Research in International Studies, Southeast Asia Series - Recent Titles from Ohio University Press

Power, Change, and Gender Relations in Rural Java

Mon, 16 Jan 2012

Power, Change, and Gender Relations in Rural Java
A Tale of Two Villages

By Ann R. Tickamyer and Siti Kusujiarti

Women’s status in rural Java can appear contradictory to those both inside and outside the culture. In some ways, women have high status and broad access to resources, but other situations suggest that Javanese women lack real power and autonomy. Javanese women have major responsibilities in supporting their families and controlling household finances. They may also own and manage their own property. Yet these symbols and potential sources of independence and influence are determined by a culturally prescribed, state-reinforced, patriarchal gender ideology that limits women’s autonomy. Power, Change, and Gender Relations in Rural Java examines this contradiction as well as sources of stability and change in contemporary Javanese gender relations.

The authors conducted their research in two rural villages in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, during three important historical and political periods: the end of the New Order regime; the transitional period of reformation; and the subsequent establishment of a democratic government. Their collaboration brings a unique perspective, analyzing how gender is constructed and reproduced and how power is exercised as Indonesia faces the challenges of building a new social order.

For more information about this book visit ohioswallow.com/book/Power%2C+Change%2C+and+Gender+Relations+in+Rural+Java.
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The Return of the Galon King

Wed, 17 Nov 2010

The Return of the Galon King
History, Law, and Rebellion in Colonial Burma

By Maitrii Aung–Thwin

In late 1930, on a secluded mountain overlooking the rural paddy fields of British Burma, a peasant leader named Saya San crowned himself King and inaugurated a series of uprisings that would later erupt into one of the largest anti-colonial rebellions in Southeast Asian history. Considered an imposter by the British, a hero by nationalists, and a prophet-king by area-studies specialists, Saya San came to embody traditional Southeast Asia’s encounter with European colonialism in his attempt to resurrect the lost throne of Burma.

The Return of the Galon King analyzes the legal origins of the Saya San story and reconsiders the facts upon which the basic narrative and interpretations of the rebellion are based. Aung-Thwin reveals how counter-insurgency law produced and criminalized Burmese culture, contributing to the way peasant resistance was recorded in the archives and understood by Southeast Asian scholars.

This interdisciplinary study reveals how colonial anthropologists, lawyers, and scholar-administrators produced interpretations of Burmese culture that influenced contemporary notions of Southeast Asian resistance and protest. It provides a fascinating case study of how history is treated by the law, how history emerges in legal decisions, and how the authority of the past is used to validate legal findings.

For more information about this book visit ohioswallow.com/book/The+Return+of+the+Galon+King.
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Resistance on the National Stage

Sun, 17 Oct 2010

Resistance on the National Stage
Theater and Politics in Late New Order Indonesia

By Michael H. Bodden

Resistance on the National Stage analyzes the ways in which, between 1985 and 1998, modern theater practitioners in Indonesia contributed to a rising movement of social protest against the long-governing New Order regime of President Suharto. It examines the work of an array of theater groups and networks from Jakarta, Bandung, and Yogyakarta that pioneered new forms of theater-making and new themes that were often presented more directly and critically than previous groups had dared to do.

Michael H. Bodden looks at a wide range of case studies to show how theater contributed to and helped build the opposition. He also looks at how specific combinations of social groups created tensions and gave modern theater a special role in bridging social gaps and creating social networks that expanded the reach of the prodemocracy movement. Theater workers constructed new social networks by involving peasants, Muslim youth, industrial workers, and lower-middle-class slum dwellers in theater productions about their own lives. Such networking and resistance established theater as one significant arena in which the groundwork for the ouster of Suharto in May 1998, and the succeeding Reform era, was laid.

Resistance on the National Stage will have broad appeal, not only for scholars of contemporary Indonesian culture and theater, but also for those interested in Indonesian history and politics, as well as scholars of postcolonial theater and culture.

For more information about this book visit ohioswallow.com/book/Resistance+on+the++National+Stage.
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Between Frontiers

Mon, 15 Mar 2010

Between Frontiers
Nation and Identity in a Southeast Asian Borderland

By Noboru Ishikawa

A staple of postwar academic writing, “nationalism” is a contentious and often unanalyzed abstraction. It is generally treated as something “imagined,” “fashioned,” and “disseminated,” as an idea located in the mind, in printed matter, on maps, in symbols such as flags and anthems, and in collective memory. Between Frontiers restores the nation to the social field from which it has been abstracted by looking at how the concept shapes the existence of people in border zones, where they live between nations.

Noboru Ishikawa grounds his discussion of border zones in materials gathered during two years of archival research and fieldwork relating to the boundary that separates Malaysian from Indonesian territory in western Borneo. His book considers how the state maintains its national space and how people strategically situate themselves by their community, nation, and ethnic group designated as national territory. Examining these issues in the context of concrete circumstances, where a village boundary coincides with a national border, allows him to delineate the dialectical relationship between nation-state and borderland society both as history and as process. Scholars across the humanities and social sciences will learn from this masterful linking of history and ethnography, and of macro and micro perspectives.

For more information about this book visit ohioswallow.com/book/Between+Frontiers.
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Sino–Malay Trade and Diplomacy from the Tenth through the Fourteenth Century

Sun, 15 Nov 2009

Sino–Malay Trade and Diplomacy from the Tenth through the Fourteenth Century

By Derek Heng

China has been an important player in the international economy for two thousand years and has historically exerted enormous influence over the development and nature of political and economic affairs in the regions beyond its borders, especially its neighbors.

Sino–Malay Trade and Diplomacy from the Tenth through the Fourteenth Century examines how changes in foreign policy and economic perspectives of the Chinese court affected diplomatic intercourse as well as the fundamental nature of economic interaction between China and the Malay region, a subregion of Southeast Asia centered on the Strait of Malacca.

This study’s uniqueness and value lie in its integration of archaeological, epigraphic, and textual data from both China and Southeast Asia to provide a rich, multilayered picture of Sino–Southeast Asian relations in the premodern era. Derek Heng approaches the topic from both the Southeast Asian and Chinese perspectives, affording a dual narrative otherwise unavailable in the current body of Southeast Asian and China studies literature.

For more information about this book visit ohioswallow.com/book/Sino%E2%80%93Malay+Trade+and+Diplomacy+from+the+Tenth+through+the+Fourteenth+Century.
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Wartime in Burma

Sat, 15 Aug 2009

Wartime in Burma
A Diary, January to June 1942

Edited by L. E. Bagshawe and Anna J. Allott

This diary, begun after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and covering the invasion of Burma up to June 1942, is a moving account of the dilemmas faced by the well-loved and prolific Burmese author Theippan Maung Wa (a pseudonym of U Sein Tin) and his family. At the time of the Japanese invasion, U Sein Tin was deputy secretary in the Ministry of Home and Defense Affairs. An Oxford-trained member of the Indian Civil Service, working for the British administration on the eve of the invasion, he lived with his wife and three small children in Rangoon.

Wartime in Burma is a stirring memoir that presents a personal account of U Sein Tin’s feelings about the war, his anxiety for the safety of his family, the bombing of Rangoon, and what happened to them during the next six chaotic months of the British retreat. The author and his family leave Rangoon to live in a remote forest in Upper Burma with several other Burmese civil servants, their staff, and valuable possessions—rich pickings for robbers. His diary ends abruptly on June 5, his forty-second birthday; U Sein Tin was murdered on June 6 by a gang of Burmese bandits. The diary pages, scattered on the floor of the house, were rescued by his wife and eventually published in Burma in 1966.   What survives is a unique account that shines new light on the military retreat from Burma.

For more information about this book visit ohioswallow.com/book/Wartime+in+Burma.
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Indonesian Exports, Peasant Agriculture and the World Economy 1850–2000

Thu, 15 Jan 2009

Indonesian Exports, Peasant Agriculture and the World Economy 1850–2000
Economic Structures in a Southeast Asian State

By Hiroyoshi Kano

The Indonesian economy, like the Indonesian nation state, took shape as part of the colonial transformation of the archipelago by the Dutch in the mid-nineteenth century. The agricultural sector of the economy provided food and labor to the export sector, which was firmly incorporated into the world economy through international trade. This economic pattern survived several shifts and persisted even after Indonesia became independent in the mid-twentieth century.

Hiroyoshi Kano uses international trade statistics to analyze three key elements of the Indonesian economy: the balance of international trade and payments, the transformation undergone by leading export industries, and the way in which the agricultural sector supplied land, labor, and food. Dividing the 150 years covered by the book into four periods, based on the prevailing major export industries, Kano identifies key actors and analyzes long-term changes in agricultural production and rural society, examining how they shaped the national Indonesian economy. Well-written and well-organized, this book is essential reading for students and scholars of Indonesian and international business and economic history.

For more information about this book visit ohioswallow.com/book/Indonesian+Exports%2C+Peasant+Agriculture+and+the+World+Economy+1850%E2%80%932000.
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Silenced Voices

Sat, 15 Nov 2008

Silenced Voices
Uncovering a Family’s Colonial History in Indonesia

By Inez Hollander

Like a number of Netherlanders in the post–World War II era, Inez Hollander only gradually became aware of her family’s connections with its Dutch colonial past, including a Creole great-grandmother. For the most part, such personal stories have been, if not entirely silenced, at least only whispered about in Holland, where society has remained uncomfortable with many aspects of the country’s relationship with its colonial empire.

Unlike the majority of memoirs that are soaked in nostalgia for tempo dulu, Hollander’s story sets out to come to grips with her family’s past by weaving together personal records with historical and literary accounts of the period. She seeks not merely to locate and preserve family memories, but also to test them against a more disinterested historical record. Hers is a complicated and sometimes painful personal journey of realization, unusually mindful of the ways in which past memories and present considerations can be intermingled when we seek to understand a difficult past. Silenced Voices is an important contribution to the literature on how Dutch society has dealt with its recent colonial history.

For more information about this book visit ohioswallow.com/book/Silenced+Voices.
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BitterSweet

Wed, 22 Oct 2008

BitterSweet
The Memoir of a Chinese Indonesian Family in the Twentieth Century

By Stuart Pearson

Millions of Chinese have left the mainland over the last two centuries in search of new beginnings. The majority went to Southeast Asia, and the single largest destination was the colony of the Dutch East Indies, now known as Indonesia. Wherever the Chinese landed they prospered, but in Indonesia, even though some families made fortunes, they never felt they quite belonged.

BitterSweet is the account of one Chinese-Indonesian family whose story stretches over the generations as their fortunes waxed and waned through revolution, riots, war, depression, occupation, and finally emigration to yet another country—Australia.

BitterSweet offers a unique insight into a world rarely seen before. An Sudibjo’s memoir, written from a woman’s perspective, is a valuable resource for anyone studying Indonesian history or the Chinese Diaspora.

An Utari Sudibjo (b. 1912) was a fifth-generation Chinese resident of the Netherlands East Indies. In 1967, after a distinguished career as a senior civil servant in the Dutch colonial and then the Indonesian Education Department, she and her husband emigrated to Australia where they operated a restaurant for the next 30 years. She lives in a nursing home in Sydney, aged 95.

For more information about this book visit ohioswallow.com/book/BitterSweet.
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Realizing the Dream of R. A. Kartini

Sun, 13 Jan 2008

Realizing the Dream of R. A. Kartini
Her Sisters’ Letters from Colonial Java

Edited by Joost J. Coté

Realizing the Dream of R. A. Kartini: Her Sisters’ Letters from Colonial Java presents a unique collection of documents reflecting the lives, attitudes, and politics of four Javanese women in the early twentieth century. Joost J. Coté translates the correspondence between Raden Ajeng Kartini, Indonesia’s first feminist, and her sisters, revealing for the first time her sisters’ contributions in defining and carrying out her ideals. With this collection, Coté aims to situate Kartini’s sisters within the more famous Kartini narrative–and indirectly to situate Kartini herself within a broader narrative.

The letters reveal the emotional lives of these modern women and their concerns for the welfare of their husbands and the success of their children in rapidly changing times. While by no means radical nationalists, and not yet extending their horizons to the possibility of an Indonesian nation, these members of a new middle class nevertheless confidently express their belief in their own national identity.

Realizing the Dream of R. A. Kartini is essential reading for scholars of Indonesian history, providing documentary evidence of the culture of modern, urban Java in the late colonial era and an insight into the ferment of the Indonesian nationalist movement in which these women and their husbands played representative roles.

For more information about this book visit ohioswallow.com/book/Realizing+the+Dream+of+R.+A.+Kartini.
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