Book Reviews

Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde Vol. 168, no. 1 (2012), pp. 130-160 URL: http://www.kitlv-journals.nl/index.php/btlv URN:NBN:NL:UI:10-1-101723 Copyright: content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License ISSN: 0006-2294 Book reviews

Chie Ikeya, Refiguring women, colonialism, and modernity in Burma. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2011, xii + 239 pp. ISBN 9780824834616. Price: USD 45.00.

HENK SCHULTE NORDHOLT Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV) [email protected]

This book came into being by accident. In 2002, Chie Ikeya arrived in Burma to do research on the Japanese occupation. While she was waiting for official permission to enter the archives, she started reading newspapers from the period 1910-1948 and became fascinated by the appearance of ‘the modern Burmese woman’ and the discussions about her. She never did receive permission to conduct her research on WWII, so thanks to the Burmese authori- ties we now have a wonderful book on the relationship between colonialism, modernity, and gender in Burma. In contrast to conventional and male biased histories focusing on nationalism or plural societies, Ikeya uncovered stories about the contested role of women in the nationalist movement, the extent to which ethnic boundaries were crossed, how modernity was manifested, and how ‘modern women’ emerged in colonial settings. Chapter 1 sketches the far reaching changes that took place in Burma under colonial rule, such as the massive influx of male migrant workers that accelerated racially mixed relationships. While in practice ethnic boundaries were blurred, the colonial regime fostered a plural legal system. Together with institutions which offered secular education, new print media help to lay the foundation for mass consumption and new discourses about modernity. Chapter 2 looks at the modest participation of women in modern education and the appearance of ‘the modern women’ in public discourse. Despite their small numbers the role of women in nation building and modernization became a key issue in the local press. Chapters 3 and 4 contrast the role of women in the nationalist movement – and the image of women as both housewife and mother of the nation – with the image of self-conscious women as consumers of modernity. Chapter 5 further explores the tension between the role and image of women as custodians of tradition, who are expected to preserve Buddhist culture, and the modern women, for whom hygiene, beauty, and self-fulfilment was central, but who were also accused of being engaged with foreign men and decadence. The last chapter compares two novels which look in different ways at the colonial experience, illustrat-

Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 06:00:18AM via free access Book reviews 131 ing the conflicting ways urban middle class men and women coped with the constraints and possibilities offered to them under colonial rule. Discussions about modernity and self-realization should also be seen against the back- drop of the idea of the emasculation of Burmese men who had lost control over their country as a result of colonial intervention and mass immigration. Ikeya argues that Burmese men felt humiliated and marginalized due to the economic effects of colonialism and the Depression in the 1930s, which were compounded by the social and psychological disgrace of foreign men’s access to the bodies of Burmese women. This book is part of a growing body of literature that explores modernity and gender in Asia during the colonial period and after. Following the example of The modern girl around the world: Consumption, modernity and globalization (Weinbaum et al. 2008), it is time to start a broader comparative project on this topic. Chie Ikeya is well equipped to play a central role in this endeavor.

References

Weinbaum, Alys Eve, Lynn M. Thomas, Priti Ramamurthi, Uta G. Poiger, Madeleine Yue Dhong and Teni E. Barlow (eds) 2008 The modern girl around the world: Consumption, modernity, and globalization. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. [Next Wave.]

Thomas J. Conners, Mason C. Hoadley, Frank Dhont, Kevin Ko (eds), Pancasila’s contemporary appeal: Relegitimizing Indonesia’s founding ethos. Yogyakarta: Indonesia History Centre, Sanata Dharma University, Yale Indonesia Forum, 2009, iv + 380 pp. [International Conference Book Series 2.] ISBN 9789791088563.

R.E. ELSON University of the Sunshine Coast [email protected]

Meekly submitting to the demands of an apparently outcomes-obsessed world, scholars often feel a binding obligation to commit the proceedings of their various conferences and workshops to print, as if to show that, yes, they really did achieve something worthwhile. This volume provides compelling evidence, however, that they should usually ignore any such claim upon their consciences. It brings together seventeen papers presented at a conference at

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Sanata Dharma University in Yogyakarta in 2008 under the theme of ‘Pancas- ila’s contemporary appeal’. Most of the papers are bland, fluffy or foggy, and nearly all of them inconsequential; only one, that by Kevin W. Mogg, would survive, in my opinion, a cursory first cull were they to be subjected to any reasonable refereeing process for a reputable journal. This outcome is disappointing. While Pancasila has often been mocked by scholars and commentators as vague and meaningless, there can be no doubt that the concept has played a key role in the vocabulary of Indonesia’s political and intellectual history since it first emerged in 1945. It provided, partly because of its inclusivist and universalist pretensions, a key piece of idiom to represent the values of mutual tolerance, openness and plurality which seemed to underpin the Indonesia project at its outset (in that sense alone it stands in sharp contrast to the virtually forgotten and ignored Rukunegara of Malaysia). Thereafter, of course, at the hands of Soekarno and especially Soeharto, it became itself a tool of highly partisan social and ideological management. In the reformasi period, its abuse at Soeharto’s hands seriously dimmed its centrality, but it has since regained some of its earlier potency as a symbol of an energetic, if sometimes embattled, Indonesian desire for unity, freedom and tolerance. This book should have made much more of the potential richness of its subject matter. But one looks in vain for a serious and rigorous analysis of, for example, the ways in which a certain kind of Pancasila rectitude was con- structed as the ideological bedrock of the New Order, or how Soekarno’s partisan appropriation of the concept in the lead-up to and process of the Konstit- uante’s deliberations might have damaged that body’s capacity to deliver a broadly acceptable outcome, or how contemporary (liberal) intellectuals have harnessed and deployed the concept in their attempts to circumvent Islamist efforts to impose their views upon everyone else. Unfortunately, the book contains far too much airy and meaningless blather about identity and too much vacuous, wordy and unproductive theorising to take us much distance towards fulfilling its objective.

I Nyoman Darma Putra, A literary mirror: Balinese reflections on modernity and identity in the twentieth century. Leiden: KITLV Press, 2011, xiv + 378 pp. [Verhandelingen 271.] ISBN 9789067183703. Price: EUR 29.90 (paperback).

Dick van der Meij Center for the Study of Religion and Culture Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University, Jakarta [email protected]

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The book contains seven chapters and six appendices and gives us an extensive view of Balinese literature in Malay/Indonesian and its relation to past and present issues. As far as I know, this is the only comprehensive exposition of a ‘regional’ literature in a national and international context. The chapters trace the position of Balinese literature from Balinese to Indonesian, and continue to Balinese cultural identity, contesting caste identity, female identity, and the relation between Balinese and Westerners. The six appendices (biographical notes on authors and poems in Indonesian and English translation plus their sources) give us information and tools for further research that would otherwise have been difficult to find, considering the scarcity in libraries around the world of the older magazines and journals he mentions. It is a rich book that approaches the subject from a large variety of angles. Nevertheless, it does give rise to the following observations. In the early part of the twentieth century, Balinese writers started to write in Malay in poetic forms but also, in the 1930s, they started to write novels. These remarks give rise to various questions, but let me just mention one: who are these writers? Are we talking of just a handful or of a substantial number? Looking at Appendix A, ‘Brief biographical notes on some Balinese writers’ (pp. 277-384), there cannot have been many, as only two are included here: I Putu Shanty (1925-1965), and Anak Agung Panji Tisna (1908-1978). I think it would therefore have been better if the author had mentioned the names of the authors he is talking about rather than talk in abstract numbers, leading to notions of scale that cannot be substantiated. After the war, the number of Balinese authors writing in Indonesian increased rapidly and includes such names as Putu Wijaya, Oka Rusmini, and Cok Sawitri, and we may indeed speak of ‘many’. In the introduction, the author mentions that ‘the 1920s not only marked a new phase in literary life on the island but also the beginning of Balinese writers taking part in the development of the national literature’ (p. xi). I have trouble accepting this because I don’t think there was such a thing as ‘literary life’ as Darma Putra conceives of it, but rather people engaging in literary activities for ritual or other purposes. If there was an emerging literary life, what did it look like? Were there salons, coteries, and clubs, or less formal literary get-togethers? Frankly, I am sceptical of the notion of the ‘development of a national literature’, especially since the author never explains exactly what he means by ‘development’. For me, the term seems to indicate some sort of great plan or guided effort, which I don’t think was the case here. But if it was, who were the architects of this plan, what were their aims, and how did they accomplish their goals? The word ‘development’ is used so often and for so many things in Indonesia that I wonder if it still has any meaning at all Could it be that the book was written more as advocacy than as scholarship, that it grew out of feelings of inferiority more than a disinterested

Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 06:00:18AM via free access 134 Book reviews analysis of Balinese literature (in whatever language)? Highlighting Bali as one of the ‘literary centres’ in Indonesia (p. xii) and as one of the victims of conscious efforts by the Jakarta Literary centre to downgrade regional literatures may incline us to think the first rather than the second. Lamenting that Balinese contemporary literature is not the subject of much research does not help things either. Perhaps there is a good reason why it is not studied, that however unfortunate it may be, this literature just does not live up to international literary standards. Interestingly, of all Indonesian writers who do live up to these standards, quite a few come from Bali, such as Cok Sawitri, Oka Rusmini, Putu Wijaya and Panji Tisna, so there seems little reason for lamentation here. I also have question marks when (on page 2) he states that the term ‘regional literature’ is usually used ‘somewhat pejoratively to refer to literature in Indonesian that originates at the regional rather than a national level’. The only references for this idea are a bunch of articles by Will Derks and that is a little meagre for a notion that pervades the whole book. Now, if this were true, which I cannot say but I have my doubts, he should have substantiated this much more thoroughly because this would be fascinating. However, I don’t think that Putu Wijaya (Balinese), Rendra and Pramoedya (Javanese), Sutan Takdir Alisyahbana (Minangkabau), or Remy Sylado (Manado) are considered less interesting than the so-called members of this group of national authors, whoever they are. Also I do not think that they belong to this group at the expense of their ethnic background but perhaps there is a possibility that they can entertain notions of belonging to both? The book thus departs from a dichotomy between national and regional literature. Apparently, regional literature is not part of the national one, again a thing that I do not understand. In view of the above, I have the impression that the book talks about politics. Oppositions of centre-periphery and high-low culture seem to be at the back of the author’s mind and ideas of identity building and modernity and the national literature’s role in these are other matters that pop up frequently as does the word ‘identity’. Are we perhaps talking about a book that discusses Bali’s underrepresented role in Indonesia’s self-claimed national identity in a changing world? The book might have merited if the author had offered some insight of what he understands as literature, identity, and modernity as these are crucial to an understanding of his views of the role of regional literature vis-à-vis national literature. In other words, if, as the book states, Jakarta and foreign scholars ignore ‘regional’ literature, this book might have been an excellent occasion to give them a reason to change their mind. I wonder if it succeeds in doing that. It may succeed in raising more interest in the study of this literature, but not necessarily in appreciating and enjoying this literature for its literary merit. At times, I have the impression that the author does not realize that what he says is very interesting but he does not elaborate. For instance, on page

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67 he writes: ‘At the turn of the twentieth century, Balinese writers only dealt with modernity in indigenous literary genres such as gaguritan, kidung, and kakawin with the outside world only occasionally mentioned’. Some more information would have been welcome since as it stands now, I wonder where on earth he got this information and what texts he is referring to. I have never encountered any notions of modernity in any of the literary ‘genres’ he mentions which, incidentally, are not genres, but poetic forms containing many genres. Another point of interest is that I gained the impression that the author seems to be convinced that literati are consciously planning and even plotting their literary scenes and identities and positions one against the other and that the successes or failures of these are more important than the quality of the so-called literary writings they produce. It is remarkable that the book virtually ignores the work of Maya Sutedja- Liem, as she is the only author to address the same subjects as Darma Putra in great depth. In his discussion of Balai Pustaka, I missed Doris Jedamski’s 1992 dissertation on the subject, which until now has been the only comprehensive study of this Kantoor (not Bureau) voor de Volkslectuur. Another problem I have is his use of the word ‘studies,’ as in the ‘studies’ on individual Balinese writers he refers to. He mentions Caldwell (1985, 5 pages!) and Quinn (1985, 8) on Panji Tisna, Rafferty (1988, 13) and Gunawan Mohamad (1994, 4) on Putu Wijaya (pp. 65-66). Come on, these are not studies! On page one he mentions that Pramoedya Ananta Toer, Seno Gumira Ajidarma and Ayu Utami’s novels have been intensely studied, but now he does not mention where or by whom. The same happens on page 66 where he omits reference to a work by I Nyoman Wijaya important to his argument. In the end, the book may be of interest mostly because it shows how Balinese literature is studied by a Balinese. It gives us insight into how local people connect their literary traditions to the center, nation, and region, even if, in my view, he fails to make a convincing case for a local versus a national literature. Perhaps a subsequent work might provide more enlightenment.

References

Caldwell, Ian 1985 ‘Anak Agung Panji Tisna, Balinese raja and Indonesian novelist, 1908- 78’, Indonesia Circle 36:55-60. Jedamski, Doris 1992 Die Institution Literatur und der Prozeß ihrer Kolonisation: Entstehung, Ent- wicklung und Arbeitsweise des Kantoor voor de Volklectuur/Balai Poestaka in Niederländisch-Indien zu Beginn dieses Jahrhunderts. Hamburg/Münster: LIT Verlag. [Bremer Asien-Pazifik-Studien 8.]

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Mohamad, Goenawan 1994 ‘Sekedarnya tentang Putu Wijaya’, in: Putu Wijaya, Blok antologi cerita pendek, pp. xi-xv. Jakarta: Pustaka Firdaus. Quinn, George 1998 ‘The rape of Sukreni, Balinese theatre in novel form’, in: Anak Agung Panji Tisna, The rape of Sukreni. Translated, introduction and afterword by George Quinn, pp. 111-8. Jakarta: Lontar Foundation. Rafferty, Ellen 1988 ‘The new tradition of Putu Wijaya’, Indonesia 49:103-16.

Margaret Jolly. Serge Tcherkézoff and Darrell Tryon (eds), Oceanic encounters: Exchange, desire, violence. Canberra: ANU E Press, 2009, xix + 344 pp. ISBN 9781921536281 (paperback). Price USD 39.95.

H.J.M. CLAESSEN Leiden University [email protected]

This volume grew out of French and Australian collaboration, and chronicles the first encounters between Europeans and the inhabitants of the Oceanic islands, from Quirós’s sojourn to Espiritu Santo in 1606 to Australian patrols in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea in the late 1920s. In a 36 pages long introduction (Chapter 1), Margaret Jolly and Serge Tcherkézoff try to do away with numerous misunderstandings regarding the interpretation of cultural practices. One of their more curious contentions is that the ‘canonical Polynesian dances like the hula of Hawaii or the heiva of Tahiti were wrongly presented as lascivious or lewd. Rather such displays of nakedness signaled respect for the strangers, catalyzing and even celebrating divine unions with them to secure sacred and potent progeny’ (p. 11). But how do the erotic dances of the Arioi fit into this picture? How should one understand the report by Le Maire (1945:71) of young women dancing naked for the ruler of Futuna? And what are we to make of the picture in D’Entrecasteaux of naked women dancing for ‘Tiné’ (the then tui tonga fefine), an event also described by Labillardière (1800, II:153)? Sahlins (1985, Chapter 1), Valeri (1985:39, 217), and Malo (1971:214-35) go deep into the hula and other erotic dances of Hawaii and describe them merely as indigenous pastimes. But in contrast with the editors’ claims, in none of the cases described are strangers present to be enchanted, nor divine unions to be celebrated. Despite such inconsistencies and the variable quality of chapters,

Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 06:00:18AM via free access Book reviews 137 this collection assembles a welcome variety of scholarship, covers a broad geographical scope, and brings together fresh historical insights. The second chapter provides a useful linguistic background of the Oceanic peoples that estab- lishes the great breadth and depth of this region: Darrell Tryon distinguishes two major language groups, the Papuan group, the oldest by far (New Guinea has been inhabited for about 50.000 years) and the Austronesian languages, which originated in Taiwan and the south coast of mainland China about 6,000 years ago. Oceania is characterized by the great number and diversity of indigenous languages. This diversity results not only from the long-term isolation and hostile relations of the islanders but mainly from the many trade contacts between the speakers of the various languages. In Chapter 3, Jolly juxtaposes the voyage of Quirós in 1606 and those of the eighteenth century explorers Bougainville and Cook in the same archipelago (Vanuatu), and tries to find out what ‘sedimented’ in, or more often ‘evapo- rated’ from, people’s memory. In the final part of her article, Jolly imagines what the inhabitants of Vanuatu might have seen, thought, and felt toward the strangers. Though the notion of entering the minds of these islanders two hundred years ago seems dubious, her interpretation based on the ges- tures and sounds described by the explorers seems plausible. In Chapter 4, Tcherkézoff presents a ‘Reconsideration of the role of Polynesian women in early encounters with Europeans’ that focuses on Samoa and Tahiti. His con- clusions are unconvincing. The main point of his article is that many young Polynesian girls were forced to copulate with strangers partly because the Polynesians expected that the offspring of such encounters would improve their status, although there are no reports of such children showing this higher status. He bases his views on Sahlins (1985), who got the idea from Diderot’s ‘Supplément au voyage de Bougainville’ (1780). His main cases of enforced ‘sacred marriages’ are the more or less ritual copulations, described by Fesche (Tahiti) and La Pérouse (Samoa). He also includes the experiences of the French trader Marchand in the Marquesas Islands in 1791, where a ‘trembling’ young girl was presented ‘by venerable old men’ to the French sailors. The Marquesan case seems improbable because at an earlier occasion no ritual presentation was found, though there were many sexual contacts between the French and Marquesan girls, and furthermore, no ceremonial activities are ever mentioned with respect to the ‘trembling’ girl (Marchand 2005:261-2, 294-5). And furthermore, the story ascribed to Hamilton for Tonga in 1791 (p. 136) hardly qualifies as a ‘sacred marriage’ since it concerns a rather commer- cial activity. Nor was the public performance of the ‘sexual act’ (pp. 124, 131) limited to Tahiti, as Tcherkézoff suggests, but occurred on other islands as well (for Futuna, see Schouten 1945:198; for Easter Island, see Forster 1983:493). The way in which the author handles the ‘Point Venus scene’, described by Cook in sober factual wordings (Cook 1968:93-4), is unfortunate. He refers here to

Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 06:00:18AM via free access 138 Book reviews the untrustworthy Hawkesworth edition, in which is added a paragraph in which the incident is mentioned in terms of education and cultural values – statements not found in Cook. A serious shortcoming in Tcherkézoffs article is that he wholly leaves out the role of the British discoverers of Tahiti. There exists a detailed report on the happenings there by the master of the Dolphin, Robertson, which was published in 1948 in a Hakluyt edition. Inclusion of these data might have caused Tcherkézoff to revise several of his statements, for the role of the English guns in taming the Tahitians and the follow up of sexual offers should not be underestimated (Claessen 1994). In a relatively short Chapter 5, Françoise Douaire-Marsaudon traces the origins of the noble savage to the sixteenth century and the Spanish conquis- tador’s encounters with native peoples of the Americas (p. 164). But unlike these truculent posses working for the Spanish crown, the first white people who settled in the Tonga Islands were beachcombers, and the missionaries of the London Missionary Society who arrived a little later were quite surprised to find some countrymen, though the missionaries soon fled when civil war broke out. Then in 1827 missionaries of the Wesleyan Missionary Society came to Tonga and their activities as teachers of reading and writing were much in demand. This is a concise and most informative article, though it is surprising that articles by Paul van der Grijp, which cover much of the same subjects, are not included in the references. In Chapter 6, Bronwen Douglas discusses the representation of indigenous peoples by d’Entrecasteaux in 1793 while searching for the lost expedition of La Pérouse. One of her aims is to explore how ideas about race played a role in the reports, since many of these ideas became ‘definitive’ when Dumont d’Urville created his well known division of Oceanic peoples along racial lines (2009:178). Douglas shows how minor incidents colored the judgment of the French with regard to the natives. In Chapter 7 (pp. 199-220) Isabelle Merle analyses the value of Watkin Tench’s fieldwork. He was the popular ethnohistorian of the ‘First Fleet’, and of the beginnings of the British colonization of Australia (p. 202). At the time, there was a hunger for descriptions of Australia, so Tench’s descriptions were in great demand. In several of his works he describes the Aborigines, ‘but he also recognized the limits to his knowledge and his lack of comprehension’ (p. 205). Problematic is that he was not present at several of the encounters with the Aborigines which he describes. Merle points to the ambivalences in Tench’s work: on the one hand he shows sympathy for the Aborigines, and on the other hand – as a soldier – he is proud of the colonization (p. 215). An ambivalence that is understandable in her opinion. Chris Ballard continues in Chapter 8 with a discussion of the problems of writing a correct account of exploration. As a case he takes the exploration of the interior of Australian New Guinea (1725-1876). In his view, many of the narratives ‘often tell us less about those native others than they do about

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Western practices of representation’ (p. 223). Fictional narratives did often sell better than historical ones. They should be based upon facts, but could leave out embarrassing or boring details, and could be enlivened by exit- ing adventures such as in Robinson Crusoe. The actual exploration of New Guinea began with the expeditions of Alfred Russel Wallace. Before that time, however, popular fictitious accounts by Morell (1832) and Coulter (1847) had appeared. Some such narratives even sparked heated debates in geographical journals (pp. 238-9). All in all, this is an interesting and well-written chapter. In Chapter 9, Mark Mosko discusses the role that physical force, primarily in the form of fire arms, played in Pacific islander’s experiences of Europeans. As examples he presents two tribes, the Mekeo and the Roro, which suffered from physical force first from the Italian naturalist Luigi d’Albertis, and some time later by the colonial agent C.A.W. Monkton (p. 272). The arrival of missionaries of the London Missionary Society, and missionaries of the Sacred Heart in the 1880s brought a serious epidemic of measles (pp. 270, 273). Efforts by government agents and missionaries were unable to break the traditional alliance between clan chiefs and sorcerers. The appointment of village constables by patrol officers finally had some success in subjecting the Mekeo and Roro. In Chapter 10, Pascal Bonnemaire and Pierre Lemonnier present an overview of the Australian efforts between the 1930s and the 1970s to colonize the region of the Ankave-Anga (north-east of Port Moresby). They base their views on the patrol reports of that period and on the oral histories they began to collect in 1982. A comparison of the memories of the Ankave with the patrol reports seems to have been difficult for these authors. About the earliest period of contact not much was remembered – not surprising in view of the age of the people that were interviewed. At the end of their chapter they state that Angan ‘treachery’ and ‘savagery’ are just products of the Australian imagination, but they do not deny that inter-group warfare and intra-group vendettas were part of everyday life there. Oceanic Encounters collects an impressive range of articles on a complex, diverse, and dynamic region. Some chapters seem more thoroughly researched and convincing than others, but most of the authors successfully do away with old prejudices about Pacific islanders. In this respect the volume can be called a success.

References

Claessen, Henri J.M. 1994 ‘Tahiti and the early European visitors’, in: Toon van Meijl and Paul van der Grijp (eds), European imagery and colonial history in the Pacific, pp. 14- 31. Saarbrücken: Verlag fur Entwicklungspolitik Breitenbach. [Nijme- gen Studies in Development and Cultural Change 19.]

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Cook, James 1968 ‘Remarkable occurrences on board His Majesty’s bark Endeavour’, in: J.C. Beaglehole (ed.), The Journals of James Cook: The voyage of the Endeav- our, 1768-1771, pp. 1-479. Cambridge: University Press. [Hakluyt Society Extra Series 34.] [Originally published in 1771] Forster, Georg 1983 Reise um die Welt. Edited by G. Steiner. Frankfurt am Main: Insel. [Eng- lish original first published in 1778.] Labillardière, J.J. de 1800 Relation du voyage à la recherche de la Pérouse, fait par ordre de l’Assemblée Constituante, pendant les années 1791 et 1792 et pendant la 1ère et la 2e année de la République Française. Paris: Nyon. Two vols. Maire, Jacob le 1945 ‘Spieghel der Australische navigatie’, in: W.A. Engelbrecht and P.J. van Herwerden (eds), De ontdekkingsreis van Jacob le Maire en Willem Corne- lisz Schouten in de jaren 1615-1617: Vol. 1, pp. 1-102. The Hague: Nijhoff. [Linschoten Vereeniging 49.] [Originally published in 1622.] Malo, David, 1971 Hawaiian antiquities (Moolelo Hawaii). Edited by N.B. Emerson. Hono- lulu: Bishop Museum Press. [Originally published in 1898.] Marchand, Ėtienne 2005 Journal de bord d’Ėtienne Marchand: Le voyage du Solide autour du monde (1790-1792. Edited by O. Garnier et C. Piquoin. Paris: Ministère de l’Education nationale, de l’Enseignement supérieur et de la Recherche. Two vols. [Editions du Comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques.] [Originally published in 1792.] Robertson, George 1948 ‘A journal of the second voyage of H.M.S. Dolphin round the world, under the command of Captain Wallis R.N., in the years 1766, 1767, 1768, written by her master George Robertson’, in: H. Carrington (ed.), The discovery of Tahiti, pp. 3-255. London: Cambridge University Press [Hak- luyt Society, 2nd Series 98.] [Originally published in 1768.] Sahlins, Marshall D. 1985 Islands of history. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Schouten, Willem Corneliszoon 1945 ‘Journal ofte beschrijvinghe van de wonderlicke reyse ghedaen door Willem Cornelisz. Schouten van Hoorn, in de jaren 1615, 1616 en 1617’ in: W.A. Engelbrecht en P.J. van Herwerden (eds), De ontdekkingsreis van Jacob le Maire en Willem Cornelisz. Schouten in de jaren 1615-1617: Vol.1, pp.149-220. The Hague: Nijhoff. [Linschoten Vereeniging 49.] [Original- ly published in 1618.] Valeri, Valerio 1985 Kingship and sacrifice: Ritual and society in ancient Hawaii. Chicago: Uni- versity of Chicago Press.

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Rudolf Mrázek, A certain age: Colonial Jakarta through the memories of its intellectuals. Durham: Duke University Press, 2010, xiii + 310 pp. ISBN 9780822346975, price: USD 24.95 (paperback); 9780822346852, USD 89.95 (hardback).

Lutgard Mutsaers [email protected]

A certain age has already received extensive critical acclaim. Adding to the praise of this wonderful book is a pleasure. Earlier books by the same author already revealed his capacity to freshly explore and contextualize, offering a welcome original conclusion or two. In particular, his eye for popular culture and technology makes this author stand out. Anyone familiar with oral history methodology may be inspired by this book to avoid worn formats and to explore off the beaten path. It is wonderful how Mrázek’s outsider position turns insider by the sheer fact that he is physically there. Mrázek takes his readers on a city trip through 1990s Jakarta, a dusty, noisy and potentially riotous metropolis. His purpose is to arrive at a place where the frozen past melts into fragments of autobiographies. He walks and talks and interviews at length. Well ordered and engaging, his careful observations make one forget to be professionally sceptical about the quality of memory in old age. It is not about fact and truth; it is about people and voices. A television documentary shot with a handheld camera and then painstak- ingly edited is what comes to mind by way of comparison. Browsing the Index for terms and names is one way to explore this book. Reading cover to cover, in consecutive order, renders the full quality. Most of Mrázek’s interviewees have now died, which makes this book all the more a monument of personal experiences of the colonial era. There is enough room for the reader to connect his own knowledge, vision, or special interest to new first-hand information. A simple misunderstanding between interviewer and interviewee, due to cultural gaps and mental distances, may result in a smile here and there. For instance, Mrázek visits Gesang Martohartono, songwriter of ‘Bengawan Solo’ [dated 1940], the alternative national anthem of Indonesia and a non-ironic staple of pasar malam in the Netherlands. To the question of how he got into radio – remember Mrázek’s Engineers of happy land – Gesang dryly replies (p. 113-4): ‘We might have a horse cart, but only when there was a big action. Mostly, we went on bicyles.’ Mrázek changes the subject and asks Gesang about traditional gamelan music compared to popular kroncong. Unable to steer Gesang back into his own special interest of radio politics, Mrázek reports what would be the preferred answer to a European stranger in the 1930s: ‘It [gamelan] is on a higher level. And it is more difficult to play. Krontjong is for ordinary people. We sung in Indonesian’.

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From my point of view, this is an example of the mental impact of interbellum colonial culture politics, resulting in untenable stereotypes of musical purity and artistic importance. The imposition of western highbrow opinions on the music of the masses being distributed by radio, resulted, as Mrázek had himself noted, in a type of innocuous popular song that on first hearing avoided all references to the real thoughts and feelings of a colonial society in the pressure cooker. In this short passage of the book where Gesang speaks via Mrázek, it is clear that Mrázek had to content himself with not discussing his outsider view with his insider informant. One might think that on the whole being a certain age has kept Mrázek from engaging in flaming debates. The question is, would he have been able to shake his interviewees a bit looser from colonial indoctrination, and to dig a bit deeper into the hindsight perspective instead of memory? The contribution of Eurasians to colonial culture is another challenging strand that runs through the book and is often left unresolved. Mrázek wants to know about the status of the Eurasian, perceived as Dutch, almost the same as Dutch, according to the revealing quotes of the well known professor Han Resink. Himself Indo by birth, European by education, Resink sheds light on the social connotations surrounding Indos in the colony. Any view on this matter stands in a long line of opinions. By no means does Mrázek bring a new subject to the table. But this eye witness is in a privileged position to sketch the active distancing of the Indonesian intelligentsia, who pretend to be untainted by ethnic prejudice, from the lower class of Indos living a city kampung life, keeping to their own colloquial speech and music. Although Mrázek is interested in this particular social struggle, so utterly relevant for postcolonial Dutch culture at large, he does not get beyond the obvious questions about being really Dutch or not really Dutch but rather Eurasian, avoiding the abbreviation Indo. If there is one missed opportunity in this book, it is that of readdressing and reassessing the racial hangups of interbellum ideologies still lingering in 1990s Jakarta. One of the strongest qualities of this book is to gently exhort readers to rethink seemingly ‘old’ issues through the voices of the now deceased on the other side of the world. Page after page, one gets more into the literary references that Mrázek loves to juggle with. His approach should inspire us to find new angles in our own work. It takes an effort to get to the hidden nooks and corners of Mrázek’s storytelling, and to distinguish the newly told from the familiar (sometimes stereotypical) within these personal views. A Certain Age could be advised as a must read for (especially Dutch) scholars doing Indonesia Studies who want to expand their horizons with unorthodox methods and cross-referential approaches. Mrázek shows that interaction with informants on all sorts of subjects may unearth fascinating details and surprising counter evidence when knowingly pursued. It might even be enjoyed as a postmodern novel.

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Mrázek delivers a potentially unsettling account of old people’s strategic memories when so intimately faced with an altogether respectful outsider. In my view, this is outstanding work that makes me eager for and curious about what’s next.

Jan Ovesen and Ing-Britt Trankell, Cambodians and their doctors: A medical anthropology of colonial and post-colonial Cambodia. Copenhagen: NIAS Press, 2010, xv + 301 pp. [NIAS Monograph Series 117.] ISBN 9788776940584. Price: GBP 18.99 (paperback).

VIVEK NEELAKANTAN The University of Sydney, Australia [email protected]

This book offers a historical and medical anthropological account of the two extant medical traditions in contemporary Cambodia – the modern biomedical system introduced during the French colonial era at the turn of the twentieth century, and the indigenous Khmer health cosmology – through a longue durée perspective that covers the period from the French colonial era (1863-1953) to the present. The authors contend that despite the therapeutic alternatives offered by both the indigenous and biomedical systems, and the choices of treatment afforded by the public and private hospitals, pharmacies, village doctors, and practitioners of traditional Khmer medicine, poor Cambodians’ access to the country’s health services is inequitable given that they have to spend a greater proportion of their income on out of pocket payments or user fees (pp. 266-7). Persuasively written and meticulously attentive to ethnographic detail, the authors trace the indigenisation of biomedicine in Cambodia through the lens of indigenous Khmer medical cosmology since the late nineteenth century. The authors invite the historians of science to rethink Roy Macleod’s proposition that colonial medicine was a ‘tool of empire’ (p. 22). Although colonial medicine in French Indochina was introduced as a means of promoting Western cultural values, the Khmer population opted in favour of medicines offered by the colonial health services, particularly arsenical treatment for yaws that showed immediate positive results. In contrast, surgery conflicted with Khmer medical cosmology, which considers a person’s moral, mental, and physical states interlinked and expressive of one’s karmic status; bodily defects signify mental or moral defects (p. 69). Due to the interrela- tions between karma, virtue, and bodily wholeness, surgical procedures such as tooth extraction, that are seen as impairing a person’s physical integrity, have been avoided since colonial times.

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Prince Sihanouk, after negotiating Cambodia’s independence from French colonialism in 1953, embarked upon a national modernisation programme that was invested with symbolic significance. Sihanouk’s interpretation of modernity envisioned a return to Cambodia’s glorious Angkorean past and conceptualised the development of public health services as a token of royal benevolence. In practice, Cambodia’s health services in the 1950s were ori- ented towards the country’s urban areas. Despite Sihanouk’s utopian vision of a return to Cambodia’s glorious past, his ambitions remained unfulfilled, owing to Cold War politics in Southeast Asia, which saw the US, France, and the USSR competing against each other to provide developmental aid to Cambodia. Each of these nations nurtured a very specific vision of what they considered appropriate for a newly independent state such as Cambodia which was at times at odds with Cambodian sovereignty. The Khmer Rouge’s approach to healthcare was shaped by Pol Pot’s curious notion of nation building which postulated that if the Cambodians’ forefathers could build Angkor their descendants could accomplish anything (p. 101). The Khmer Rouge regime appointed pet padevat (‘revolutionary medics’) inspired by the Chinese barefoot doctors to treat the rural poor. Sickness during the Pol Pot regime was framed in terms of a person’s inability to carry out designated jobs and confinement to the hospital. Medication was administered in the form of herbal pills (‘rabbit droppings’) that consisted of ingredients administered in traditional Khmer potions. However, when the herbal pills proved ineffective, they were removed from the spiritual context of Khmer medical cosmology that provided psychological comfort to the unwell. The bureaucratization and modernization of healthcare under the Khmer Rouge resulted in the overall deterioration of healthcare (pp. 91-2). In 1978, defectors from the Khmer Rouge, including Hun Sen and Heng Samrin announced that the People’s Republic of Kampuchea (PRK) to over- throw the Pol Pot regime. The PRK government encouraged the development of Khmer traditional medicine as a part of its nationalist ideology. Unlike the Pol Pot’s regime, the PRK government received a substantial amount of foreign medical aid from the communist bloc countries, particularly the USSR, Cuba, Poland, and Hungary. However, international aid was seen as a mechanism for donors to get rid of surplus medical supplies. Thus, in effect, the bureaucratization and modernization of medicine initiated under the Khmer Rouge continued under the PRK. The authors caution against the generalization that although the Cambodian drug market has been dominated by modern pharmaceuticals since the early 1990s and that educated Cambodians express a certain disdain for Khmer medicine, this does not infer that the Cambodians are exclusively informed by the principles of biomedicine. They continue to orient themselves to a pre modern medical cosmology, which attributes illness

Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 06:00:18AM via free access Book reviews 145 to social and moral transgression and healing mending the social and spiritual relationships of the ill (p. 236). The pharmaceutical market in Cambodia remains unregulated. Pharmacists face stiff competition from unlicensed physicians and shopkeepers who dispense biomedical pharmaceuticals, diag- nose patients’ condition in accordance with indigenous notions, and dispense several kinds of medicine irrespective of the seriousness of – and often their lack of true knowledge of – the perceived medical condition requiring treatment. One unfortunate side effect of ‘combination’ medicine is the risk of harm. The choice of treatment for a particular illness in Cambodia is largely contingent upon the trust a patient has in a particular practitioner rather than the efficacy of the treatment. This book is mainly intended for academic audiences, such as medical anthropologists and historians of medicine, rather than policy makers. I am curious, however, as to why the authors have not explored the agendas of the various international NGOs operating in Cambodia and their funding agencies vis-à-vis the provision of primary healthcare. During the first dec- ade of Cambodian independence (1953-1963), the World Health Organisa- tion (WHO) initiated pilot projects in maternal and child health and malaria eradication; but, the role of the WHO scarcely finds mention in the monograph. Nevertheless, the authors offer a nuanced reinterpretation of socialized medicine under the Khmer Rouge drawing upon oral testimony to assess how modernization contributed to deterioration of healthcare for those who had access to traditional medicines. Firmly based as it is on archival evidence and oral testimony, this work cautions the reader against coining essentialist terms like ‘resilience’ while analysing how the Cambodians coped with the political uncertainties of the 1960s and 1970s.

Daromir Rudnyckyj, Spiritual economies: Islam, globalization and the afterlife of development. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2010, 289 pp. ISBN 9780801448508, price: USD 65.00; 9780801476785, price USD 24.95 (paperback).

GABRIAL FACAL Institut de Recherche sur l’Asie, University of Aix-Marseille [email protected]

This stimulating study grows out of two years of fieldwork in the Krakatau Steel (KS) complex of Cilegon, in Banten, Java, but the book has little to do with industry as it is commonly understood. It focuses on Emotional and Spiri- tual Quotient (ESQ) training, an ideal project to explore what author Daromir

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Rudnyckyj calls ‘Spiritual economies’. With these terms, the author designates ‘a set of concrete practices’, designed to meet the challenges of globalisation and which is fabricated from an array of forms taken to be universally valid: human resources management, science, and Islam (p. 5). The ESQ program is one of a growing number of Islamic reform initiatives that share the concern that Indonesia’s economic crisis results from the separation of religious ethics from economic practices. This program, which has been followed by the biggest Indonesian companies and over one million participants, combines busi- ness leadership, human resources, and life-coaching techniques with popular psychology and Islamic practice. The book analyzes the curious convergence of nationalist development legacies with resurgent religious practices and neo- liberal policies and ideologies. The site, the biggest Southeast Asian steel mill and a centrepiece of national development, offers a unique case study, which is skillfully explored through a well-documented ethnography that provides both qualitative interviews and quantitative data on the company’s economic challenges and on ESQ development. Rudnyckyj’s insightful political and economic background underlines how the Asian financial crisis and the government decision to eliminate tariffs on imported steel have threatened to end the company’s privileged position of competitiveness with foreign producers. But the situation also provided an opportunity for ESQ managers to promote a project referred to as ‘spiritual reform’ (reformasi spiritual). Influenced by formations for Islamic renewal like the Salman mosque movement and the Indonesian Association of Muslim Intellectuals (ICMI), ESQ has been designed to enhance Islamic practice and to equate Muslim virtues with corporate values. It is described as indispensable for transpar- ency, productivity, competitiveness, and prosperity in the global economy. The founder, Ary Ginanjar, constructs globalisation and the company’s dif- ficulties ‘as a challenge posed by God directly to company employees’, which can be met through the intensification of Islamic faith, by consolidating the Muslim community and by renouncing ‘egoism’ (p. 2). The failure of the State in reaching the goals promised by faith in development (p. 60) requires nothing less than a cultural change that ESQ, as a socio-technical scheme for developing faith, can provide. The book directly immerses the reader in the subject with detailed descriptions of ESQ seminars. We hear about the actors’ motivations, the dedicated convictions of the managers, and learn how the program is perceived and received by the employees. The local context of the programme’s implemen- tation in Banten is also taken into account, as the author presents the main particularities of this region: a strong Islamic culture and the prominent role of the authority leaders (jawara) in political and development matters. The reciprocal point of view of the local population and KS’s staff depicts the socio-cultural tensions that favour ESQ as a consensual tool.

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The format of the book, the equilibrium between its different parts (‘Milieu’, ‘Intervention’, ‘Effects’) and a detailed index help the reader to easily explore the rich documentation on the subject and to follow the thread of the argument. The well furnished bibliography shows solid references on socio-cultural anthropology, economics, politics, and Islam. It enables us to understand Indonesia’s development in a broader global scene, as it is mainly stressed in the conclusion, where the author recalls that worldwide institutions also actively promote the so-called ‘developing faith’ paradigm. From all of this come reflections on modernity and its ideology. The theoretical analysis mainly draws from Weber’s study on the Protestant ethic, concerning the interrelation between ideas (doctrines of the calling and predestination) and work. Rudnyckyj uses the notion of ‘embodied practice’, to point out that Foucault’s work can provide useful insights into the ‘techniques of rationalization’ and the ‘rationalization of practices’ (p. 3), which according to the author form the very core of modern ideology. This in turn leads Rudnyckyj to advocate for a comprehensive anthropology that doesn’t dissociate ‘theory and practice, object and analysis, ethics and knowledge’ (p. 260, n2). To this end, he underlines the necessity for anthropology to adopt specific methods of research and analysis. He notably argues in favour of para-ethnography, which has been developed by Holmes and Marcus, and he defends epistemological reconsiderations concerning the ‘ethical’ role of anthropology. This one should encourage thought on why questions concerning efficacy and truth are generally raised, because they form ‘the increasing- ly widespread presumption that economic rationality and calculative reason are universally valid means for organising and living human life’ (p. 259). This study on ESQ raises important questions on the socio-economic and ideological transformations in Indonesia since the ‘Reform era’ and decentral- isation. Less convincingly explored is the extent this program has impacted Indonesian society and its diverse Islamic ideologies. ESQ’s influence would probably have been played down by affording comparison with deep-rooted and national scale organisations, like Muhammadiyah or Nahdlatul Ulama. Moreover, a deeper diachronic perspective could have shed more light on these issues, since the described ‘opposition to modernity’ (p. 63) However, we can’t suspect Rudnyckyj to be unaware of these aspects, as he is himself currently engaged in research on Syariah banking. Thus, he explains his choice of focusing ‘on the way in which contemporary Indonesians posed questions about their contemporary lives’ (p. 16), by his para-ethnography approach, which is presented as a means to enhance reflexivity and to narrow the chasm between theory and method in anthropology. The reference could be fruitful and propose an applied dimension to the discipline but, by seeking to build concrete models of the ‘empirical world’ (namely: local knowledge, theoretical models, and the concerned

Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 06:00:18AM via free access 148 Book reviews practices), it diminishes the importance of more structural aspects. Without upholding Geertz’s cultural ‘static script’ (p. 17), couldn’t we imagine a com- bining approach, which would recognise the reciprocal and distinct dynam- ics of both current processes and structures? The possible relativity of ESQ’s impact upon contemporary Indonesian society and the unavoidable analytical adjustments do not tarnish this study’s significance for the understanding of this kind of program and its implicit ideological foundations. The rigorous research and skillful argumentation provide a gripping book, which constitutes a valuable contribution to the un- derstudied region of Banten and should be read by anyone concerned with Indonesia, religion, the economy, or management. Whether they criticise or adopt Rudnyckyj’s views, anthropologists concerned with new methods and objects should be drawn to this book.

Claudine Salmon, Sastra Indonesia awal: Kontribusi orang Tionghoa. Jakarta: Kepustakaan Populer Gramedia, École française d’Extrême-Orient, Forum Jakarta-Paris, Pusat Bahasa, Yayasan Nabil, Perhimpunan Indonesia Tionghoa, MTjersil, 2010, 562 pp. ISBN 9789799102942 (IN), 9782855394824 (FR). Price: IDR 59,500 (paperback).

MELANI BUDIANTA Faculty of Humanities, University of Indonesia [email protected]

This 562 page book gathers Claudine Salmon’s extensive writings on Chinese Indonesian culture from academic journals such as Archipel, Indonesia, Asian Culture, and RIMA, as well as book chapters and one conference presentation. The work was originally published between 1971 and 2005 in Germany, the Netherlands, France, and the United States, and has been translated from French and English by eight Indonesian translators (with the exception of one written in Bahasa Indonesia). The twenty papers, are arranged in four sections and aim to show ‘how literature written in Malay – in addition to those written in Mandarin – reflect the gradual integration of the Chinese migrants and their descendants into the Nusantara cultural world, and their assimila- tion into that world’ (p. 17, my translation). The process of integration is depicted in the thematic periodization of the four sections. The first section of the book, entitled ‘Kebudayaan leluhur dan terjemahan karya-karya Tionghoa’ (The culture of the ancestor and the translation of the Chinese sources) shows the obsession with China and

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Chinese culture as the cultural home of the Chinese settlers. The second section depicts the role of the ‘educated traders’ in different societies in the archipelago at the end of the nineteenth century. The third section looks at the rising position of the Chinese Peranakan at the beginning of the twentieth century, and the final section discusses literature between 1920 and 1980 as a mirror of social realities in the region which became Indonesia. Although the narrative of gradual integration from China to Indonesia does emerge from this thematic time frame, the book actually offers a more complicated picture than what Claudine Salmon modestly claims to give. There are at least two other dimensions. First, it does not only describe one- way traffic from China to Indonesia, but also the other way round. It provides a historical overview of the cross-cultural interaction and translation between Chinese and Indonesian cultures through the roles of Chinese migrants to the Nusantara archipelago from the late eighteenth century to post Independence Indonesia. Second, the book clearly indicates that China is not the only source of the cultural translation for the Chinese settlers in the Nusantara archipelago which became Indonesia. The literary works Claudine Salmon shows how Chinese settlers translated and adapted European (French and Dutch) sources, and mixed them with Chinese and local ones (Makassar, Javanese, and Melayu). In this way, the book showcases the creation of cosmopolitan subjectivities of the Chinese settlers, who continued to respond to the appeal of modernity with multiple, localized, hybrid versions. The title of the book, Sastra Indonesia awal (Early Indonesian literature), falls short in catching the rich and complex sociocultural dimensions that the book contains. Although it uses literature as its primary texts, the book is not about literature as such. The title of ‘Early Indonesian Literature’ is also problematic, unless the meaning of Indonesian literature here is totally redefined or vigorously reexamined. First of all, the texts discussed in this book are not only those written in Malay (or Malay mixed with local languages, such as Buginese), but also texts written in Mandarin and published in Shanghai, Hongkong, and Singapore about the Nusantara archipelago, Dutch Indies, or Indonesia. Three chapters focus on literature written in Mandarin. The first paper in the book discusses reports about ‘the islands’ by Chinese intellectuals who had stayed and travelled in Java and other islands as Chinese teachers. Another chapter entitled ‘Banjir Darah di bawah pohon kelapa’ (Bloodshed under the coconut tree) analyses literature written in ‘Modern Chinese’ with critical perspectives towards the East Indies within the Nanyang literary movement in Singapore. The last paper in the book is about a novel written in Mandarin during the Chinese cultural revolution by a Chinese couple, with the principal writer a woman who was born in Malang, went to study in China and could never return. The quotes of these Chinese texts are given in Indonesian (which might be translated by Indonesian translators from

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Claudine Salmon’s French and English translations). As Claudine Salmon in her comparative studies switches with ease, sometimes from the translated Mandarin text into the works of Chinese Peranakan in Malay, the boundary between the Mandarin and the Malay texts gets lost in translation (and second translation). It is especially confusing for Indonesian readers when one translator calls literature written in Chinese ‘sastra Tionghoa-Indonesia’ (Indonesian Chinese literature). Does this term stand in opposition to Sastra Melayu-Tionghoa – which refers to works written in Malay by the Chinese Peranakan writers? Should those various kinds of texts be seen as literatures of the Chinese diaspora, Indonesian literature, or early Indonesian literature, and what defines an early stage? The subtitle, which underlines the contribution of the Chinese to early Indonesian literature suggests something else. Is the book arguing that the Chinese (settlers as well as visitors, those residing in the neighbouring regions as well as Indonesian citizens) through their writing (in Mandarin, Malay, Indonesian or local languages) participate in the making of Indonesian literature? These questions – though never directly addressed – offer provocative thoughts for scholars of the region, literary scholars, and Indonesianists. Nationalist perspectives have so far cut off the transnational fluidity of one text from the others based on the borders of nation states. Claudine Salmon, with her mastery of languages and distance from the nationalist ideology, could compare Siauw Giok Tjhan’s memoir with reports on violence written in Mandarin. On the other hand, the book is not contained within the totalizing Chinese diaspora perspective – as Claudine Salmon explores the heteroglossic influence from European cultures. Other scholars could further the discussion by examining other sources of cultural translation and adaptation from Persian, Arabic, Sanskrit, and hundreds of local languages into this hybrid Chinese -Indonesian literature. The value of this book is in the examination of this complex cross-cultural translation at work. The feat could only be accomplished by someone with a command of Mandarin, French, Dutch, and Malay, who knows the difference between Hokkien and Hakka, and also understands some local languages of the archipelago. In addition to these achievements, the book shows the hard work of a historian who has the passion to meticulously trace, compare the source texts and the translations, and provide a comprehensive social and historical context for interpreting the strategies of adaptation and translation. The above work is done in different ways in the twenty papers. Some papers (on the travel journal of Peranakan traders to Europe, the mission of the Chinese Empire vessel to Java, and Tiong Hwa Hwe Kwan syair) are more descriptive than argumentative. These papers provide detailed context of the text as well as the subject of the text, and then reproduce the whole text with annotation. Since this book deals with texts which are no longer available, such reproduc-

Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 06:00:18AM via free access Book reviews 151 tion is helpful. Appendices, such as list of Malay words used in Chinese texts, summaries of novels, lists of peoples, institutions, and places mentioned in the texts, as well as biographical and bibliographical lists of various topics (such as that of translated Chinese novels to Buginese by Liem Kheng Yong) are handy primary material and historical sources for scholars interested in venturing into this wealth of hybrid Chinese-Indonesian materials. (A list of appendices and an index should be considered for the second edition). The publication of the book could not be more timely. In the twenty first century, the Indonesian Chinese culture has experienced a new era since President Abdurrachman Wahid (Gus Dur) lifted the ban against Chinese language and culture in 2000 and President Megawati Sukarno declared Chinese New Year as national holiday in 2002. Popular fiction written by Chinese Indonesians in colloquial Malay from the early to mid nineteenth century were republished and Indonesian scholarship has started to re-eval- uate the contribution of the Chinese Malay popular press in Indonesian literature. Chinese Indonesian associations, which have mushroomed since then, have been promoting the cultural roles of the Indonesian Chinese. It was in this climate that Claudine Salmon received the Nabil Foundation Award for her significant contribution. The joint effort of private publisher, Chinese- Indonesian associations and the Pusat Bahasa as an Indonesian governmental body, and the École française d’Extrême-Orient (EFEO) in collecting, trans- lating, and publishing Claudine Salmon’s work into one monumental piece show the significance of this cultural project. The publication of this book can also be seen in relation to the larger movement, initiated by academic publishers and cultural foundations, to translate into Indonesian the classical works of Indonesian studies by international scholars. It signals a new stage of Indonesian scholarship where translation, not only launches possibilities for cultural appropriation – adapting other stories as one’s own – but also opens creative space for dialogues and for new knowledge to emerge.

Renate Sternagel, Der Humboldt von Java: Leben und Werk des Naturforschers Franz Wilhelm Junghuhn 1809-1864, Halle (Saale): Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 2011, 352 pp. ISBN 9783898128414. Price: EUR 18.00.

ANDREAS WEBER University of Twente [email protected]

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The multifaceted life and career of the German naturalist, administrator, and traveler Franz Wilhelm Junghuhn (1809-1864) offers fertile ground for analyses of the relationship between knowledge production and Dutch colonialism in the mid-nineteenth century. Born in the Prussian Mansfeld, situated at the south- ern rim of the Harz, Junghuhn was socialized in a family with close ties to the region’s mining industry. It is therefore not surprising that Junghuhn, like the Prussian naturalist and mining official Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859), developed an early interest in studying and investigating wild nature. The region’s many caves and tunnels, where one could find cryptogams, especially attracted his attention. After his subsequent studies of botany and medicine in Halle and Berlin, which, owing to an unfortunate duel with a Swiss student, he never finished, Junghuhn departed on an adventurous career as foreign legion- naire in Algeria and physician, traveler, botanist, geologist, writer, map maker, colonial surveyor, and quinine expert in the Netherlands Indies. Sternagel narrates Junghuhn’s career chronologically. After two chapters on his early years in Europe, she provides a detailed reconstruction of Junghuhn’s fieldwork in Java and Sumatra. The final chapters focus on Junghuhn’s return to Europe and his second stay in Java. Sternagel, who is by training a literary scholar and historian, bases her narrative on a wide array of sources. She draws on Junghuhn’s numerous publications as well as archival material collected in Germany, Jakarta, and the Netherlands. The Junghuhn collection of Hans van der Kemp (who passed away in 2005) at the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV) in Leiden turned out to be a particularly valuable source. In order to illustrate her account, Sternagel also included various reproductions of lithographs, maps, photographs, and portraits which are related to Junghuhn and his work. However, the fact that Sternagel’s monograph targets a wider audience has various implications. First, Sternagel neglects to weave her account into a wider debate in the field of science and empire studies.1 In particular, Marie Louise Pratt’s study (2008) of similar travelers in South America and South Africa would have helped to develop a more critical perspective on Junghuhn. Also, by putting too much analytical emphasis on Junghuhn’s subjective experiences, Sternagel fails to historize her ‘hero’ adequately. Instead of carefully situating Junghuhn’s career in spatial and intellectual contexts which would have shed more light on the complexities of knowledge accumulation in Java and Sumatra, she tends to idealize Junghuhn as a forgotten travelling naturalist (Naturforscher) who, similar to Von Humboldt, dared to investigate wild and unknown nature and societies. By placing the historical actor Junghuhn almost exclusively at the center of the narrative stage, readers of Sternagel’s monograph are only presented fragments of the intellectual, social, and mate-

1 For a recent historiographical overview, see Hodge 2011.

Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 06:00:18AM via free access Book reviews 153 rial infrastructure which provided the crucial basis for his fieldwork in the Netherlands Indies. For instance, Junghuhn’s survey of Java’s volcanoes and the Batak region in Sumatra would have hardly been possible without drawing upon a wide array of local materials, helpers, expertise, and skills. Nineteenth century naturalists like Junghuhn and Von Humboldt tended to erase such agency in their subsequently published accounts written for Europe’s growing reading public. Instead of praising Junghuhn as a travelling ‘hero’, it would have been a fascinating endeavor to say more about the general economic, social, intellectual, and political climate and networks which made ‘heroes’ such as Junghuhn possible. In her study on Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913), Jane Camerini (1996) has shown what we might gain from such an approach. Leaving this criticism aside, Sternagel’s monograph provides a well-written and coherent overview of Junghuhn’s life and work which might serve as a solid platform for further research on Junghuhn.

References

Camerini, Jane R. 1996 ‘Wallace in the field’, Osiris 11:44-65. Hodge, Joseph M. 2011 ‘Science and empire: An overview of the historical scholarship’, in: Brett M. Bennett and Joseph M. Hodge (eds), Science and empire: Knowledge and networks of science across the British Empire, 1800-1979, pp. 3-29. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. [Britain and the World.] Pratt, Mary Louise 2008 Imperial eyes: Travel writing and transculturation. Second edition. New York: Routledge. [First edition 1992.]

Wynn Wilcox (ed.), Vietnam and the West: New approaches. Ithaca, NY: Southeast Asia Program Publications, Cornell University, 2010, viii + 210 pp. ISBN 9780877277521. Price: USD 23.95 (paperback).

HANS HÄGERDAL Linnaeus University [email protected]

Nine scholars from North American universities explore Vietnamese relations with the West in this volume, which grew out of a 2005 conference. The focus is on history in a broad sense of the word, but the contributors have vari-

Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 06:00:18AM via free access 154 Book reviews ous affiliations within the humanities and social sciences. At first glance, the subject of the anthology may appear somewhat unoriginal, since we know Vietnam has a long and cumbersome history of intervention by Western pow- ers, and has played an unhappy role in the game of international politics in the twentieth century. There is an abundance of studies of French colonial policies, the American impact during the war in Indochina, and the recent effects of economic liberalisation and globalisation. Still, as the editor Wynn Wilcox remarks in his introduction to the volume, we need studies that provide a deeper understanding of the contacts, and theorise the relationships in a meaningful way. Westernisation as such is an ambiguous concept, and the existing literature on Western-Vietnamese relations has tended to fall within one of three broad paradigms – here, Wilcox has borrowed from Paul Cohen’s well-known study of historiography on modern China, Discovering history in China (Cohen 1984). An impact/response approach tends to see Vietnamese tradition in static terms and attributes technological and cultural change to Western influences. There are both empirical and normative problems with this view. A second approach is tradition/modernity, where the central theme is the quest to become ‘modern’. In such a view, the Western impact is important but not in control. This paradigm suffers from the drawback that modernity tends to be coupled with Westernisation. The third paradigm is the autonomous approach that focuses on processes in the region and aims to counter Eurocentric images. This approach has informed scholars for more than four decades but has its problems as well, leading to an overcorrection for Eurocentrism. Wilcox claims that the essays in the present volume move beyond the three paradigms by re-conceptualising the contradiction between Vietnamese and Western circumstances. As he puts it, ‘The entities “Vietnam” and “the West” are not given categories of analysis that were produced ex nihilo; rather, they are defined through the interactions of the subjects that we deem Vietnamese and Western’ (p. 12). At least the majority of the nine contributions do live up to these aims. Taken together, they make a fairly disparate impression, with a chrono- logical range from the seventeenth to the twenty-first century. Three of the essays treat aspects of the precolonial period. Brian Ostrowsky’s study of the Christian Nôm literature of the seventeenth century is somewhat technical in scope, but does show that Christian texts had an innovative role for precolonial Vietnamese literature, at the same time as they were consistent with wider intellectual and literary currents in the country. C. Michele Thompson attempts to provide the closer context for Jean Marie Despieu, a French physician associated with the rulers Gia Long and Ming Mang in the early nineteenth century. In spite of the rather circumstantial details given about his times, Thompson is not completely successful in elucidating Despieu’s relationships with his Vietnamese surroundings, and the investiga-

Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 06:00:18AM via free access Book reviews 155 tion entails some guesswork. Wynn Wilcox himself is more successful in his discussion of the complexities of identity among Vietnamese Christians of the nineteenth century, focusing on the cleric and scholar Dang Duc Tuan. In his poetic work, Tuan was pulled between loyalty to the Nguyen regime and Christian solidarity, a dilemma made acute by the colonial onslaught, and he elaborated on ideals of peace, order, and harmony that were common to both Confucian and Christian traditions. This implied a complex, anti-imperialist Christian identity. The following four essays take up issues of the French and American periods. Again, they vary somewhat in quality, but none is devoid of interest. Micheline Lessard focuses on anticolonial activism launched by women in the French colonial era. The study seems something of a catalogue, and it never comes to any comprehensive discussion of gender and political activism. By contrast, one of the most interesting studies in the collection is the essay of Marc Jason Gilbert on the French and American wars. Gilbert traces attempts of Vietminh and NLF forces to persuade non-white troops in French or American service to give up fighting for their own presumed oppressors. Gilbert traces the Vietnamese tactics back to the propaganda efforts of the anti-Chinese war of Lê Loi in the fifteenth century. Also of considerable interest are the essays of Edmund Wehrle, on the abortive attempts to build up a viable trade union in South Vietnam, and Sophie Quinn-Judge, on the like- wise unsuccessful efforts to develop a third political force during the years of conflict from 1954 to 1975. The last two studies deal with contemporary issues and differ markedly in tone from the other essays. The anthropologist Diane Niblack Fox discusses the effects of the Agent Orange defoliant that was used extensively during the American War. Much of the essay is a description of her experiences in the field, told in an engaged and somewhat rhetorical style. By analyzing both the past uses of the Agent Orange and the contemporary consequences, the text moves between historical narrative, participant observation, and analysis. The last study addresses the consequences of globalisation in the case of the privatisation of water resources. Christopher Kukk highlights the inconsistencies of present day Vietnamese economic policy, and the dire consequences of water privatisation for the environmental setting. Like Fox, Kukk is an engaged scholar, and the text contains explicit policy recom- mendations. In conclusion, the nine essays are somewhat uneven in quality and style. However, most of them serve to illustrate the main points of the volume, namely that the Western world and Vietnam are not opposing or constant cultural categories, and the variety of ways that Western input has been localised in a Vietnamese context for the better or worse.

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References

Cohen, Paul 1984 Discovering history in China. New York: Columbia University Press.

Zheng Yangwen and Charles J.H Macdonald (eds), Personal names in Asia: History, culture and identity. Singapore: NUS Press, 2010, xi + 339 pp. ISBN 9789971693800. Price: USD 32.00 (paperback).

ROSEMARY GIANNO Keene State College, Department of Sociology and Anthropology [email protected]

What’s in a name? This book argues that that is the wrong question. Better to ask, what’s in a naming system? Or what’s with governmental forms that require a personal name and surname, no more and no less? This book aims to describe, classify, and begin to explain historical and cross-cultural patterns of naming systems. It highlights the richness and variability of local naming systems, showing what is lost when these systems are diminished or replaced (directly or indirectly) by the state. The book, derived from a conference held at the Asia Research Instititute at the National University of Singa- pore in 2005, consists, primarily, of contributions from anthropologists and historians whose cultural focus is Southeast Asia and it is within that nexus of geographic and disciplinary interests that the book is strongest. Anthony Reid and Charles Macdonald do a good job of providing context by surveying naming systems in Asia and beyond in their introduction. The book is divided into four parts: the first concerns historical processes in naming, particularly in regard to family names. MacDonald’s tripartite typology in Chapter 4 provides the structure for the three remaining parts. James Scott’s preface and Reid’s chapter establish one of the book’s two major projects: theorizing the relationship between naming systems and the historical development of the state and capitalism. They review the benefits to the state, social hierarchy, and the accumulation of wealth, of state imposed ‘official’ naming systems that obscure, replace or delegitimize the intricacies of local ‘vernacular’ naming systems supporting local social systems. All of the authors, but especially Gealogo, Fiskesjö, and Hew, speak to this point as well. Scott emphasizes that, in order for a state to reinforce its power and be able to efficiently identify and monitor individuals, it must stabilize and minimize the fluidity and complexity of vernacular naming. Therefore, for

Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 06:00:18AM via free access Book reviews 157 communities and individuals resisting the state, evading this kind of confor- mity can be freeing and empowering. Reid, for his part, shows how important the family name has been in the development of patrilineal and patrilocal family structures seeking to con- solidate wealth and power. He evaluates four alternative explanations for the global shift toward patrilineal family names and tests them with evidence from Southeast Asia and elsewhere. He notes that Southeast Asian Muslims have been particularly resistant to family names and that their imposition by the colonial state and church in the Philippines may in fact have encouraged, at least among elites, a more patrilineal family than in other lowland societies. He further describes a synergy between democratic principles and uni- formity of naming, with the latter symbolizing equal worth. Citing Tanya Li, Reid concludes that family names reinforce identification with the patriarchal family and therefore aid the consolidation of family power and wealth in in capitalist societies. It is interesting in this light that Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia have not required family names, perhaps indicating the limits of state power in these nations (although Reid does also suggest that the era of the family firm may be over). The chapter by Francis Alvarez Gealogo sup- ports the theorized relationship between state and surname by demonstrat- ing that their imposition by the Spanish government was not to Hispanicize Filipinos but to regularize record keeping for taxation and law enforcement. Macdonald’s contribution constitutes a broad and ambitious theoretical and methodological statement. His focus is the interrelationship among culture, society, language, and naming systems. He argues that most anthropologists who have investigated naming in recent years have not really tried to develop a comparative classificatory framework in the tradition of Morgan on kinship systems. His two principle aims, therefore, are 1. to show how formal properties of naming systems are determined, or at least constrained, by cultural and social factors and 2. to propose the beginnings of a typology of naming systems for Southeast Asia. A central principle of his approach is the distinction he makes between name type and name tag. He asserts that the focus of investigation and analysis should be on the interplay of all name types in a system. Other foundational assumptions needed in anthropological analysis of naming that seeks to avoid particularism include the following: that all existing naming systems contain several name types; that all naming systems seem to consider one of those name types to be the ‘real’ name, the ‘autonym’; and that the relationship, organization, and combination of name types make up the naming system. Building upon these principles, Macdonald then outlines a set of analytic variables that seem to correlate with socio-cultural patterns. For example, a major distinction is between naming systems that string several kinds of name tags together (syntagmatic) and those that also have multiple name tags for an individual but only allow one

Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 06:00:18AM via free access 158 Book reviews to be used at a time (paradigmatic). Another distinction is between those name types that have an open repertoire of name tags versus those with a finite set. What Macdonald found was that those societies with naming systems that are paradigmatic, with an open repertoire and several other features, emphasize egalitarianism, while those with syntagmatic naming systems, closed repertoires, and other correlated features, encourage competition and social hierarchy. Based on these observations, Macdonald presents a typology of naming systems: Class A ‘Paradigmatic’, found in the Philippines, Borneo, and Peninsular Malaysia, Class B ‘Syntagmatic’, of Eastern Indonesia, and Class C ‘Titles/title system’, typical of class societies in Central Indonesia. The patterns associated with Class A versus B ‘make sense’ in terms of the size and orientation of these ‘types’ of societies, while Class C feels underdeveloped. (For example, there could have been greater definition of the word ‘title’.) Macdonald also presents examples of naming systems in the region that are ‘mixed’ typologically. It is not so important whether Macdonald is partly or entirely right or wrong in his formulation. What is important is that he has offered a basis for theorizing a systematic method that researchers can accept or reject, refine or revamp based on their attempts to apply the model. The chapter by Kenneth Sillander focuses on teknonyms and pseudo- teknonyms within the larger naming system of the Bentian of Borneo while reviewing anthropological theories of teknonymy generally. Teknonymy refers to the practice of renaming parents after the birth of their first child so that they become ‘[Father or Mother] of [child’s name]’ and constitutes a name type. Pseudo-teknonymy, a concept Sillander himself coins here, like teknonymy, includes the parent term, but in this case it is followed by a nickname rather than a child’s name. The Bentian seem to treat the two name types interchangeably. And because teknonyms are names with status implications, Sillander argues that individual autonomy and sociocentrism are both reflected and reinforced when one looks at the entire naming system. The analysis provides a fine example of innovative, detailed ethnography made possible by a comparative theoretical framework. Magnus Fiskesjö’s chapter on Chinese imperialism and Wa naming autonomy on the Southeast Asia-China frontier describes how official imposition of the Chinese personal name system has competed with the Wa naming system to diminish the identification of individual Wa with their lineages as well as their collective identity as an autonomous people. Lineage genealogies today reinforce land claims; Fiskesjö suggests that, therefore, the suppression of lineage names undercuts property rights. The article clearly demonstrates the importance of personal naming systems to the political autonomy of a people. My question is why this chapter was placed in the ‘Class A simple egalitar- ian societies’ section. The Wa have had patrilineal descent groups, consider-

Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 06:00:18AM via free access Book reviews 159 able wealth, opium cash cropping, lengthy genealogies of lineage ancestors, and a mostly limited repertoire of autonyms, characteristics that place them squarely into Class B. While the book is primarily structured by Reid’s and, especially, Macdonald’s schemas for analysis of naming, the other chapters are variable in their use of these approaches. For example, it was difficult to tell how Zheng Yangwen’s historical survey of Chinese naming practices connected to the project. Other authors had trouble fitting in all the support needed for their argument. For example, Ananda Rajah’s chapter on the Karen in Palokhi, Thailand, argues that the particularities of the Palokhi naming system are all part of a cultural ideology that requires an understanding of religious, subsistence, gender, and marriage systems. He applies Macdonald’s as well as Geoffrey Benjamin’s (tribal/peasant/ruler and indigeny/exogeny) typology but in a fairly mechanical way. One chapter provides inadequate space to support such grand assertions. I also suspect that unless one collected the data using these typologies, it is difficult to retrofit them after the fact. The papers in Part III concern segmented societies with leaders who con- centrated wealth and social obligation through feasting and thereby achieved prestigious and ancestral names. In each case the authors sketch the older naming system while describing the process of change that has occurred. For example, Ku Kun-hui focused on the Paiwan (of Taiwan) term vusam translated as ‘seed-millet’ and by extension as ‘firstborn’ and ‘nobility.’ Vusam, in both social senses, has become less meaningful in recent times as all siblings should now inherit equally. Similarly, the boundary between nobility and commoners has been weakened by more frequent intermarriage. While Reid and Macdonald’s introduction discounted the utility to an analysis of naming systems of linguistic and philosophical theorizing on sense versus reference, both Joel Kuipers and R.H. Barnes make these competing dimensions of meaning central in their analysis. Barnes presents a plethora of ethnographic data on naming in eastern Indonesia to argue that variability of naming practices is much greater than that imagined in Macdonald’s typology; but he basically lists the information, making little effort to connect the data in any systematic way to each other or to society. He argues that personal names in Eastern Indonesia have sense as well as reference (while some names inform about social categories, others may have other meanings or be simply indexi- cal) and that ethnographers should pay attention to both. He contends further that there are no firm boundaries between proper names and titles, and that there is no real need to distinguish between the two. Kuipers analyzes how a speech event at a political demonstration in eastern Sumba in 1998 after the fall of Suharto led to ‘Bloody Thursday’ in which at least twenty-six people died and scores of houses were destroyed. The Loli demonstrators, in the spirit of Reformasi, were protesting a Weyewa politician’s use of surrogates

Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 06:00:18AM via free access 160 Book reviews to take a civil service test for him. Kuipers concludes that, at the same time that the more traditional rules of naming in a competitive society were disap- pearing, a breach of those rules was interpreted as a threat by the politician’s supporters who retaliated accordingly, at least from their point of view. In regard to complex, centralized societies, Mary Louise Nagata, in her clearly written chapter on autonym changes among commoners in early modern Kyoto, describes Japan prior to the Meiji Regime as conforming to ‘Class C,’ by relying on titles to communicate status. She further hypothesizes and confirms that autonyms were not changed in coming-of-age rites but instead signaled changes in status within family businesses, which needed to absorb non-family members. M.W. Amarasiri de Silva similarly uses quantitative data, in this case, notifications of name changes in newspapers, to assess the reasons for name change among the Sinhalese in Sri Lanka. De Silva argues that, in the context of the emergence of class and modernity, caste can affect one’s class status through preferred names similar to or associated with higher caste family names. But since anyone can change their name, it seems, to whatever they want, it is not clear that he proved his point here. Finally, Hew Wai Weng’s fascinating chapter describes the religious boundaries maintained by Malaysia through its control of official names. In Malaysia, a Muslim cannot marry a non-Muslim. Therefore, Chinese who convert to Islam to marry a Malay (Malays cannot disavow Islam) must adopt a hybrid name to distinguish them from Bumiputera Malays. This practice serves the purposes of the state as well as the converts’ wish to maintain their connections to the Chinese community. Because of the divide between Malays and Chinese in Malaysia, the converts remain anomalies, although their continued existence may perhaps weaken the boundary they inhabit. The author casts the situation in the best light while mostly sidestepping the coercive nature of these name changes. By soft pedaling some effects of state action, the article provides an interesting counterpoint to Scott’s preface. This is an important book that breaks new ground in the systematic analysis of naming in anthropology and history. It is essential reading for anyone interested in the meaning of personal names.

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