Organizer and Chair: Barbara Watson Andaya, University of Hawaii
Never Been to the Indies: A 19th-Century Anthropology of Indonesia by P. J. Veth
Paul van der Velde, International Institute for Asian Studies, The Netherlands
Today, should an anthropologist claim that he had written a standard work on a region without ever having been there, his findings would be treated with the utmost circumspection, not to say disbelief. "A false anthropology is a holistic depiction of a foreign experienced world which claims to be objective but is not. The author either knows the world he depicts and its intrinsic order far less than he pretends . . . or even has not been there at all" (Stagl, 1995). This twentieth-century stipulation did not exist at the time when the Indologist P. J. Veth (1814-1895) wrote his "standard" works on Indonesia which encouraged thousands of people to take interest in that country. Nowadays, hardly anyone knows who Veth is, but during his lifetime he was recognized as being one of the foremost liberal intellectuals in the Netherlands whose review of the Max Havelaar in the literary periodical De Gids in 1860 signified instantaneous stardom for Multatuli. Only recently has Veth's work again been appreciated for what it is: "Although from our standpoint Veth's anthropology was an indiscriminate sort of science, he contributed a great deal to the study of languages, geography, history, and ethnography of the East Indies, and he was generally regarded as the Nestor of Dutch Indologists" (P. E. Josselin de Jong/Vermeulen, 1989).
How was he able to convey a picture of a world which he did not know through personal experience without meeting a barrage of criticism even from people who had been there? Was it because of his effective way of interrelating data? Can it be attributed to an interesting thesis propounded recently: "Whoever came to build a bridge into one particular region first, thereby established for himself a monopoly of access to it and therefore also a monopoly of disposition over it. He could use it . . . even for his cognitive goals. In the latter case he would become the 'leading authority' on that region. He now only could be dethroned by other authorities contradicting his and appearing more credible to the public" (Stagl, 1995).
It was only at the end of the century that Veth began to be criticized by specialists who had been there. Notwithstanding their more profound knowledge of some areas or certain topics, they were never able to undermine Veth completely, due to the encyclopedic nature of his scientific work. Therefore Veth was never really dethroned, but comfortably ignored by specialists. Now that a more generalistic approach to science has again become popular in some circles at Leiden University, it is time to reassess the contributions of Veth to science and his manner of data collecting, bearing in mind the remark by Multatuli about Veth: "He who does not know Prof. Veth does not know what knowledge is."
The Role of Market Structure in Crop Choice: The Case of Tobacco and Rubber in
East Sumatra
Siddharth Chandra, Cornell University
This paper focuses on the decision of plantations in the southern half of East Sumatra to switch from the production of tobacco to rubber at the turn of this century. The conventional view, based on simple arguments about cost differentials, is that poor soil quality made the production of tobacco in the south unprofitable, while plantations in the north continued to produce tobacco of favorable soil conditions. Statistical analysis shows that the suitability of soil for tobacco production does not adequately explain these decisions. There is also only limited evidence that the suitability of soil for rubber production played a role.
A model of interaction among plantations based on the stylized facts of market structure in the plantation economy yields an alternative robust interpretation. The relevant facts are that the ownership of plantations in the north was highly concentrated, Sumatra had no close substitutes in the world tobacco market, while rubber was easily substituted with rubber from other countries, and the short run supply of rubber was highly inelastic, given the five year lag between planting and maturity of rubber trees. In this scenario, the owners of the large tobacco companies were able to raise the capital to collaborate in the construction of a private railroad which served their plantations and lowered their cost of production. This provided an additional reason for southern plantations to start producing rubber instead of tobacco. In this model, northern plantations continue to produce tobacco in spite of an equivalent fall in their potential cost of production of rubber and further increases in the world price of rubber.
Hazardous Tightrope Walking to Survive Sukarno's Political Testament and the
First Months of the Indonesian Republic (1945)
Harry A. Poeze, Royal Institute of Linguistics and Anthropology, Leiden, The
Netherlands
After Sukarno and Hatta proclaimed Indonesian independence on 17 August 1945, the fate of the new-born Republic remained hazardous for some time. The Japanese armed forces had, after the Japanese surrender, to maintain the status quo until the Allies would land. Only by careful and smart maneuvering the Republic gained a foothold to establish power and authority. The attitude of the Allies toward the Republic remained undecided for a number of months and the Republican leaders were thus uncertain and worried about the future fate of their Republic. This also held true for Sukarno personally who feared that his "collaboration" with the Japanese would make him unacceptable to the Allies. In this tense atmosphere he signed a Political Testament in which he, in case of himself being unable to act as President, relinquished his position to the enigmatic Tan Malaka, a veteran radical, who after almost 25 years of exile and clandestinity returned to Jakarta in 1945. This Political Testament, of which a number of versions are said to exist, has been a matter of controversy since, in politics and historiography. This paper weighs the available sources and traces the controversy and its backgrounds.
Creation of a New Tradition: Liturgical Music Among the Toba Batak People of
North Sumatra
Yoshiko Okazaki, University of the Sacred Heart
A musical tradition once banned by the church can be later promoted by the same church to develop a new tradition. Among the Toba Batak people of North Sumatra, an instrumental ensemble called gondang was forbidden by the church because of its close connection with pre-Christian spirit beliefs. Today, however, gondang is quite popular among the Christian Toba Batak and is especially featured at church events. This has been allowed by stripping off the old religious elements and by renaming it "traditional culture." Moreover, among the Catholic Toba Batak, a minority among the Protestant Toba Batak society, gondang is performed as an important part of liturgical music adopting the traditional ritual music and style. The church has been encouraging indigenous cultural elements in the liturgy as part of liturgical renewal after Vatican Council II. Now, after over 20 years of experimentation in adopting a traditional repertoire, some church leaders are attempting to compose new gondang pieces for the liturgy. The questions in focus in this study are: (1) how Catholic Toba Batak have been adopting traditional ritual repertoire and style in the liturgy; (2) the main reasons for composing new pieces; and (3) how they create them, and how people respond to them. I shall respond to these questions in relation to the cultural and religious identity of the people in their efforts to create a new tradition. The study is based on my field work in Toba Batak villages between 1989 and 1992, and in 1996.
A Political Analysis of Fertility Decline in New Order Indonesia
Jeremy Shiffman, University of Michigan
Indonesia's national family planning program was established in the late 1960s. It has been one major cause of a large fertility decline in the country: from 5.7 children per woman in 1970 to 2.9 in 1996. Several factors have been connected to the program's ability to increase contraceptive prevalence and reduce fertility levels, including extensive domestic and foreign funding, presidential priority, strategic program design, cross-sectoral coordination and latent demand. While these variables all have contributed to program results, a central factor-perhaps the central factor-has not received the attention it deserves: the political mobilization strategy of the coordinating agency. Since the early 1970s, the National Family Planning Coordinating Board (NFPCB) has engaged in a sustained and deliberate effort to persuade President Suharto, bureaucratic elements, social/religious leaders and foreign donors to direct ongoing priority and resources to the program. Without this sustained push, the program may not have achieved its objectives.
Within the political system, the main targets have been the President, the Ministry of Interior, the Army and the country's most powerful women's organization: the PKK. This conscious cultivation of authority structures stands in contrast to the behavior of other social development organizations in the Indonesian bureaucracy, many of which have adopted a passive approach to policy implementation. This paper examines the components of the NFPCB's political mobilization strategy to demonstrate that this factor deserves a central place in explanations of Indonesian fertility decline. The findings have implications for the literatures on New Order bureaucratic politics, gender, policy implementation and fertility.