China Books

[Indent] Religious and ethnic violence between Indonesia's Muslim majority and Christian minorities escalated dramatically after Suharto resigned in 1998. In this first extensive ethnographic study of Christianisation in Indonesia, Lorraine Aragon delineates some background to this contemporary conflict. Fields of the Lord departs from many studies of comparative religion by positing that religions - like cultural groups - can no longer be considered as isolated or inherently 'orthodox' entities. Moreover, the realisations of particular religions in their social contexts are best understood through an examination of institutions mediating between the power of governments and the agency of particular individuals. To this end, Aragon closely details Central Sulawesi highlanders' institutions of farming and community leadership, regional patterns of exchange, ancestral cosmology, shamanic healing, sacrificial rituals, and ritual speech and song to determine the subtle shifts that have caused contemporary forms of these events to be deemed either Christian or 'un-Christian'. (For this item please quote stock ID 18102) ISBN: 9780824823030

'A powerful reading experience' - Pacific Reader Silenced Voices presents contemporary writing from Indonesia, and at the same time a selection of fiction, poetry and essays from throughout the Pacific region. Many of the Indonesian writers in the volume were imprisoned or persecuted for their opposition to the country's authoritarian governments and draconian restrictions on freedom of expression. Guest editor John H. McGlynn gathered the Indonesian writing, most of it banned or censored work and appearing in English for the first time. The authors are Hersri Setiawan, Sujinah, Abdul Latief, Ahmad Tohari, Ayu Utami, Seno Gumira Ajidarma, Putu Oka Sukanta, Goenawan Mohamad, and Ratna Sarumpaet. The works include fiction, poetry, essays, and courtroom testimony. In his overview essay, John McGlynn discusses the state of censorship in Indonesia as the country moves toward full democracy. The feature also includes an interview by Harold Augenbraum with Will Schwalbe, an editor at Hyperion and one of the strongest American supporters of censored Asian writers, about how Schwalbe came to publish Pramoedya Ananta Toer. John H. McGlynn is a long-time resident of Jakarta. He has edited and translated several dozen volumes. Manoa: New Writing from America, the Pacific, and Asia (For this item please quote stock ID 18115) ISBN: 9780824823214

[Indent] This richly illustrated volume is a study of the temples created in East Java between the 10th and 16th centuries, filling an important scholarly lacuna. The arts of Central Java, home of the great Buddhist monument, Borobudur, and Hindu Prambanan, have been given thorough scholarly attention. The architectural and sculptural treasures of the East Javanese kingdoms of Kadiri, Singasari, and Majapahit are little known in comparison, yet beautiful and significant in Indonesian history. The author presents the major sites of these three historical periods and discusses their architecture and sculpture. The many narrative reliefs illustrating sacred and secular literature have been painstakingly identified. The reader is thus able to follow their stories and understand where, why, and how they fit into the visual program planned for each temple and their relation to historical events and the wayang theater. These descriptions are augmented by extensive site summaries. Superb colour photography supports the text throughout and is a major contribution in itself. Ann Kinney has a lifelong interest in Asia, growing up in Japan and living in Vietnam and Indonesia, where her husband served as the American Consul in Surabaya, East Java. She received her Ph.D. in economics from Columbia University and lives in New York City. (For this item please quote stock ID 21226) ISBN: 9780824827793

[Indent] Hard Bargaining in Sumatra is an artfully written and penetrating examination of interactions between Western travellers and Toba Batak wood carvers in the souvenir marketplaces of Samosir Island, North Sumatra. Toba Batak carvings, ranging from simple human figures of wood to elaborately engraved water buffalo horns, are described in tourist guidebooks and by Toba Batak vendors alike as 'traditional' and 'antique,' despite many recent changes and inventions in form. This pathbreaking work investigates how notions of place and self are constructed by the travellers and the Bataks in the context of ethnic tourism. The author proposes that these interactions be understood in light of Louis Marin's concept of utopics, suggesting that tourist venues such as hotels and marketplaces are neutral spaces where both locals and visitors can act out behaviors that would ordinarily be constrained by their respective cultures. The transformation of Toba Batak woodcarving is one result of such marketplace interactions. The Western tourist's desire for traditional art has encouraged Batak carvers to continue to make objects based on forms developed by their animist predecessors, the majority of whom converted to Christianity at the turn of the century. Toba Batak carving style, however, is far from static; artisans create innovative pieces that they frame within the same historically legitimizing narratives used for 'traditional' objects. Tourists, seeking proof of their travels in representative icons of place, purchase both innovative and traditional forms, largely unaware of the difference. Rich in ethnographic description and employing a lively narrative style, Hard Bargaining in Sumatra is essential reading for students and scholars with interests in anthropology, cultural studies, globalisation and tourism research, art history, and identity studies. Andrew Causey is professor of anthropology at Columbia College Chicago. (For this item please quote stock ID 21242) ISBN: 9780824827472

[Indent] The impact of the Indonesian spice trade on global and, more particularly, European history has been widely acknowledged. Although more recent studies have gone beyond the preoccupation with the colonial relationship to provide a more 'Asia-centric' view, On the Edge of the Banda Zone is the first to focus an anthropological lens on the dynamics of trade in a specific area: that incorporating the Seram Laut and Gorom archipelagoes (and the adjacent mainland) of east Seram, in the Moluccas. The point of departure for Roy Ellen's analysis is a description of trade relations in the east Seram zone between 1970 and 1990, but the wider importance of the data presented here is readily apparent: For 500 years (and probably much longer), it has served as a corridor between Eurasia and the southwestern Pacific and played a vital role in the production and distribution of nutmeg and other high-value commodities that have for centuries had an impact on the global economy. The islands themselves are minute and fragile ecosystems, ultimately dependent on the local networks of which they are a part and on the long-distance trade that has bound them to mainland Asia and beyond. Drawing on the author's fieldwork as well as archival and secondary sources, this ambitious, eclectic volume demonstrates the enduring continuities in the local system as it comes into contact with the changing outside world. It illuminates how barter, ecological and ethnic divisions of labor, exchange patterns, and the organisation of trade between the peoples of the New Guinea coast and east Seram, help us make sense of long-term cycles and trends. On the Edge of the Banda Zone not only provides readers with a 'production-end' account of the spice trade and an ethnography of a culturally distinctive part of Indonesia, but also forces us to rethink conventional approaches to the study of trade and the relationship between island Southeast Asia and the Pacific. Roy Ellen is professor of anthropology and human ecology at the University of Kent at Canterbury. (For this item please quote stock ID 21243) ISBN: 9780824826765

[Indent] This is at once a compendium for designers and an entertaining essay on the architecture of Asia's most glamorous tropical island by one of its foremost admirers. Landscape and architectural designer Made Wijaya draws on his extensive photographic archives, compiled over the past 30 years, to present a visual study of Balinese architecture: its origins, elements, variations, and vagaries. The book opens with an overview of Balinese architecture in its human context - the village. It then looks at the basic elements of Balinese architecture - the walled courtyard and the pavilion. Further chapters examine building materials, the Balinese love of ornamentation and the architectural hybrids resulting from other ethnic influences. Progressing through the book, Bali's intricate built landscape becomes legible and ever more surprising. Made Wijaya, born Michael White in Sydney, Australia, was an architecture student travelling in the Indonesian archipelago when he leapt overboard and swam to Bali's southern shore during a rainstorm in 1973. He has made his home in Bali ever since. (For this item please quote stock ID 21261) ISBN: 9780824826833

[Indent] Among Borneo's spectacular indigenous buildings, the longhouses, mortuary monuments, and other architectural forms of the interior are some of the most outstanding, and much of the renewed interest in indigenous architecture has focused on the rapidly vanishing or now extinct traditional forms of a small number of surviving examples or recreations. Drawing on the author's extensive research and travel in Borneo, this impressive and original study offers a more comprehensive account of this architecture than any previous work. Organised into two sections, the book first documents and explains traditional built forms in terms of tools and materials, the environmental context, village organisation, and social arrangements. This section includes a full discussion of architecture designs and symbolism, especially those dealing with life and death. The author next looks at the destruction or transformation of traditional architecture based on a number of interrelated developments, including religious conversion, Western influence, internal migration, and logging, as well as governmental attitudes and efforts. The book concludes with a discussion of recent efforts to document and preserve traditional structures and turn indigenous as well as colonial architecture into history and heritage. Robert Winzeler is professor of anthropology at the University of Nevada, Reno. (For this item please quote stock ID 22678) ISBN: 9780824826321

[Indent] Should a temple be seen as a work of art, its carvers as artists, its worshipers as art critics and patrons? What is a temple (and its art) to the people who make and use it? Noted anthropologist Hildred Geertz attempts to answer these and other questions in this unique look at transformations in material culture and social relations over time in a village temple in Bali. Throughout Geertz offers insightful glimpses into what the statues, structures, and designs of Pura Désa Batuan convey to those who worship there, deepening our understanding of how a village community evaluates workmanship and imagery. Following an introduction to the temple and villagers of Batuan, Geertz explores the problematics of the Western concept of 'art' as a guiding framework in research. She goes on to outline the many different kinds of work - ideational as well as physical - undertaken in connection with the temple and the social institutions that enable, constrain, and motivate their creation. Finally, the 'art-works' themselves are presented, set within the intricate socio-cultural contexts of their making. Using the history of Batuan as the main framework for discussing each piece, Geertz looks at the carvings from the perspective of their makers, each generation occupying a different social situation. She confronts concepts such as 'aesthetics,' 'representation,' 'sacredness,' and 'universality' and the dilemmas they create in field research and ethnographic writing. Recent temple carvings from the tumultuous and complex period that followed the expulsion of the Dutch and the increasing globalisation and commercialisation of Balinese society demonstrate yet again that any anthropology of art must also be historical. Hildred Geertz is professor emeritus of anthropology at Princeton University. (For this item please quote stock ID 22691) ISBN: 9780824825331

Tales from a Charmed Life is the last in a trilogy of works by Hildred Geertz exploring the complexity of Balinese history, religion, and society. A landmark study by one of the most distinguished anthropologists of Indonesia, it centres around the stories and paintings of Ida Bagus Madé Togog (1913-1989), an artist and ritual specialist who played a significant role in the history of Balinese ethnography. In the 1930s, Togog was central to Mead and Bateson's pioneering studies of 'Balinese character' and came under the influence of expatriate artists Walter Spies and Rudolf Bonnet to emerge as a major representative of the Batuan style of painting. Togog's art and anecdotal stories of his most memorable life experiences are here interwoven with Geertz's illuminating commentary to construct an innovative framework for understanding Balinese culture. Togog shares stories of his early life, relating dilemmas from his childhood and youth. Growing up in the wake of Dutch colonisation, he came into contact with new languages, customs, and economic opportunities that presented him with puzzling and poignant experiences. He tells of his association with Spies and Bonnet and later Mead and Bateson and his role in the creation of a genre of painting for which Bali is now famous. This is a view of Bali from the inside - a vivid, highly personal look at a world where spirits, ancestors, and sorcerers have the power to intervene in one's life. According to Togog, who narrowly escaped death numerous times, his was indeed a 'charmed life'. The other volumes in the trilogy are The Life of a Balinese Temple: Artistry, Imagination, & History in a Peasant Village (2004) and Images of Power: Balinese Paintings Made for Gregory Bateson & Margaret Mead (1994). Hildred Geertz is professor emeritus of anthropology at Princeton University. (For this item please quote stock ID 24888) ISBN: 9780824828226

Southeast Asia: Politics, Meaning, and Memory Art as Politics explores the intersection of art, identity politics, and tourism in Sulawesi, Indonesia. Based on long-term ethnographic research from the 1980s to the present, the book offers a nuanced portrayal of the Sa'dan Toraja, a predominantly Christian minority group in the world's most populous Muslim country. Celebrated in anthropological and tourism literatures for their spectacular traditional houses, sculpted effigies of the dead, and pageantry-filled funeral rituals, the Toraja have entered an era of accelerated engagement with the global economy marked by on-going struggles over identity, religion, and social relations. In her engaging account, Kathleen Adams chronicles how various Toraja individuals and groups have drawn upon artistically-embellished 'traditional' objects ? as well as monumental displays, museums, UNESCO ideas about 'word heritage', and the World Wide Web ? to shore up or realign aspects of a cultural heritage perceived to be under threat. She also considers how outsiders ? be they tourists, art collectors, members of rival ethnic groups, or government officials ? have appropriated and reframed Toraja art objects for their own purposes. Her account illustrates how art can serve as a catalyst in identity politics, especially in the context of tourism and social upheaval. Ultimately, this insightful work prompts readers to rethink persistent and pernicious popular assumptions ? that tourism invariably brings a loss of agency to local communities or that tourist art is a compromised form of expression. Art as Politics promises to be a favourite with students and scholars of anthropology, sociology, cultural studies, ethnic relations, art, and Asian studies. Kathleen M. Adams is professor of anthropology at Loyola University Chicago and adjunct curator at the Field Museum of Natural History. (For this item please quote stock ID 27087) ISBN: 9780824830724

(For this item please quote stock ID 13268) ISBN: 9780824816544

[Indent] Religious and ethnic violence between Indonesia's Muslim majority and Christian minorities escalated dramatically after Suharto resigned in 1998. In this first extensive ethnographic study of Christianisation in Indonesia, Lorraine Aragon delineates some background to this contemporary conflict. (For this item please quote stock ID 18103) ISBN: 9780824821715

One of the world's most intensively studied societies, Bali has hosted scholars and writers as renowned as Margaret Mead, Gregory Bateson, Miguel Covarrubias, Fred Barth, and Hildred and Clifford Geertz. Staying Local in the Global Village is part of a continuing tradition in which Balinese and foreign scholars reflect on the processes of transformation that link Bali to Indonesia and the world beyond. The chapters in this volume are based on research carried out in the early 1990s, when Suharto's New Order still enjoyed widespread legitimacy in Indonesia. Even then, political consensus in Bali was weakened by the inhabitants' view of themselves as an exploited minority of Hindus in a nation dominated by Islamic Javanese. As this book reveals, the ambivalent positioning of Balinese vis-à-vis the national and the global in recent decades has been played out in many different spheres of life. (For this item please quote stock ID 12260) ISBN: 9780824821173

[Indent] In this study of early modern Makassar in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, William Cummings traces the social, cultural, and political significance of the transition from oral to literate culture in one region of Indonesia. He examines 'history-making' - the ways in which the past is perceived, interpreted, and used at a crucial moment in early modern Makassar when conceptions of history are being transformed by the advent of literacy. Central to his argument is the notion that histories are not just records or representations of the past but are themselves forces or agents capable of transforming the worlds in which humans live. Not simply structured by the prevailing social, cultural, and ideological contexts in which they are made, they also shape these contexts. Making Blood White bears in important ways on the historiography of Southeast Asia in general and will be read by students of the region's history and anthropology as well as by those interested in the relationships of history, literacy, and politics in premodern Asia. William Cummings is assistant professor of interdisciplinary studies at the University of South Florida. (For this item please quote stock ID 18080) ISBN: 9780824825133

Even as Major General Suharto consolidated his power in the bloodletting of the mid-sixties, Freeport-McMoRan, the American transnational mining company, signed a contract with the new military regime, the first foreign company to do so. Today, in the isolated jungles of West Papua, a region that is increasingly restive under Indonesian rule, Freeport lays claim to the world's largest gold mine and one of its richest and most profitable copper mines. This volume is the first major analysis of the company's presence in Indonesia. It takes a close and detailed look at the changing nature of power relations between Freeport and Suharto, the Indonesian military, the traditional landowners (the Amungme and Kamoro), and environmental and human rights groups. It examines how and why an American company, despite such rigorous home-state laws, was able to operate in West Papua with impunity for nearly 30 years and adapt to, indeed thrive in, a business culture anchored in corruption, collusion, and nepotism. Denise Leith has a Ph.D. in politics from Macquarie University, Sydney. (For this item please quote stock ID 20283) ISBN: 9780824825669

[Indent] The last decade has seen widespread Islamic religious revitalisation in Southeast Asia, a region with a Muslim population almost as large as that of the entire Arabic-speaking Middle East. One such movement in 1990s Indonesia promoted engagement with the Qur`ân through memorisation, reading, skilled performance, and popular competitions in recitation. This movement drew on longstanding structures of Islamic education and piety, social interests, Southeast Asian patterns of performance and aesthetics, and unique features of the Qur`ân itself. Based on fieldwork in South Sulawesi and elsewhere in Indonesia, Perfection Makes Practice vividly portrays Indonesian Muslims' committed practice of perfecting their own (and others') Qur`ânic piety. 'Drawing from anthropology and the history of religions, this book shows the potential for a re-awakened and engaged understanding of everyday Islam in Southeast Asia and its relationship to traditions of Qur'ânic recital and schooling' - Kenneth George, University of Wisconsin-Madison. 'Offers a remarkable view into the Qur'ân as it is learned and as it is lived within the world's largest Muslim society ... Essential reading for Qur'ânic studies, Islamic studies, and comparative approaches to sacred texts' - Michael Sells, Haverford College. Anna Gade is an assistant professor of religion at Oberlin College. (For this item please quote stock ID 22690) ISBN: 9780824825997

Over the course of 1000 years, from 600 to 1600 CE, the Java Sea was dominated by a ring of maritime kingdoms whose rulers engaged in long-distance raiding, trading, and marriage alliances with one another. And the Sun Pursued the Moon explores the economic, political, and symbolic processes by which early Makassar communities were incorporated into this regional system. As successive empires like Srivijaya, Kediri, Majapahit, and Melaka gained hegemony over the region; they introduced different models of kingship in peripheral areas like the Makassar coast of South Sulawesi. As each successive model of royal power gained currency, it became embedded in local myth and ritual. To better understand the relationship between symbolic knowledge and traditional royal authority in Makassar society, Thomas Gibson draws on a wide range of sources and academic disciplines. He shows how myth and ritual link practical forms of knowledge (boat-building, navigation, agriculture, warfare) to basic social categories such as gender and hereditary rank, as well as to environmental, celestial, and cosmological phenomena. He also shows how concrete historical agents have used this symbolic infrastructure to advance their own political and ideological purposes. Gibson concludes by situating this material in relation to Islam and to life-cycle rituals. Thomas Gibson is associate professor of anthropology at the University of Rochester. (For this item please quote stock ID 25223) ISBN: 9780824828653

The spectacular Lingsar festival is held annually at a village temple complex built above the most abundant water springs on the island of Lombok, near Bali. Participants come to the festival not only for the efficacy of its rites but also for its spiritual, social, and musical experience. A nexus of religious, political, artistic, and agrarian interests, the festival also serves to harmonise relations between indigenous Sasak Muslims and migrant Balinese Hindus. Ethnic tensions, however, lie beneath the surface of cooperative behavior, and struggles regularly erupt over which group - Balinese or Sasak - owns the past and dominates the present. Bridges to the Ancestors is a broad ethnographic study of the festival based on over two decades of research. The work addresses the festival's players, performing arts, rites, and histories, and considers its relationship to the island's sociocultural and political trends. Music, the most public icon of the festival, has been largely responsible for overcoming differences between the island's two ethnic groups. Through the intermingling of Balinese and Sasak musics at the festival, a profound union has been forged, which participants confirm has been the event's primary social role. Bridges to the Ancestors effectively reveals the Lingsar festival as a site of cultural struggle as the author explores how history, identity, and power are constructed and negotiated. He addresses the fascinating interaction between music and myth and the forces of modernity, globalisation, authenticity, tourism, religion, regionalism, and nationalism in maintaining 'tradition.' David Harnish is associate professor of ethnomusicology and director of Balinese gamelan Kusuma Sari at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. (For this item please quote stock ID 25241) ISBN: 9780824829148

This original and innovative book challenges many of our long-held assumptions about traditional Balinese religion. Drawing on data from visual art, mythology, esoteric texts, and public rituals, Michele Stephen identifies a core of important mystical themes at the heart of Balinese religion and demonstrates the striking parallels between these and Indian Tantric thought. She argues that Balinese cosmology can be better understood in terms of transformations, ambivalence, and dynamic cycles of desire and destruction rather than the fixed hierarchies, harmonies, and balance that have dominated previous accounts. Far from being primarily a matter of customary forms and public ritual, the author shows that Balinese religion also encompasses important streams of mystical thought, including the inner spiritual discipline of various yogic teachings. Desire, Divine & Demonic begins with an introduction to the problems of defining mysticism in Bali, a discussion of prevailing scholarly views concerning the nature of Balinese religion, and a brief description of the link between art and religion in Balinese culture. What follows is an intriguing analysis of two series of paintings by contemporary Balinese artists I Ketut Budiana and I Gusti Nyoman Mirdiana, who specialize in mystical and mythological scenes. These paintings, in Stephen?s convincing interpretations, illustrate important mystical themes - themes that also appear in oral and textual versions of Balinese myths and philosophical texts and bear remarkable similarity to the basic premises of Indian Tantric thought. In the book?s final chapter, Stephen examines several well-known Balinese rituals to show how they can be reinterpreted as expressions of the central and classic themes of Shivaitic Tantric philosophy. Desire, Divine & Demonic provides an important and timely reassessment of the nature of Balinese religion as it has survived in the modern era. It will generate fresh debate and research as Balinese religious thought and practice continue to be reproduced and re-created in the 21st century. Michele Stephen is senior lecturer in anthropology at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia (For this item please quote stock ID 24890) ISBN: 9780824828592