour force imported from China; pepper cultivation became an alternative living for those Chinese who settled on Bangka, often of peranakan descent. In the twentieth century Bangka became the second pepper-producing region of Indonesia. Both products thus provided the main sources of income for the Chinese population on Bangka (in the 1930s they comprised 48% of the inhabitants), giving Bangka a distinctly Chinese outlook (population, architecture). For the different reasons mentioned in the last chapter, the Chinese population has now declined from nearly half to a mere quarter. The book thus offers a social and economic history of three centuries of Chinese settlement on Bangka; mining and its consequences for Billiton show up in incidental comparisons. The original inhabitants of Bangka, the Orang Gunung or Orang Bangka, appear in one chapter, broadening the perspective and preventing a too-isolated treatment of the subject matter. The author, who teaches at the University of Gottingen, shows the development in mining from original Chinese to European organization and technology. In the 18th century the quasi-independent tin miners were headed by administrators closely connected to the sultanate. During British rule, this intermediate layer of Palembang administrators was ousted; the Chinese miners themselves - organized in a cooperation (kongsf) and as such responsible for the mines - then traded with European inspectors. The Dutch followed this British example. After 1850, with the introduction of European mining technology and the arrival of Dutch mining engineers, European (state) control was strengthened. It was only in 1913 that colonial administration and mining were separated. Mining became the exclusive territory of the Bangka Tin Winning (Bangka Tin Mining Co.). How advantageous the Bangka tin was to the Dutch is clarified by figures, not by an opinionated account. Its non-moralizing description is one of the book's strong points.

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One of its weaker sides is its composition. The author has taken a thematic approach. This results in (unnecessary) repetition. The Tin Regulation of 1891 shows up again and again. Figures concerning the Chinese population are repeated more than once. One of the last chapters, 'Bangka in the 1940s: Towards War and Revolution', has suffered most under this approach. In 25 pages the author covers seven themes (nationalist activities, economic rehabilitation, labour activities, federal policy, republican politics and the political position of the Chinese), with a few pages reserved for each topic, each with its own chronology. The result is a fragmented story, in which the relationship between the different aspects is completely lost. In this way history becomes a storage of encyclopedic facts. Fortunately, earlier chapters are more consistent, though clarity is not the book's first merit. All in all, however, the book covers an interesting and - in view of the present-day importance of ethnicity - relevant subject.

Christin Kocher Schmid, Of People and Plants. A Botanical Ethnography of Nokopo Village, Madang and Morobe Provinces, Papua New Guinea. Ethnologisches Seminar der Universitat und Museum fur VOlkerkunde, Basel, 1991, 336 pp. ISBN 3.85977.187.6. Price: SFr. 55.-.

MARIE ALEXANDRINE MARTIN Centre national de la Recherche scientifique Paris.

This book focuses chiefly on the botanical knowledge of Nokopo. The author, among other objectives, states a priori that she wants 'to demonstrate convergences of natural and cultural phenomena', and postulates that 'cultural phenomena are in this context considered to be subject to the same rules as natural phenomena, to be products of the same process' (p. 18). Taken as such, it cannot be considered as an objective piece of field work, but rather as a study stressing the points which illustrate the intended demonstration. Schmid aims to present her results as seen 'through the eyes of Nokopo people' and therefore follows a dualist presentation, referring only to the vegetation - grasslands versus forests - and gives us the 'dual assignments of phenomena' concerning nature, culture, material life .... The missionaries (are they German? The author uses the terms 'Lutheran faith' and 'missionaries' without mentioning their nationality) radically changed Nokopo society when they destroyed the major sites of Nokopo religion (sacred forest, ritual places). Schmid does not linger on social practices (past and present), which she summarises in 22 pages (p. 38-60) under the heading 'Ethnography' (namely: 'social organisation', 'organisation of time and space', 'religious beliefs and practices'). A few more pieces of

Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 05:34:46PM via free access 384 Boekbesprekingen information are given throughout the text, but they remain rather unclear. For example, 'The establishing of a new golda pi [banana garden] is a communal affair' (p. 86); the use of the present tense (the author has previously explained this point) indicates that this practice has been introduced by the missionaries or is a more ancient custom, as the reference to parental links may suggest; what is the influence of Christianisation in that respect? The rest of the book deals with the plants, her major interest The most remarkable part of the work concerns the presentation of biogeography, the very detailed description of various agricultural systems, including the exhaustive enumeration of cultivated plants and the study of the whole flora. It represents a major effort to present the Nokopo's knowledge of their environment. It shows how deep the Nokopo knowledge of plants goes: those which fertilize the soil, those which require rich mineral components and so indicate a good soil ... However, not all the components of each ecological niche other than plants (in other words, animals, rocks, water, temperature, local religion - which still persists [see p. 14]) are given the same attention, except for soils and birds, although the Nokopo seem to have a global vision of nature (p. 17). The chapter on agriculture also focuses on basic foods (sweet potatoes here, bananas there) without giving the composition of a meal (a few menus would have sufficed). The chapter on Nokopo plant classification is a little confusing. Although the author wants to respect Nokopo concepts, she does not give a local definition for plant categories, which she explains by using English concepts such as trees, vines, grasses and herbs. This leads to a lack of rigor in the analysis. If an informant hesitates between two categories to classify a species, does it mean that the plant has a special status? This phenomenon occurs elsewhere (Cambodia): there is a fringe of uncertainty between the main categories, and plants can be put in different categories according to the informant, which does not mean that they are marginal or in an original position. On a related note, we would better understand the polysemy of kandap - 'tree', 'vegetation strata', 'fire wood', and 'fire' - if we were given the word in its different linguistic contexts. Moreover, we can wonder if kandap is really applied only to spontaneous trees, as the Nokopo use this term to name cultivated plants (p. 151). It may be considered as a contradiction (author's opinion) or possibly as an incorrect interpretation. Last but not least, does the category dsaap 'food' (p. 264-265), which includes kandap, naap and pidang, belong to the structural classification and more precisely to the specific level (and what does specific mean for Nokopo people)? Other classifications may exist alongside the structural one; this point is not clearly explained. The chapter on aesthetics could suggest the existence of a classification in which ornamental plants, colour concepts, vegetation, rituals, are all intermixed, and this would be significant on a cultural level. Plant names are carefully analyzed from a linguistic and a semantic point

Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 05:34:46PM via free access Boekbesprekingen 385 of view, and this analysis is useful to understand the functioning of botanical nomenclature. However, in the index, we miss those vernacular terms which-do not correspond to Latin binomes. In short, the reader is provided with very precious information on botany, on vernacular names and uses of plants, and on agriculture, with good photographs and drawings. But readers will have to look elsewhere to get an idea of what Nokopo thoughts and representations could have been before the arrival of missionaries, and even what they are today. One may wonder whether the author has actually succeeded in reaching her goal of presenting Nokopo society through plants.

Bernhard Dahm (ed.), Regions and Regional Developments in the Malay-Indonesian World: 6. European Colloquium on Indonesian and Malay Studies (ECIMS) June 1987 Passau. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1992, x + 221 pp., maps. ISBN 3.447.03199.9.

J. NOORDUYN

The thirteen articles in the volume under review are the historical, sociological and politicological papers read at the conference on Malay and Indonesian studies held in Passau in 1987 with the general theme of Daerah, Region. The scene is set by two old masters of Indonesian historiography. Denys Lombard advocates (in French) a historical conception of the notion 'region'. Taking as an example, he shows how the regions themselves change over time in number, extent and importance, unlike a static mapping based on ethnicity and language would suggest. The Indonesian doyen of historians, Sartono Kartodirdjo, discusses the concept of regional history, which he sees as, in fact, a subsystem of National History. Luis Filipe Thomas of Lisbon examines the incidental information on Sumatra's west coast which can be gleaned from the accounts of the adventures of a large group of Portuguese shipwrecked off this coast in 1561. H. Jacobs assembles from mainly Portuguese and Spanish (Jesuit) sources what is told about the less well-known early history and culture of the miniature island kingdom of Siau, to the north of Celebes, known from 1510 to 1677. Heather Sutherland gives a novel insight into the power and limitations of the 18th-century VOC trade in Makassar, from the promising though mainly still untapped harbourmaster's reports. Mary Somers Heidhues of Passau recounts the changes occurring in the tin island of Bangka in the 19th century. P.E. de Josselin de Jong discusses the question of how far-reaching are the at first sight fundamental differences in social organization between the

Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 05:34:46PM via free access 386 Boekbesprekingen neighbouring regions of Negri Sembilan and in Malaysia. Peter Carey demonstrates how many elements of Central Javanese high court culture originate from the Pasisir (north coast) civilization. Thommy Svensson of Gothenburg presents a lucid overview of the development of rural West Java since the early 19th century and the role of the state bureaucracy and capitalism in this, with the vicissitudes of the Majalaya textile industry as a case in point. V.J.H. Houben of Leiden shows how much the basically divergent cities of Yogyakarta and Surabaya turn out to have in common, for instance in the way Javanese villages were ruthlessly removed to make room for European living quarters in colonial times. Passing on to the present-day Indonesian state, Francois Raillon describes (in French, with many translated quotations in Indonesian) the central administrator's view of the rural area, the desa. Frans Hiisken and Benjamin White of Amsterdam sketch the longstanding diversification of the rural society of Java and the strong influence of state patronage on it up to the present-day New Order. Wolfgang Clauss, Hans-Dieter Evers and Solvay Gerke of Bielefeld, finally, give a detailed picture of the unexpectedly instant socio-economic and commercial diversification taking place in a settlement of transmigrants from Java in Southeast . As may be clear from the brief summaries, there is a large diversity of interesting new insights and information in this volume. It is a pity, therefore, that an abundance of crude misprints and a sometimes awkward lay-out detract from the readability of this book.

J.N. Sneddon (ed.), Studies in Linguistics, Part II, NUSA, Linguistic Studies of Indonesian and other Languages in Indonesia, volume 33. Jakarta: Badan Penyelenggara Seri Nusa, Universitas Katolik Indonesia Atma Jaya. 1991, x + 115 pp., maps.

J.NOORDUYN

Hardly two years after the appearance of a NUSA volume exclusively devoted to the study of languages of Sulawesi (reviewed in BKI 147, 1991, 517-8), a second volume of Sulawesi linguistics has seen the light, again edited by J.N.Sneddon. The authors of three of the four articles are linguists of the Summer Institute of Linguistics who were engaged in long-term research in Sulawesi. Ren6 van den Berg explores the historical phonology of Muna in South- East Sulawesi on the basis of his recent grammar and other historical work on the language. Using a top-down approach, he traces the Muna reflexes of the Proto-Malayo-Polynesian (PMP) phonemes and the origin of particular subsystems. This way he succeeds admirably in elucidating complex and

Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 05:34:46PM via free access Boekbesprekingen 387 irregular synchronic structures such as are found in the numerals and the classes of subject prefixes. He also discovers the reflexes of many PMP etyma - a conspicuous example is wogha-li 'split' from *belaq - but is as yet unable to detect more than sporadic sound changes and multifarious developments as causes of change. It is the same experience as Adriani had in an earlier period when conducting similar research in other Sulawesi languages. One reason must be as yet undetected loanwords (bhongo 'stupid' with aberrant -ng- (p. 17) is no doubt a loan from the Bugis word bongngo' with the same meaning), another the great time-depth since the PMP stage. Robert and Marilyn Busenitz present an overview of the phonology and morphophonemics of Balantak in the eastern arm of . While the phonology is generally straightforward, the morphophonemics shows some striking particularities, culminating in the highly involved structure of the second person singular pronominal suffix displaying different combinations of vowel harmony, consonant insertion and consonant loss. Nikolaus Himmelmann of the University of Cologne writes about the sound structures of the ten Tomini-Tolitoli languages in the northern parts of Central Sulawesi. Following a seven-month field trip, he gives a rough sketch of most of these languages and a detailed statement of two of them, Lauje and Totoli. For the group as a whole he notes the tendency towards an open-syllable structure as shown, for instance, by the occurrence of a supporting vowel following the final consonant and the resegmentation of the prefix *mog- into prefix mo- and base-initial consonant g-, as has also been observed in the purely open-syllable language of in . Timothy and Barbara Friberg use a standard generative approach to describe the phonology of Konjo in the southeastern corner of Sulawesi's southwestern peninsula. They give a meticulously argued and clearly presented report on a range of particulars and problems. As a consequence, Konjo phonology is now better and more systematically known than the phonology of the closely related standard Makasar language, which exhibits many similarities and some tiny differences (such as K.M. balla' 'house' vs. M. ballaka K. balla a 'the house'), and one would like to know more about which of the Konjo data apply also to Makasar. There are also features for further research, such as the common sequence -aeng (p. 75), which may be due in part to a change < *-ayang such as in karaeng 'king' < *karayang < *karayaan 'greatness'. These articles are all high-quality reports on field work in progress. They show implicitly how much linguistic investigation still remains to be done in a region such as Sulawesi, which is full of languages of which literally next to nothing is known.

Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 05:34:46PM via free access 388 Boekbespreldngen Richard Michael Bourke, Taim hangre: Variation in Subsistence Food Supply in the Papua New Guinea Highlands. Unpublished PhD Thesis, submitted in the Depart- ment of Human Geography, The Australian National Uni- versity, RSPacS, Canberra, 1988, xxiii + 370 pp.; maps, tables, figures, appendices.

ANTON PLOEG

This thesis is an important contribution to our knowledge of food shortages in the Highlands. It consists of two parts. In the first one Bourke documents the shortages; in the second he attempts to account for their occurrence. The author was well qualified for this project since, before taking up his PhD scholarship, he had researched indigenous agriculture in Papua New Guinea for 13 years as an agronomist for the Department of Primary Industry. To document the food shortages Bourke presents a wide range of data. He surveys prices in food markets in several Highlands towns: over a period of 15 years in the case of Goroka, in the Eastern Highlands Province; and over a much shorter time span in other towns. Secondly, he uses data gleaned from Patrol Reports and statements by agricultural officers. They provided him with data over a much longer period; in the case of Kainantu, the first part of the Highlands to come under colonial administration, over a period of almost 50 years. A third source is research, conducted by Bourke and his associates in two villages, one in Southern, the other in Eastern Highlands Province. The latter was close to Kainantu and Aiyura, the agricultural station where the author worked as an agronomist. Bourke complements the data on food availability with data on the effects of shortages. There are reports of deaths, and of malnourishment as evidenced by variations in adult body weight and children's weight by age. An investigation, made in the Southern Highlands in the area which includes one of the villages from the case study, shows a varying but high proportion of malnourishment among children. The author stresses that the longer the period covered, the better the analytic value of the data, and demonstrates this point several times in his thesis and again in an appended paper that analyses 50 years of agricultural change near Aiyura. The data presented in the first part of the thesis show that New Guinea Highlanders do not live and - in the recent past, including the late pre- colonial period - did not live in what Fisk called 'subsistence affluence'. They experienced regular food shortages, in some areas much more than in others. People responded to shortages in various ways: short-term or long- term migration, agisting their pigs or giving them less fodder, turning to emergency foods, and increasing the area under-cultivation. But although hunger-related deaths occurred, Bourke concludes these were not so widespread that the shortages amounted to famines. In the second part Bourke first examines the validity of a number of

Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 05:34:46PM via free access Boekbesprekingen 389 causes adduced for the occurrence of food shortages. He discounts that Highlanders have neglected agriculture since they spent too much time and labour on other activities, such as warfare, pig feasts, wage labour and commercial agriculture, hence both pre-colonial and (post-)colonial pursuits. To the contrary, he argues that inclusion in the money economy has increased food security. Food purchases appear to increase when harvests fall off. When faced with dramatic setbacks, such as widespread frosts or landslides, the government steps in with food aid. In the pre-colonial past, fighting is likely to have caused occasional shortages in small localities. Nowadays wage migration affects access to food, due to the absence of workers, the absence of potential consumers, and an increase in cash to spend. Bourke doubts if wage migration tends to harm food security, but precise information is lacking. While it is demonstrable that climatic factors have resulted in shortages, Bourke reckons that climatic factors do not fully explain the pattern and frequency of shortages. He finds an additional factor in the pattern of sweet potato planting. As mentioned, women increase their planting rates when harvests fall off and decrease them when harvests are ample, their prime consideration apparently being the size of the current and not of the prospective harvest. This leads to a phenomenon analogous to a hog cycle. The mechanism explains why shortages often occur at intervals of about two years rather than annually. The cyclical variations in harvest size can further be aggravated especially by wet weather during the initial phase of tuber growth and dry weather during its later phase. The food supply of New Guinea Highlanders is a vast topic. Bourke's thesis marks a major advance in its analysis. As he makes clear, a lot more research needs to be done. He lists four subjects, having to do with sweet potato cultivation and pig husbandry, people's responses to shortages or perceived future shortages and the effects of off-farm activities. Especially the ideological aspect of the topic merits further study. While Bourke has assembled and organized a mass of etic data on Highlands production, he has much less information about the emic side, the ideas which Highlanders entertain about their environment and the ways they interact with it. This multiplies the scope for research, since Highlanders live according to a multitude of different cultural traditions. The two villages studied were modal as far as size of the pig herd was concerned. Nevertheless, unlike the Aiyura village, the Southern Highlands one managed its herd along the pattern found elsewhere in this part of the Highlands, with extensive exchange networks and massive pig killing festivals. It seems worthwhile to make a comparison with yet other pig management regimes. In addition, Bourke's study mainly concerns areas with sweet potatoes as the main staple crop. This is representative for the majority of Highlanders, but a minority have another staple, notably taro, a more demanding cultivar than sweet potato. In the recent past that minority is likely to have been

Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 05:34:46PM via free access 390 Boekbesprekingen bigger. It is important to know how the adoption of the sweet potato has effected food security. Because this thesis is an important starting point for further research, it is opportune that copies are available at the ANU. Nevertheless, it is unfortunate that publication is unlikely.

Maureen A. MacKenzie, Androgenous Objects: String Bags and Gender in Central New Guinea. Chur, Switzerland, Harwood Academic Publishers, 1991, xv + 256 pp., maps, figures, bibliography, index. ISSN 1055.2464.

ANTON PLOEG

At last we now have a book about bilum, the carrying bag so widely used in a large part of New Guinea. And it is a book which is well researched and well written, at that. Bilum are looped; that is to say, unlike weaves, they are made with a single element, and unlike knits, they are made by employing the end of the yarn, which has to be pulled through the already looped part of the fabric for each stitch. The procedure allows of great variation in techniques. The bags are an essential attribute for both men and women. Large ones are strong enough to carry loads of tens of kilograms: the daily harvest, a baby, hunted game. The smaller ones are used as wallets, for tobacco, for charms, nowadays for matches, and so on. Looped fabric has no knots, so bilum adapt to the shape of the load carried. But, in addition to their utilitarian value, the bags are laden with meaning and a focus of affect. MacKenzie was fortunate in that she did field research among the Telefol, in the western-most part of the Papua New Guinea Highlands, among whom bilum are even more prominent than elsewhere in New Guinea. Apart from the working and decorative bags used and worn by women, there are bags decorated with bird feathers or with wild pig tails, used and worn by men, and sacred bags which contain bones of deceased ancestors and are hung inside houses. The Telefol distinguish between 27 types of bilum, and 14 looping techniques. MacKenzie devotes a substantial part of the book to describing and illustrating the bags and their manufacture. While the various fibres used for spinning the yarn are collected by both men and women, the bags are looped by women. However, the bird feathers and pig tails are subsequently applied by men. This is but one instance of the androgynous character that bilum have. In the first chapter MacKenzie argues that she wants to combine an interest in technology with one in function and meaning of the artifacts concerned. She succeeds admirably, helped along by a judicious use of her field data, the theoretical literature, and the work of fellow ethnographers. In

Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 05:34:46PM via free access Boekbesprekingen 391 the course of her argument she employs and critiques, among others, M. Strathern's notion of multiple authorship - of which bilum are an instance; Appudarai's notion of 'the social life of artifacts' - to analyze the life cycle of bilum; Gregory on gifts - bilum are prime gifts; Thomas and Strathern on inalienability - since bilum remain associated with their original maker; and Jorgensen on a range of issues dealing with the immaterial aspect of bilum, especially their gender associations, evidenced by such statements as 'the bilum is our mother'. Especially valuable in her analysis, I find, is MacKenzie's stressing of the variation in social and cultural arrangements occurring with shifts in space and time. There is marked segregation between the sexes in village life, which is lacking in the garden camps. And the maleness and femaleness of individuals changes in the course of their lives. Briefly, I present one illustration of what bilum mean for the Telefol. During the first initiation, when a boy is removed from his mother, a ritual mother - a male - gives him his first bird feather bilum, looped by his mother, in MacKenzie's words: 'the very person he is probably missing most' (p. 177) at that moment. During this initiation the bilum is filled with a set of objects signifying sexual complementarity. In subsequent initiations, initiants receive bags decorated with feathers of other bird species, in line with Telefol knowledge of the nesting and other reproductive habits of these species. Curiously, however, it does not seem to matter that, at least in the first initiation, it is the father who applies the feathers, so the bilum also reminds the boy of the father's parenting role, and not only of the mother's. This is important, given the gender complementarity which, MacKenzie argues, is 'repeated endlessly in ... Telefol material culture' (p. 201). The book is nicely produced. The illustrations are lavish, with well over 100 photographs, some in colour, and with some 60 figures showing looping techniques and their products. Unfortunately there are many printing errors. In all other respects it is a most welcome book.

Jeremy Kemp (ed.), Peasants and Cities; Cities and Peasants; Rethinking Southeast Asian Models, Overveen, ACASEA, 1990, 126 pp. ISBN 90.800247.2.4. Price: / 12.-.

NICO G. SCHULTE NORDHOLT University of Twente

The central theme of this compilation of selected and revised papers, presented at the Eighth Bielefeld Colloquium (1988), is directed towards a critique of the current 'urban-rural' dichotomy. A second publication of these nine articles (they originally appeared as a special focus issue in SOJOURN:

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Social Issues in Southeast Asia 4(1), Feb. 1989) ought to receive its 'added value' from a thorough analysis, either in an introduction and/or epilogue, of the papers' main themes and the salient results of the discussions of such a colloquium. Indeed, this new edition clearly summarizes in a well-constructed, though rather short Introduction (5 pages), some arguments as to why the above- mentioned dichotomy is not applicable in this region. Although this conclusion as such, in the year 1989, seems to be rather obvious, Kemp's analysis, added to the nine articles dealing with five different ASEAN countries, can be regarded as a sufficient justification for the publication of this modest book. Kemp mentions two main arguments in support of the critique on the rural-urban dichotomy, namely: the existing chains of hierarchical relations within the sphere of the political order, and the extensive trading networks within the market sector; neither, in their scope, are limited to particular territorial boundaries. Rather strikingly, no reference is made to O.W. Wolters' classical work, History, Culture and Region in Southeast Asian Perspective (1982), anywhere in the volume. In this study Wolters convincingly argues, by applying such well-known concepts as 'men of prowess' and 'mandala', the non-applicability from early days of the urban-rural dichotomy, especially in Southeast Asian wet-rice cultivated areas. In his Introduction Kemp poses, in line with the subtitle of the book, that beyond the aforementioned objective the Colloquium also intended to further investigate the theoretical concepts related to processes of state formation. Or, as Hans-Dieter Evers in the Preface asks: 'Will the state and its burgeoning bureaucracy or markets and traders provide the empirical and theoretical link that ties it all together ...?' In this context it is rather evident that the concept of 'strategic groups' appears dominant in several of the articles. Evers not only chairs the Sociology of Development Centre at Bielefeld, but also introduced the concept 'strategic groups'. Unfortunately, however, this concept is not applied in a very systematic way. The fascinating analysis of W.G. Wolters, dealing with the 'Rise and Fall of Provincial Elites in the Philippines: Nueva Ecija from the 1880s to the Present Day' (p. 54-74), forms an excellent example of that concept, albeit without any reference to it. In contrast, Suparb Pas-Ong, in his description of the role of petty traders in the border region between Thailand and Malaysia, explicitly states his intention to use this concept as a point of departure. However, it seems not to be used analytically in the presentation of his data. The editor elaborates in his Introduction on a very interesting contrast that appears in two articles. This contrast concerns the role of the village leaders, both official and so-called 'informal' ones, within the developmental model of the New Order in present-day Indonesia, respectively in Central Java (by Frans Hiisken, p. 89-99) and North Sulawesi, a Minahasan Village (by Ulrich Mai, p. 100-112). A more thorough analysis, however, would

Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 05:34:46PM via free access Boekbespreldngen 393 have been beneficial to providing a better understanding of the complexity of linkages within the processes involved in the formation of states and nations, and hence would do more justice to the second objective of this Colloquium. The articles clearly prove that the aforementioned dichotomy does not cover social realities in Southeast Asia, but at the same time they also show that it is still widely applied within government policies. Therefore, it seems to me that it would have been appropriate to have also directed the focus of this Colloquium toward the impact of such policies on rural communities. Only William Wilder's article, well worth reading, on 'The Peasant-Urban Interface in Malaysia' (p. 75-88) deals with the consequences of the new economic policies for Malaysian peasants, resulting in 'a nation of new communities'. Due to the rather limited analysis of quite a few important aspects, this publication of nine articles, each one well written, though generally rather short, together with its Introduction, forms but a basis to a better understanding of the self-formulated goal of the organizers, namely: '... to identify and discuss key theoretical and methodological issues for the study of the region and the changes now occurring' (p. 4).

Clara Brakel-Papenhuijzen, The Bedhaya Court Dances of Central Java, Leiden/New York/Koln: Brill, 1992, xvi + 349 pp. ISBN 90.04.09424.5.

RODIGER SCHUMACHER Freie Universitat Berlin

If we agree with the notion that the Central Javanese courts are the culmination of Javanese self-consciousness, the objective of this Leiden University PhD dissertation may claim high importance as a central symbol of courtly identity and ideology. Bedhaya (or badhaya) are group dances, performed by nine princesses and their female attendants. The musical aspects of bedhaya are choral singing - in unison - and the playing of several gamelan instruments. Originally, bedhaya were individual and private sacred dances, and some of them are still greatly valued as pusaka, but - as a result - are often difficult of access. According to Javanese beliefs, the origin of these ritual dances dates back to the founders of the Mataram dynasty, especially to Agung (1613-1645). As a result of Mataram's division in the mid-18th century and the dispersion of power and authority to the two , Surakarta Adiningrat (Kasunanan) and Ngayogyakarta Adiningrat (Kasultanan), as well as to the two 'minor' courts, the pura Mangku Nagaran and Paku Alaman, during the 19th and 20th centuries, these dances branched into a variable genre of ceremonial group dances. In the 20th century, the decline of political power and the weakening of the

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economy has caused a general regression of cultural activities of the courts; consequently, the bulk of the bedhaya repertoire fell into oblivion. There has been an oppositions! trend only since about two decades. Clara Brakel-Papenhuijzen's book starts with a discussion of the recent renewed interest in bedhaya dances: on the one hand a small, sacred, core repertoire has evidently been perpetuated and stabilized, with the intention of preserving and cultivating the heritage, and has partly been combined with endeavours to reconstruct a forgotten former tradition of performance; on the other hand non-ritual models have been transformed and refashioned as an artistic enrichment. This trend is strongly felt, particularly at private and public dance schools and academies which, inspired by the courtly heritage, contribute considerably to the continuity of traditional art today. The culturally relevant concepts and structures of bedhaya dancing, expressed and verbalized by the Javanese themselves, is what the author aims to detect and define from among a complex historical process which is not easily accessible. Her book benefits from the author's exceptional knowledge of the performance techniques of the Javanese dance, acquired through an extensive process of participatory observation. In the first chapter Dr Brakel-Papenhuijzen gives a thorough account of the origin, meaning and function of the bedhaya dances, their course of development, as well as the causes, reasons and motives for deviation, variation and innovation, on the basis of Javanese written sources and documents. In the next two chapters, the core of the book, she turns to the two crucial elements of dance performance, that is, sound and movement. While the aspect of instrumental 'accompaniment' is only dealt with marginally, we find a thorough discussion of the formal structure and contents of bedhaya songs (pesindhen or sindhenan), and an elaborated treatment of bedhaya choreography, particularly of typical group formations in space as well as the characteristic vocabulary of the individual dancers' movements in time. In this, the author skilfully avoids any artificial isolation of these levels: singing style and poetic features are always seen in the context of the whole dance performance, and the temporal aspects of choreography are analyzed in terms of their musical structure. Composition and practice of dances is basically still an oral - or rather, a performing - tradition, but, probably since the end of the 19th century, an increasing number of Javanese choreographic scores have been made and used by dance masters as mnemonic aids to coordinate the 'interlocking relationship between dance movements, music and song text'. A distinctive analysis of these scores forms the concluding chapter of Clara Brakel- Papenhuijzen's book. An appendix, containing song texts and an exemplary transcription of a Javanese choreographic score, a detailed bibliography, glossary and index, and some photo illustrations complete this book. It is no exaggeration to say that it will be treated as equal to the most important studies of dance in general and that it will become a standard reference work for Javanese dance. An additional publication of the video

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Carol Laderman, Taming the Wind of Desire; Psychology, Medicine, and Aesthetics in Malay Shamanistic Performance. University of California Press, 1991, 382 pp. Price: US $39.95.

CORRY MJ. VAN DER SLUYS

This unique book gives a detailed description as well as an in-depth anthropological analysis of the Main Peteri, a Malay shamanistic healing ritual, traditionally performed in northeast Malaysia. Due to the recent pressure of Islam fundamentalism, which discourages contact with the various spirits invoked during this ritual, the importance of the Main Peteri seems to be on the decrease, rendering Laderman's account all the more valuable. The aim of the Main Peteri is to restore the balance and harmony of a patient's vital forces which are supposed to have been impaired by a blocking of his 'inner winds' (Malay: angin). This image of 'inner winds' is seen to be central to the Malay conceptualisation of the self. In other words, these are the strong dispositions, talents and desires that are part of an individual's personality and are supposed to be present already at birth. In her book, Laderman gives the example of the mental state of a retired puppeteer (dalang) of the traditional Malay shadow play (wayang kulit), who suffered from severe depressions after he stopped performing. Although his suffering was attributed in part to the neglect of his former spirit helpers, the main cause of his illness was thought to be frustration in expressing his 'inner winds'. To solve such mental problems, it is assumed that the patient's pent-up 'inner winds' must be released and subsequently recognised by the individual and by society as forming an inseparable part of the patient's personality. This is exactly what takes place during the Main Peteri, which culminates in the falling into a trance of the patient, induced by the shaman (Malay: bomoh) and his helper (Malay: mindok), assisted by a troupe of musicians. The ceremony employs music and verbal invocations, often in beautiful poetic language, which are thought to 'open the gates' to the patient's inner self, thus allowing the patient's 'winds of desire' to manifest themselves. All tension in the patient's mind is finally released and the suppressed urges are then expressed during a 'refreshing'

There is a video documentary complementing the book reviewed available, in fact. Copies may be ordered from the author, Dr. Clara Brakel. THE EDITORS BKl.

Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 05:34:46PM via free access 396 Boekbesprekingen dance, while still in trance. After such a ritual, patients are considered to have regained their vitality and to be able to resume their normal daily lives. According to Laderman, the Main Peteri develops as a 'social drama' (a term adapted from Victor W. Turner's work on rituals), with the shaman and his troupe of musicians, the patient, the audience and the various invoked spirits as the actors. Its dramatic effect is enhanced through a recitation by the shaman of what Laderman calls 'archetypical legends'. Carol Laderman's interest in this shamanistic ritual was first aroused when she encountered it in the course of her research on Malay cultural ideas regarding procreation and childbirth in kampong Merchang in Terengganu, where she stayed in 1975, 1977 and from 1982 to 1985. There she came into contact with several shamans, one of whom, Pak Long , an adept in the Main Peteri, accepted her as an apprentice. Subsequently she attended numerous performances, which enabled her to gain a complete insight into the general structure as well as into every aspect of the deeper significance of this ritual. The book consists of three parts. The first part describes the general structure as well as the cultural ideas underlying the Main Peteri. It gives an account of the Hindu, Greco-Arabic and orang asli (aboriginal) influences that are apparent. Most valuable is the comparison of the theories about psychological disturbances as these are conceptualised in the Malay world view with those prevalent in Western psychiatry. While the latter locates the cause of mental problems mainly outside the patient, namely in society, in the Malay world view 'the sufferers of sakit berangin must face the reality of their own personalities, undisguised by symbols that locate their problems outside themselves' (p. 82). The second part consists of the transcription of three seances, recorded and translated by the author, together with annotations derived from the ritual practitioners' own comments when the recording was played back in their presence. Part three consists of an afterword discussing the deeper meaning of vocalisations in the ritual, the transcription of an interview with one of the shaman informants (Appendix A) and four transcriptions of music used during the seances (rendered by Marina Rosemann). The book also contains a useful glossary, a bibliography and an index. This fascinating book, written in a clear and vivid style, will be of interest to professional anthropologists, psychologists and psychiatrists as well as to all those who wish to gain a profound insight into this traditional Malay shamanistic ritual. A deeper analysis and interpretation of the Main Peteri has been long overdue - since John D. Gimlette's descriptive account of the ritual in his book Malay Poisons and Charm Cures, which dates back to 1915.

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Geoffrey Irwin, The prehistoric exploration and colonisation of the Pacific. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1992, viii + 240 pp. ISBN 0.521.40371.5. Price: £ 30.00, US$ 49.95.

• J.H.F.SOLLEWIJNGELPKE

In this fascinating book, enlivened by numerous maps, graphs and illustrations, Irwin reveals that by ca. 30,000 B.C. the first migrants, voyaging between intervisible islands from East Asia via north New Guinea and eastward, reached their navigational limit in the . Archeological evidence suggests that some time after 1500 B.C., an Austronesian-speaking people associated with the Lapita material culture suddenly began to explore the Pacific, reaching Easter Island ca. A.D. 400 and possibly making contact with South America; an archeologically different group moved from somewhere west of New Guinea to the high islands of west . Irwin then develops his theory that maritime skills had continued to evolve in the 'voyaging nursery' of the ancient corridor and that the explorers of the Deep Pacific, far from sailing haphazardly and at high risk into the unknown, used a coherent system of navigation, which assured a high rate of survival. A detailed computer simulation showed that from many points along their generally ESE route, the explorers could have reached other islands just as well and even more easily, but apparently were not primarily in search of new land. They deliberately chose to progress upwind against the prevailing eastern trade winds, returning to the point of departure with the trades, whether with positive or negative results. Return voyaging supplied information for a memorized system of navigational and geographical knowledge still used today, but not yet fully understood by Western scientists. As experience and insight accumulated, they embarked upon exploration across and down the dominant winds, often by more complex return routes but still with a high survival rate: ca. A.D. 500, New Zealand 1000, Chatham Islands 1500; the farther from the equator, the later the settlement. When the empty ocean finally stopped expansion, the supporting system of voyaging and communication gradually withdrew from the least accessible islands, from east to west, deteriorating in some areas, but surviving regionally in others. In fact, Irwin suggests, his theory might become a tool for interpreting patterns of language, culture and biology in the Pacific, instead of these disciplines tracing the patterns of colonisation. Regrettably, since seaworthy vessels go hand in hand with navigation, the technical evolution of sailing canoes, presumably a parallel, and conceivably anterior, product of the 'nursery', received less thorough attention. A reference to the approximately synchronic westward Austronesian expansion might have been useful. To readers in both

Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 05:34:46PM via free access 398 Boekbesprekingen hemispheres, identifying the monsoons as 'east' or 'west' would be clearer than 'summer' and 'winter'. Two droll printing errors I noted are: under the illustrations borrowed from Dumont d'Urville the name Astrolab for his corvette 'Astrolabe', which according to the bibliography sailed for years sans le commandement of that gentleman. I closed this book, nostalgic for a pristine Pacific, and looking forward to a sequel.

Burhan Magenda, East Kalimantan; The decline of a commercial aristocracy. Ithaca, Cornell University [Cornell Modern Indonesia Project, Monograph Series (Publication no. 70)], 1991, viii +113 pp., maps. ISBN 0.87763.036.4.

R.G. TOL

As in the other parts of the island, in East Kalimantan a major role in its history is played by its geography. It effected the distribution of the population and its patterns of communication, where the river is the main means of transport. Also indigenous political systems were influenced by the geographical circumstances, as it is almost impossible to control the widely scattered population. Chapter one of this study presents the complex picture of the interethnic and international relations in the area through the last three centuries. The often far-reaching implications of these relations between the various groups of indigenous Dayak, coastal , Bugis, Banjarese and Javanese immigrants, Toasug traders from the Philippines, British speculators and Dutch colonists are succinctly described. The discovery by the Dutch in 1902 of oil in East Kalimantan brought a definite change to life in the region and to the local aristocracies in particular. With increased wealth induced by oil revenues and with the help of Dutch protection they accumulated power and reinforced their traditional prestige. Among them the aristocracy was without any doubt the primus inter pares. This forms the topic of chapter two, in which ample attention is also paid to the extravagances of nouveau riche such as Sultan Parikesit in the 1920's. The next chapter is devoted to the rise of the two major cities in the region, Balikpapan and Samarinda. The former, mainly inhabited by Javanese, became the center of oil activities, whereas Samarinda functions primarily as the center of trade for forest products. The last three chapters of the book describe recent events that occurred in East Kalimantan from the Japanese occupation to the late 1980's. In sometimes great detail the nationalist struggle for independence and its effects on political developments is related. The role of the army in all kinds of political and

Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 05:34:46PM via free access Boekbesprekingen 399 economic issues became a prominent factor in the decline of the power of the local aristocracies. Another factor in their financial downfall was the transfer of oil royalties from the regional government to the Central Government, which in practice favoured the South Kalimantan Residency (where the seat of the provincial Government was located) to the detriment of East Kalimantan. Apart from oil, in the last few decades timber has established itself as yet another major commodity in East Kalimantan. Because of the huge economic, political and environmental stakes involved, this matter is up until the present day a hot issue, not in the last place as this section is dominated by army-backed peranakan Chinese businessmen such as Bob Hasan (and recently Prayogo Pangestu, who is not mentioned in this book). Needless to say, the impoverished aristocracy, such as Sultan Parikesit, could not possibly compete with these tycoons. In this book there is a clear dichotomy between the sections dealing with prewar events and the chapters which describe the postwar developments. These last chapters are much more informative and reliable than the first three, since they are based on interviews with protagonists in these historical events and other materials actively collected by the author. In contrast with this, in the historical sections which are not based on fieldwork it is often hard to see what the basis is for his account, as the sources are unclear. Are the contents based on bibliographic research, have the data been provided by informants, are the statements the author's opinions or hypotheses? The reader is left in the dark. Apparently the author has made no use of Dutch sources, which is rather curious considering the period under discussion. Instead, he draws heavily on an unpublished typescript in his possession. And for Buginese matters he used a study on the Sulu zone instead of the readily available and rich corpus of South Sulawesian studies. The mass of detailed information contained in only a hundred-odd pages is not easy to absorb, since the author's line of argument is not always clear, at least to me. He is obviously very much interested in the sociological and political effects of the complex demographic dynamics in the region, but presents his data in an unstructured manner. This publication is furthermore somewhat marred by rather poor editing: the lack of an index and the outdated and impractical way of referring to publications at the bottom of the page with no bibliography at the end of the book is quite frustrating for the serious student. Also unnecessary misspellings and inconsistencies occur, especially in non-English words. And though most of the maps can be appreciated from an aesthetic point of view, they are too sketchy to have any informative value. In sum, this book gives a lot of useful information but could have done with a better presentation.

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