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130 books match the query 'Indonesia' and 8 start with b

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Balinese Worlds

Fredrik Barth

University of Chicago Press, 1993

In Balinese Worlds, Fredrik Barth proposes a new model for anthropological analysis of complex civilizations that is based on a fresh, synthetic account of culture and society in North Bali and one that takes full notice of individual creativity in shaping the contours of this dynamic culture.

In this detailed ethnography of the Northern district of Buleleng, Barth rejects mainstream anthropological generalizations of Bali as a cultural system of carefully articulated parts. Instead—drawing on many sources, including the sociology of knowledge, interactional analysis, postmodern thought, and his own exceptionally varied field experience—Barth presents a new model that actually generates variation. Barth's innovative analysis of Balinese life highlights both the constructive and the disorganizing effects of individual action, the constant flux of interpretation, and the powerful interaction of memory and social relationships, and knowledge as a cultural resource.

Balinese Worlds is a unique contribution not only to Balinese studies but also to the theory and methods of the anthropology of complex societies.

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Beyond Decent Work

The Cultural Political Economy of Labour Struggles in Indonesia

Felix Hauf

Campus Verlag, 2016

Beyond Decent Work explores the history of the Indonesian labor movement, using three contemporary case studies to shed light on the development of Indonesia’s labor struggles and trade union strategies. Drawing on extensive and recent qualitative fieldwork, Felix Hauf argues that the economic idea of “decent work” plays a central role in current trade union strategies at the expense of more radical—or traditional working-class—strategies of industrial action, even though the latter have been more effective in fulfilling workers’ demands for higher wages and better working conditions. Hauf’s analysis offers unique insight into the labor dynamics of Indonesia and Southeast Asia more broadly, revealing how genuinely democratic and independent unions—confronted with rival unions controlled by businesses, Indonesian subcontractors, multinational corporations, and the Indonesian state—struggle to create an economy outside the confines of neoliberal capitalism.

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BitterSweet

The Memoir of a Chinese Indonesian Family in the Twentieth Century

Stuart Pearson

National University of Singapore Press, 2013

Behind the statistics of migration are the life stories of millions of migrants and their descendants. The movement of people out of China is one of the largest movements of humanity in modern times and large numbers of Chinese emigrated to the colony of

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BitterSweet

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

Stuart Pearson

Ohio University Press, 2008

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.

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Bittersweet Sounds of Passage

Balinese Gamelan Angklung Cremation Music

Ellen Koskoff

University of Illinois Press, 2025

An important presence through centuries of musical and social change, gamelan angklung is a small, four-tone bronze-keyed ensemble that remains ubiquitous at cremations in Bali. Ellen Koskoff offers a compelling portrait of these little-studied orchestras and their members: rice farmers, eatery owners, and other locals who do not see themselves as musicians or what they play as music.

Koskoff examines the history, cultural significance, and musical structures of contemporary gamelan angklung cremation music through the lens of three intertwined stories: existing scholarship on this music, written mostly by Western composers and scholars; the views of those performing and experiencing the music who regard it as dharma--ritual obligation, a basic concept in Balinese Hinduism; and the music itself, with a musical analysis focusing on changes in rasa--feeling, flavor and musical flow.

A journey inside a tradition, Bittersweet Sounds of Passage reveals the overlooked music of an important ritual in Balinese village life.

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Breeds of Empire

The Invention of the Horse in Southeast Asia and Southern Africa 1500-1950

Edited by Greg Bankoff and Sandra Swart

National University of Singapore Press, 2007

Ships of empire carried not just merchandise, soldiers and administrators but also equine genes from as far afield as Europe, Arabia, the Americas, China and Japan. In the process, they introduced horses into parts of the world not native to that animal in historical times. As a result, horses in Thailand, the Philippine Horses, the Cape Horse in South Africa and the Basotho Pony in the mountain kingdom of Lesotho share a genetic lineage with the horse found in the Indonesian archipelago.This book explores the 'invention' of specific breeds of horse in the context of imperial design and colonial trade routes. Here, it focuses on the introduction, invention and use of the horse in Thailand, the Philippines and southern Africa as well as examining its roots and evolution within Indonesia. In addition, it examines the colonial trade in horses within the Indian Ocean and discusses the historiographical and methodological problems associated with writing a more species- or horse-centric history. This is a fascinating study that will appeal not only to scholars but also to the broad horse-reading public interested in all things equine.

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Building on Borrowed Time

Rising Seas and Failing Infrastructure in Semarang

Lukas Ley

University of Minnesota Press, 2021

A timely ethnography of how Indonesia’s coastal dwellers inhabit the “chronic present” of a slow-motion natural disaster

Ice caps are melting, seas are rising, and densely populated cities worldwide are threatened by floodwaters, especially in Southeast Asia. Building on Borrowed Time is a timely and powerful ethnography of how people in Semarang, Indonesia, on the north coast of Java, are dealing with this global warming–driven existential challenge. In addition to antiflooding infrastructure breaking down, vast areas of cities like Semarang and Jakarta are rapidly sinking, affecting the very foundations of urban life: toxic water oozes through the floors of houses, bridges are submerged, traffic is interrupted.

As Lukas Ley shows, the residents of Semarang are constantly engaged in maintaining their homes and streets, trying to live through a slow-motion disaster shaped by the interacting temporalities of infrastructural failure, ecological deterioration, and urban development. He casts this predicament through the temporal lens of a “meantime,” a managerial response that means a constant enduring of the present rather than progress toward a better future—a “chronic present.”

Building on Borrowed Time takes us to a place where a flood crisis has already arrived—where everyday residents are not waiting for the effects of climate change but are in fact already living with it—and shows that life in coastal Southeast Asia is defined not by the temporality of climate science but by the lived experience of tidal flooding.

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