Technology and Ethical Idealism investigates a pivotal intellectual and political moment in twentieth-century Indonesian history, the establishment of “development” as both an ideal and a practice. The focus of this study is on technological development as a central concern of colonial political life from 1900 to 1942 in the Netherlands East Indies. The foundations of developmentalist thinking and practice in the turn-of-the-century colonial reforms were called the Ethical policies. Tracing the interplay of Ethical politics at the highest levels of the Netherlands Indies colonial government with the technical practices of development taking place in the fields of ordinary Javanese farmers, it shows how and why technological development became such an enduring part of political and material life in the archipelago.

(In English, 186 pp. ill., incl. bibliogr. and index)

The IIAS Newsletter (Autumn 2008) has published a review of this book. You can read it here.

About the author

Suzanne Moon is an Assistant Professor in the History of Science at the University of Oklahoma. She received her Ph.D. in Science and Technology Studies from Cornell University, where she also studied in the Southeast Asia Program.

(In English, 260 pp. ill.)

Since the 1980s, the study of material culture has become a central focus in cultural anthropology. This book explores the philosophical roots and reviews recent studies of this anthropological discourse. Based on his own experience of working intensively with museum collections throughout the world, Pieter ter Keurs proposes a new approach towards material objects.

It is now generally acknowledged that material objects are dynamic entities in culture. In this study the author suggests that this flexible approach towards form and meaning is, however, not useful without fully recognizing the materiality of the object. He argues that the inherent static nature of matter is crucial in shaping cultural realities. Objects are best seen as items in which reality is materialized, or condensed . Apart from condensation he looks at the opposite process of evaporation , namely of extracting meanings from their material bases when viewed in different contexts.

The concrete ethnographic examples illustrating this model come from Papua New Guinea (the Siassi Islands) and Indonesia (Enggano Island).

On the Siassi Islands extensively decorated wooden bowls play a major role in local ritual life and in the trade with neighbouring people. The designs on the bowls can be interpreted as being part of the mariam complex: a system of mythical beings that was of crucial importance in pre-Christian Siassi. The mariam beings no longer appear during rituals, but their presence is secured (condensed) in the carvings the Siassi people still make.

On Enggano Island the main designs used in the woodcarvings represent images of slain enemies. In former ritual life the carvings were meant to secure the welfare of society and to stimulate fertility of the people and the soil. Nowadays the people of Enggano no longer remember much of their old culture. In Jakarta their woodcarvings have acquired a new meaning, in the sense that they are found for sale as tourist items representing indigenous "primitive" objects. The author introduces the concept evaporation to indicate that although the materiality of the objects is similar (they "look" the same), their meanings have completely changed.

Pieter ter Keurs is curator for Indonesian collections at the Rijksmuseum voor Volkenkunde (National Museum of Ethnology), Leiden, the Netherlands.

(In English, 240 pp. ill.)

For much of its two centuries of existence (1602 to 1799), the VOC, the Dutch East India Company was the largest trading company in the world. Although the VOC was established to operate primarily as a trading company, it soon also came to play a prominent military, diplomatic and political role on the Asian stage and eventually it laid the foundations of the Dutch colonial empire in the Indonesian Archipelago.
Merchant in Asia is the first study to pay attention to the full breadth and width of the VOC commercial activities in Asia. It looks at the company from the peak of its fame until its final decline at the end of the eighteenth century. The study focuses on the main trade goods - spices, Indian textiles, Chinese tea and Javanese coffee - and their specific by-products. Els Jacobs has analyzed in detail the VOC trade in fifteen of the most important commodities that together made up 85% of the total turnover.
This innovative study is based on extensive research of the VOC archives and many other Dutch sources, as well as a detailed quantitative analysis of the VOC bookkeeping records. In the study the author sketches in vivid detail how the merchants of the VOC sold, bought, and even supervised the production of tropical products and how they dealt with Asian suppliers and consumers. In addition, she looks at the range of problems the merchants encountered in the maritime trade from Yemen and Persia in the West to China and Japan in the East, including India, Ceylon, Malacca, and the Indonesian Archipelago.

(In English, 474 pp. ill., incl. tables, notes, bibliogr. and index )

About the Dutch edition, Koopman in Azië (published in 2000), Gerrit Knaap wrote: 'This is, as I have said, an extremely useful monograph, addressing a wide range of topics and problems. At the same time its clear structure and functional illustrations make it a very accessible publication. Hopefully, in the near future the entire book, or at least its conclusions in the form of articles, will also reach international (that is non-Dutch), audiences. Jacobs’ book has a great deal to say to Asianists everywhere in the world, and as the number of Asianists capable of reading Dutch is rather limited, the results of this study should be brought to their attention in English.' - Review in: Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 158 (2002) 339-343

Prior to her present position as secretary-general of the Netherlands National Commission for UNESCO, Els M. Jacobs (PhD. Leiden 2000) taught maritime and Dutch national history at Leiden University for almost twenty years. As guest curator at the maritime museums in Amsterdam and Rotterdam, she has been in charge of several major projects, including the National Anniversary Exhibition The Colourful World of the VOC 1602-2002, as well as a well received television series on the history of the VOC for Teleac/NOT, the Dutch educational broadcasting company. Among her earlier works is In Pursuit of Pepper and Tea: The Story of the Dutch East India Company (1991). Merchant in Asia was published in Dutch in 2000 as Koopman in Azië.

Manado Malay is the language of the Indonesian city of Manado. This book presents an overview of the grammar of this language, with particular attention to discourse particles and intonation, and studies how these phenomena are used to mark focus.
The first part of the book gives a description of the grammar, based on a corpus of spontaneous conversations. It presents the main aspects of the phonology, morphology, and syntax. One chapter is devoted to discourse particles, which are used frequently in this language. Another chapter discusses intonation, a much neglected topic in the study of Indonesian languages.
The second part of the book is concerned with information structure. It presents a number of experiments that were run to test the compatibility of various constituent orders and focus structures. Other experiments were carried out to investigate which discourse particles mark focus and to define the position of the sentence accent for a given focus structure.
This book will be of interest to linguists working on information structure or intonation, as well as to typologists and students of Indonesian languages.

The Linguist List has published a review of this book.

This book provides both an introduction into and a thorough analysis of the basics of Indonesian environmental law and policymaking.
At its heart this collection of essays concerns the current state of Indonesian environmental law, departing from the question of whether there is now a coherent and accessible framework for environmental management. The authors provide the reader with an overview of Indonesian environmental policymaking and the political context in which it has emerged.  The essays analyse the general features and principles of the Environmental Management Act of 1997, the frameworks for enforcement and dispute resolution, and the relation with the vital areas of forestry law and spatial planning.
Two more theoretical discussions that are highly topical in the Indonesian legal environmental discourse contextualise the subject: first, the use and role of the vital concepts of integration, harmonisation and co-ordination of environmental law and policy; and second, the relation between enforcement and voluntary compliance mechanisms. The authors also explore potential paths towards better environmental law in Indonesia.
(In English, 162 pp.)

Another book by Niessen