Indonesia is in the midst of an epic transition as it moves from decades of authoritarian government to a new era of democratic opening, from years of secular government to a time of struggle over the role of Islam in public life, and from the breakdown of a 'miracle' economy to a search for resilience in the face of global forces. In this timely work, leading scholars analyze the causes of the social, political, and economic crises that erupted in Indonesia in the late 1990s, the responses of the elite and civil society, and the prospects for continuing reform. In the process, they explore such issues as the relevance of the nation-state in an age of globalization, the role of Islam in politics and violence, the strengths and weaknesses of a negotiated route to democratic governance, the relationship of corruption and structural reform to economic growth, and the prospects for stability in Southeast Asia. The first book to grapple with the scale and complexity of this historic transition, this work offers a clear and compelling introduction to the Indonesian experience for students with an interest in the problems of post-colonial states, to scholars in comparative Asian studies, and to anyone seeking a serious yet accessible introduction to the world's largest Islamic democracy. A Study of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University

The turn of the century and the crossroads of reformasi presents a timely juncture for examining Indonesia's political, economic, and social history--both to evaluate current events and to chart the country's future course. Providing an up-to-date overview, this volume explores events, processes, and themes in contemporary Indonesia--including the evolution of political institutions and democracy, economic development and political economy, religious and social movements, political ideology, and the role of the armed forces. By holding a mirror to historical events, the authors add a rich dimension to our understanding of Indonesia and its problems, free from the exigencies of the present and the prejudices of the past.

The proclamation by the United Nations General Assembly of the International Year to Commemorate the Struggle against Slavery and its Abolition during 2004 marked the culmination of recent efforts to re-engage with slavery’s past and create an intellectual, social, political and ethical climate conducive to a sustained and meaningful dialogue among cultures and civilisations. The past decade witnessed an upsurge of national and international exhibitions and conferences on the impact of slavery and the overwhelming and enduring cultural miscegenation and the demographic, socio-political and spiritual hybridisation that the phenomenon consciously or unconsciously initiated; the celebration of efforts by Abolitionists to publicise the savagery of this inhumane practice; a revival of interest in and the glorification of, the often ignored or historically negatively represented resistance to slavery by slaves themselves; and, numerous endeavours to address the negative legacies of slavery like racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, which continue to impinge upon our present as part of contemporary politics. Yet, these ventures aimed at raising awareness of the horrors of slave trade and slavery, at honouring struggles for the emancipation of the enslaved, at examining the aftermath of slavery like the emergence of a new historic consciousness, at restoring broken links and solidarity between the historically dislocated diasporas and their countries of origin, at commemorating sites of memory, and, at celebrating artistic and cultural métissage, such as the UNESCO’s Slave Route Project, have largely focused on the Atlantic World, and the deportation of slaves from Africa to other parts of the World, raising questions about the legacy of slavery in other societies, like those in Asia, the Pacific and Europe, where slavery still remains on the margins of national and post-colonial histories. This edited volume is an attempt to reconsider slavery as a global human institution which has coexisted with other socio-political, economic, legal and cultural institutions. As a temporally and spatially ubiquitous phenomenon, it has generated and continues to, engender legacies, be they historical, oral or visual, which need to be compared and discussed to facilitate dialogue between cultures and civilisations and to mitigate the wounds of the past which continue to scar our present. It brings together writings by scholars from history, literature, anthropology and cultural studies who examine the indelible mark left by slavery in its various forms, on societies, cultures and peoples all over the world and attempts by artistes and writers to alleviate this stigmata of History. This volume consists of two sections. The first section entitled "Connecting Histories" explores some of the varied forms in which slavery presented itself in the last four centuries and the need to reengage with its legacies. Adhering to Manning’s contention that slavery is "an enduring metaphor for inequities in the treatment of humans", this section focuses on identifying the legacy of slavery and its significance in scholarship (Manning); alternate perspectives on slavery through the examination of forced labour and the dehumanising treatment of indigenous people in Australia (Read), enforced migration and labour exploitation of convicts in penal colonies (Maxwell-Stewart); and, a historical overview of Lusitanian slavery in India (D’Souza) and the hybridisation of pre-colonial slavery traditions in the perpetuation of the perkerniersstelse, or a profitably managed European settler-colony based on the global monopoly of nutmeg production, by the Dutch (Winn). The second section of the book entitled "Centering Discourses: Identity, Image and Text" begins with a postcolonialist reading of Caribbean slavery as a legacy of capitalism, imperialism and plantation culture and above all, the globalization of sugar consumption (Ashcroft). The two chapters that follow resuscitate two of the many categories of slaves who were victims of historical silence, namely children in the sugar plantations of the West Indies (Teelucksingh) and Martiniquan maroons (Fernandes-Dias). Articulating with the discourse on identity and cultural appropriation introduced in the preceding essay, chapter nine provides an overview of the power struggle at work in the construction of Creole identity and its political legitimization, through a topical analysis of the process of commemoration of a "site of memory", Le Morne Brabant, symbol of slavery and marronage in the Mauritian collective memory (Carmignani). The final two chapters explore the problematics of presenting slavery through the adoption of a counter-hegemonic discourse, particularly through the arts. Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko which exalts the Black slave as a hero without making any explicit case for the abolition of slavery, continues to occupy the terrain of sympathist - abolitionist ambiguity (Landford) while the Amistad case, despite its numerous positive legacies, demonstrates how excessive popularization of the incident as an Abolitionist cause célèbre, resulted in an overload of historical memory to the point of obscuring historical reality (Fernandes Dias). Despite the volume's overarching desire to provide a global and comparative overview of the historical, ideological, economical and cultural factors that contributed to the evolution of slavery and the legacies that the institution generated, this volume is limited in the thematic, chronological and geographic terrain that it has covered. We attribute this shortcoming to the complexity of slavery itself as an institution, the problematic of defining what constitutes slavery and the historical silence maintained over its dehumanizing effects. Yet the story of slavery is also a tale of survival, of resistance and of the resilience of the human spirit to transcend oppression and preserve its inherent dignity. It is the celebration of the rich cultural fusion and métissage that rose from the ashes of human suffering. The wounds of the past need to be healed, perhaps initially, at a mythopoetic level, through the articulation of repressed collective angst and its legacies through the arts and through scholarship.

This book examines how the cultural context influences the way in which young single women approach courtship, and issues of sexuality and reproductive health.

In this study John Saltford examines the unhelpful role of the international community, in particular the United Nations, in the handover of the Dutch colony of West Papua/Irian Jaya to Indonesia in the 1960s.

These two memoirs provide windows into the Sumatran past, in particular, and the early 20th-century history of south-east Asia, in general. In reconstructing their own passage into adulthood, the writers tell the story of their country's turbulent journey to independence.

This is an intensive study of Indonesian politics from the attainment of full independence in December 1949 to the proclamation of martial law in March 1957, and President Soekarno's subsequent establishment of "guided democracy". It is intended as a contribution to the ongoing discussion of democracy in the new states of Asia and Africa, of the ways in which Western political institutions are transformed when employed in non-Western social settings, and of the obstacles to be overcome if such institutions are to operate in consonance with the authority systems of new nations and with their solution of economic and administrative problems. Now brought back into print as a member of Equinox Publishing's Classic Indonesia series, The Decline of Constitutional Democracy is considered to be the definitive study of Indonesia in the 1950s and will be of great interest to the growing number of social scientists concerned with the pre-industrial nations and in particular with their efforts to use and adapt Western political institutions. This is a solid and scholarly account, but, writing on the basis of much personal observation, Dr. Feith manages to present his material in such a way that readers with no previous background in the subject will be able to follow the book almost as easily as will specialists. HERBERT FEITH (1930-2001) became familiar with Indonesia during 1951-53 and 1954-56 when he was an English Language Assistant with the Ministry of Information of the Republic of Indonesia. A citizen of Australia, he received an M.A. degree from the University of Melbourne in 1955 and a Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1961. He was a Research Fellow in the Department of Pacific History, Australian National University, from 1960 to 1962 and was Chair of Politics at Monash University from 1968 until 1974.