Ecological Anthropology of Households in East Madura,

Wilson Glenn Smith

Thesis committee

Thesis supervisor Prof. Dr. A. Niehof Professor of Sociology of Consumers and Households, Wageningen University

Thesis co-supervisor Dr Y. Goudineau Director of Studies at Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) and at Ecole Française d'Extrême-Orient (EFEO), Paris

Other members

Prof. Dr. L.E. Visser Wageningen University Dr. H.M.C. de Jonge Radboud University, Nijmegen Prof. Dr. B. Hubert Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Paris, and Agropolis International, Montpellier Dr. B. Lacombe Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD) and Editions Harmattan, Paris

This research was conducted under the auspices of the Graduate School of Wageningen School of Social Sciences (WASS)

Ecological Anthropology of Households in East Madura, Indonesia

Wilson Glenn Smith

Thesis Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of doctor at Wageningen University by the authority of the Rector Magnificus Prof. dr. M.J. Kropff in the presence of the Thesis Committee appointed by the Academic Board to be defended in public on Wednesday 25 May 2011 at 11 a.m. in the Aula

Wilson Glenn Smith Ecological Anthropology of Households in East Madura, Indonesia

Thesis, Wageningen University, Wageningen, NL (2011) With references, with summaries in Dutch and English

ISBN 978-90-8585933-8

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This dissertation results from enthusiasm, hopefully not ill-placed, that anthropology could become the premier social science discipline for empirically-grounded understanding of human societies, and a determination to help some of the hurdles on the road to such understanding. Along the way, I also hope to contribute new perspectives on a misunderstood Indonesian society. I am grateful to the ethnomusicologist Jacques Brunet for suggesting Madura as a site for field research and for alerting me to the excellent work being done there by Dutch scholars. Anke Niehof, along with her husband Roy Jordaan, were among those Dutch researchers I was instructed to contact at that time, and to this day they remain a constant source of support and insight into Madurese society. Professor Niehof’s study of fertility in central Madura provided direct inspiration for my comparative fertility study further east, and the overarching concept of households present in all her work to date provided my framework for observation and analysis. Fittingly, Professor Niehof was to become my Wageningen University (WUR) academic supervisor (promotor) for this dissertation, ensuring through patience, prodding and proofreading that something worthwhile could be produced. In concert with Professor Yves Goudineau – who graciously accepted to take over direction of my doctoral studies at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) following the retirement of Professor Georges Condominas, and provided invaluable support and guidance in Paris – this WUR-EHESS cotutelle and my dissertation could finally come to fruition. For this they have my deepest gratitude. To Professor Condominas, I must also express my enduring gratitude for accepting to direct my studies back in 1982, and my equally deep apologies that I could not defend this thesis while he was still active at EHESS. Special credit must be given to several scholars who influenced my thinking early on. It was Gerald Berreman’s introduction to anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley that first convinced me of the discipline’s value for getting at what he called “the politics of truth,” for uncovering the unequal power relations at the root of injustice, and for getting me thinking about impression management and the promise and perils of ethnographic informants. Similarly, the course in anthropo