This book is a closely-observed anthropological study of life in two small Javanese towns and, at the same time, it attempts a general analysis on sociological lines of some key characteristics of contemporary Javanese society. In particular, the author's examination of the manner in which a pre-existing authoritarian system is being adapted to republican institutions grounded in democratic ideas helps us to understand many of Indonesia's present-day social and political problems.

Presents speeches by various African American religious and political leaders from the days of slavery to the present, along with biographical information and historical background.

In this brilliant ethnography of contemporary Java, James Siegel analyzes how language operates to organize and to order an Indonesian people. Despite the imposition of Suharto's New Order, the inhabitants of the city of Solo continue to adhere to their own complex ideas of deference and hierarchy through translation between high and low Javanese speech styles. Siegel uncovers moments when translation fails and compulsive mimicry ensues. His examination of communication and its failures also exposes the ways a culture reconstitutes itself. It leads to insights into the "accidents" that precede the formulations of culture as such.

President Barack Obama’s mother, S. Ann Dunham, was an economic anthropologist and rural development consultant who worked in several countries including Indonesia. Dunham received her doctorate in 1992. She died in 1995, at the age of 52, before having the opportunity to revise her dissertation for publication, as she had planned. Dunham’s dissertation adviser Alice G. Dewey and her fellow graduate student Nancy I. Cooper undertook the revisions at the request of Dunham’s daughter, Maya Soetoro-Ng. The result is Surviving against the Odds, a book based on Dunham’s research over a period of fourteen years among the rural metalworkers of Java, the island home to nearly half Indonesia’s population. Surviving against the Odds reflects Dunham’s commitment to helping small-scale village industries survive; her pragmatic, non-ideological approach to research and problem solving; and her impressive command of history, economic data, and development policy. Along with photographs of Dunham, the book includes many pictures taken by her in Indonesia. After Dunham married Lolo Soetoro in 1967, she and her six-year-old son, Barack Obama, moved from Hawai‘i to Soetoro’s home in Jakarta, where Maya Soetoro was born three years later. Barack returned to Hawai‘i to attend school in 1971. Dedicated to Dunham’s mother Madelyn, her adviser Alice, and “Barack and Maya, who seldom complained when their mother was in the field,” Surviving against the Odds centers on the metalworking industries in the Javanese village of Kajar. Focusing attention on the small rural industries overlooked by many scholars, Dunham argued that wet-rice cultivation was not the only viable economic activity in rural Southeast Asia. Surviving against the Odds includes a preface by the editors, Alice G. Dewey and Nancy I. Cooper, and a foreword by her daughter Maya Soetoro-Ng, each of which discusses Dunham and her career. In his afterword, the anthropologist and Indonesianist Robert W. Hefner explores the content of Surviving against the Odds, its relation to anthropology when it was researched and written, and its continuing relevance today.

In sharp contrast to today's disorder was the apparent cohesion and stability of Indonesia during much of the New Order period (1965-1998). While Suharto's authoritarian rule was significant, the regime's cultural policies also played their part in demonstrating that his regime created order throughout Indonesia not just through coercive means. Ethnic, religious, and regional sentiments were to be channelled into art, which was used to help develop a national Indonesian identity. This theme is explored by this study, which focuses on the efforts of a group of young art students based at the Bandung Academy of Performing Arts to revitalize traditional Longser theater.

This volume contains a selection from the papers presented at an interdisciplinary symposium on 'Images and ideas concerning women and the feminine in the Indonesian archipelago', organized in 1984 by the Werkgroep lndonesische Vrouwenstudies (WIVS), a Dutch interdisciplinary study group on Indonesian women. In the present volume, now in its second printing, notions about women in Indonesia in past and present are treated in relation to their actual positions. The articles deal with cultural definitions of sex roles and their social implications, and thus link up with the current academic interest in gender studies. The contributions occupy varying positions on an imaginary scale ranging from an approach primarily concerned with underlying cultural principles to one focused on the social context. Some show a clearly 'culturalist' approach, dealing with female symbols in Balinese offerings, female figures in Indonesian agricultural myths, and Tolaki views on procreation and production. The contributions on the images of women in Indonesian literature, views on the prostitute in colonial society, and the position of women in marriage in Madura and the Minahasa more or less take an intermediate position. The 'sociological' approach may be found in the contributions on the life of the educational pioneer Rahmah EI Yunusiya, on Indonesian-Chinese women, on priyayi women at the Central Javanese courts and in modern Jakarta, and on women's labor in pre-war and present-day Java. Recurring themes, such as sexual dualism, 'ibuism', and the questions of female power and authority, create unity in the diversity of regions and topics represented.