Showing papers in "Pacific Affairs in 1985"

Trade and Civilisation in the Indian Ocean: An Economic History from the Rise of Islam to 1750

Abstract: Introduction Part I. General Problems and Historical Events: 1. Trade and civilisation in the Indian Ocean: social, cultural, economic, and temporal dimensions 2. The rise of Islam and the pattern of pre-emporia trade in early Asia 3. The Portuguese seaborne empire in the Indian Ocean 4. The Dutch and English East India companies and the bureaucratic form of trade in Asia 5. Emporia trade and the great port-towns in the Indian Ocean Part II. Structure and la longue duree: 6. The sea and its mastery 7. Ships and shipbuilding in the Indian Ocean 8. The land and its relationship with long-distance trade 9. Commodities and markets 10. Capital and trade in the Indian Ocean: the problem of scale, merchants, money and production 11. Conclusion.

Ritualized homosexuality in Melanesia

Abstract: This book contains the work of seven leading anthropologists on the subject of ritualized homosexuality, and it marks the first time that anthropologists have systematically studied cross-cultural variations in homosexual behavior in a non-Western culture area. The book as a whole indicates that contemporary theories of sex and gender development need revision in light of the Melanesian findings.

Soeharto's Indonesia: Personal Rule and Political Institutions

Abstract: S TRONG POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS have not been a hallmark of Third World governments. With few exceptions, colonialism in Asia and Africa left a legacy of only rudimentary governmental institutions and even less-formed political party and interest group organizations. In these structureless environments, personal rule has been the almost inevitable alternative. Strong individuals, typically supported by armies, installed themselves in presidential palaces (formerly the residences of governors-general, also originally installed by armies) and swept away the flimsy and hastily-erected democratic scaffolding of late colonialism. In his still-influential Political Order in Changing Societies,' Samuel Huntington explained the widespread collapse of democratic regimes as the natural outcome of a situation in which the mobilization into politics of large numbers of detraditionalized people placed too heavy a load of demands on fledgling governments. Praetorianism, the direct control of government by social forces unmediated by political institutions, was Huntington's label for the personal or military regimes that replaced Western-derived democracies. Civic polities, in which autonomous political institutions-that is, one or more strong political partiespredominate over social forces, could ultimately be established following one of two routes: a "within-system" coalition of urban elites with the conservatively-led rural poor, which would enable the former to impose order on conflicts among urban lowerand middle-class groups; or the seizure of central power by a revolutionary opposition supported by radicalized peasants. The second alternative is clearly the Communist model. The first-paradoxically, Huntington says-is initially highly traditionalizing, because it is based on a conservative rural following. But the stability of an urban-rural conservative coalition buys time for a more thoroughgoing modernization to take place. The gradual growth of the party system keeps pace with the emergence of newly-mobilized social forces, and the end result is a developed civic polity.

The United States and the Overthrow of Sukarno, 1965-1967

Abstract: IN THIS SHORT PAPER on a huge and vexed subject, I discuss the U.S. involvement in the bloody overthrow of Indonesia's President Sukarno, 1965-67. The whole story of that ill-understood period would transcend even the fullest possible written analysis. Much of what happened can never be documented; and of the documentation that survives, much is both controversial and unverifiable. The slaughter of Sukarno's left-wing allies was a product of widespread paranoia as well as of conspiratorial policy, and represents a tragedy beyond the intentions of any single group or coalition. Nor is it suggested that in 1965 the only provocations and violence came from the right-wing Indonesian military, their contacts in the United States, or (also important, but barely touched on here) their mutual contacts in British, German and Japanese intelligence. And yet, after all this has been said, the complex and ambiguous story of the Indonesian bloodbath is also in essence simpler and easier to believe than the public version inspired by President Suharto and U.S. government sources. Their problematic claim is that in the so-called Gestapu (Gerakan September Tigahpuluh) coup attempt of September 30, 1965 (when six senior army generals were murdered), the left attacked the right, leading to a restoration of power, and punitive purge of the left, by the center.' This article argues instead that, by inducing, or at a minimum helping to induce, the Gestapu "coup," the right in the Indonesian Army eliminated its rivals at the army's center, thus paving the way to a long-planned elimination of the civilian left, and eventually

The Decollectivization of the Chinese Countryside: A Survey of Twenty-eight Villages

Abstract: CHINA'S RECENT MOVE away from collective agriculture has affected very dramatically the lives of three-quarters of a billion people. It may well constitute the single most important policy shift in China since the introduction of collectives in the mid-1950s. The restoration of family farming has been so recent, however, that a whole range of simple questions remain as yet unanswered. Did the peasantry play any role in deciding whether their village should decollectivize? Did they help decide what new type of agricultural system should be implemented locally? Were any sizeable numbers of peasants opposed to the breakup of collective production and, if so, on what grounds? What were the immediate effects on the different types of peasant households? To what degree have different types of villages been differently affected by the changeover to family smallholdings? In an attempt to answer such questions, a series of interviews was conducted in mid-1983 with twenty-eight emigrants from the Chinese countryside who were working in Hong Kong and who regularly returned to their home villages to visit their parents, spouses and children. Eighteen of them were from villages in Guangdong province; the remaining ten came from villages distributed in eight other provinces and regions.' All the twenty-eight had returned home on at least one extended visit, ranging from a week to several months in duration, during the year prior to the interviews. Such interviewing from afar cannot guarantee a scientifically random sample of villages, nor can interviewees always be counted on to provide precise and accurate information about every aspect of their native communities. But if conducted with all due caution, such interviews can provide a considerable amount of information unobtainable through other means.2 Though recent on-the-spot studies of decollectivization at

Women's work and women's roles : economics and everyday life in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore

Abstract: Ea:lT observers of Southeast Asian societies frequently commeittd upon the varied and disparate nature of women's work, anc xpon the authority and power which resulted from women's actiTe participation in the economy. Undoubtedly women in sone situations enjoyed far fewer restriction than did their comerpart in the homelands of their colonial rulers. The authors of this monograph have examined the roles of wonei, past and present, in a variety of societies, in Indon­ esia Malaysia and Singapore. The chapters deal with specific sociities and situations, and no attempt has been made at a conp-ehensive overview of areas, ethnic origins, religious or sociil classes. However, certain themes recur. One is that, since dev­ elopment and modernization began, women's contribution to soc­ iety has been increasingly ignored and undervalued. Second, althmgh industrialized development has provided opportunit­ ies for training and for earning money outside the village emi-onment, the opportunities have largely been for men. A third theme seems to be that, although many elite women ha^e been able to take advantage of the opportunities generated by dxvelopment, peasant women have almost always been disadvaitiged. The chapters generally show that the official, Westen-aifluenced, view of the woman's role as primarily that of wife and mother has constituted a loss for all women, and has en:r».nched attitudes which do not necessarily conform to the reilities of women past or present.

External China as a New Policy Area

Abstract: T HIS ESSAY SEEKS TO SHOW that some recent developments in the People's Republic of China mark the emergence of a new policy area that may be called External China (Waihua Zhengce).' This policy area would focus mainly on people outside the P.R.C. who are Chinese nationals of one kind or another as well as those people within China who are related to, and are identified with, ethnic Chinese outside China. This means that it is not simply about foreign policy or about matters outside China. Nor is it merely about the traditional Overseas Chinese or Huaqiao (Chinese sojourners) as commonly understood to include everybody who was of Chinese descent outside China. The new policy area includes people and problems inside China and therefore concerns aspects of domestic policy. For the moment, it seems to be a grey or ill-defined area that covers a large number of people inside and outside China, involves a mixture of foreign and domestic policies, and is the responsibility of a wide variety of central and local officials who have to work together on related problems. In addition, because it seems inclusive and ill-defined, it appears to be a growth area that has ramifications even more subtle and complex than the older policy area that concerned itself with all Overseas Chinese.2

The Orang Asli: Aboriginal Policies in Malaysia

Abstract: W A WITHIN THE ETHNIC MOSAIC that comprises Malaysia, the aborigines of the Malay peninsula are today both the most deprived and under-represented community in the country. Although these people make up only 0.7 percent of the population of Malaysia, they pose major dilemmas for government policy, and raise complex issues that affect inter-ethnic relations in the country as a whole. Their extreme poverty poses a major impediment to the government's promise in its New Economic Policy "to reduce and eventually eradicate poverty."' Furthermore, the controversial issues of "Malay special rights" and "Bumiputra (indigenous) rights" become even more complex and contentious if applied to these aboriginal peoples whose claim to indigenous status antedates all other communities. Finally, the issue of their eventual integration into Malay society or their continued separate identity in a multi-ethnic Malaysian society raises important symbolic issues of political alignment and ethnic balance in the country as a whole. Their small numbers and their relative political impotence thus belie their relative significance as a proving ground for government intentions on many sensitive, controversial and complex ethnic, religious and developmental issues.

The Fruits of Ambivalence: China's Urban Individual Economy

Abstract: IT HAS HOW BEEN more than six years since the watershed Third Plenum of the 11th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist party (CCP) initiated a dizzying series of changes in economic policy. Amidst the furore over special economic zones, agricultural responsibility systems, and the more recent urban industrial reforms, over three million people in China's cities are quietly going about their businessrunning small shops, restaurants, workshops, and service enterprises which they themselves own. They form a sector of the economy that before 1979 had become close to invisible-the urban individual economy. The individual economy (geti jingji) is the smallest, and in some respects the least significant, of the three major sectors (as defined by ownership) of the non-agricultural economy: the other two are the state-run sector ("ownership by the whole people") and the collective sector. Basically, the individual economy can be defined in terms of self-employment. It includes small-scale, privately-owned industrial, commercial, catering, transport, and service enterprises, operated for the most part by individuals or households, with a strictly limited number of employees and/or apprentices. It covers a broad range of operational forms, including work in the home, small shops and workshops, fixed-location sidewalk and market stalls (permanent as well as periodic and seasonal), and itinerant businesses operated from pushcarts and baskets balanced on shoulder-poles. The key feature they share is private ownership. The proliferation of these small private businesses-tailors and dressmakers, restaurants and cooked-food stalls, book and newspaper stands, letter-writing services, corner groceries and dry-goods shops, stalls stocked with the latest fashions from Shanghai and Guangzhou, peddlers hawking home-made wooden combs and plastic hairornaments, shoe repair stands, appliance repair services, photography

Wives and Midwives: Childbirth and Nutrition in Rural Malaysia.

Abstract: In this widely-praised study, Carol Laderman provides a vivid picture of the daily life of rural Malays as she focuses on their dietary practices and the ritual and medical aspects of childbirth procedures. Apprenticed to a village midwife and a local shaman, she was able to observe a traditional culture adapting to modern practices.