China is a vast nation comprised of hundreds of distinct ethnic communities, each with its own language, history, and culture. Today the government of China recognizes just 56 ethnic nationalities, ...or minzu, as groups entitled to representation. This controversial new book recounts the history of the most sweeping attempt to sort and categorize the nation's enormous population: the 1954 Ethnic Classification project (minzu shibie). Thomas S. Mullaney draws on recently declassified material and extensive oral histories to describe how the communist government, in power less than a decade, launched this process in ethnically diverse Yunnan. Mullaney shows how the government drew on Republican-era scholarship for conceptual and methodological inspiration as it developed a strategy for identifying minzu and how non-Party-member Chinese ethnologists produced a “scientific” survey that would become the basis for a policy on nationalities.
In this lively book, Benedict R. O'G Anderson explores the cultural and political contradictions that have arisen from two critical facts in Indonesian history—that while the Indonesian nation is ...young, the Indonesian state is ancient, originating in the early seventeenth-century Dutch conquests; and that contemporary politics are conducted in a new language, Bahasa Indonesia, by peoples (especially the Javanese) whose cultures are rooted in medieval times. Analyzing a spectrum of examples from classical poetry to public monuments and cartoons, Anderson deepens our understanding of the interaction between modern and traditional notions of power, the meditation of power by language, and the development of national consciousness. This volume brings together eight of Anderson's most influential essays written over the past two decades. Most of the essays address aspects of Javanese political culture—from the early nineteenth century, when the Javanese did not yet have words for politics, colonialism, society, or class, through the early nationalism of the 1900s, to the era of independence after World War II, when deep internal tensions exploded into large-scale massacres. In the first group of essays Anderson considers how power was imagined in traditional Javanese society, and how these imaginings shaped Indonesia's modern politics. Other essays focus on the significance of the incongruences between the egalitarian, ironizing national language through which modern Indonesia has been imagined and the powerful influence of the hierarchical, authoritarian Javanese official culture. Finally, two essays on consciousness illuminate the crucial eras before and after the rise of Indonesia's nationalist movement. One reflects on Javanese intellectuals' phantasmagoric efforts to keep imagining Java as the island was overrun by colonial capitalism and absorbed into the huge, heterogeneous Netherlands East Indies; the second traces the transition from old culture to new nation through the autobiography of an eminent Javanese first-generation nationalist politician.
In honor of Benedict Anderson's many years as a teacher and his profound contributions to the field of Southeast Asian studies, the editors have collected essays from a number of the many scholars ...who studied with him. These articles deal with the literature, politics, history, and culture of Southeast Asia, addressing Benedict Anderson's broad concerns.
These essays investigate institutionalized violence in New Order Indonesia and the ongoing legacy Suharto's dictatorship has conferred on the nation. The collection includes papers on East Timor, ...Aceh, Biak, the police, and the Indonesian military.
No Concessions Lev, Daniel S; Anderson, Benedict
12/2011
eBook
The compelling personal story of human rights lawyer Yap Thiam Hien (1913-1989) brings decades of modern Indonesian history to life.No Concessionsis a penetrating analysis of the trajectory of the ...Chinese minority in Indonesia over close to a century and the remarkable making of a civic leader. Without abandoning his ethnic roots, Yap transcended them by becoming a courageous legal defender of civil and human rights of all oppressed Indonesians, including former communists and radical Muslims.
Ben Anderson reflects on the history and significance of the journal Indonesia, and on his role as a founding editor and then editorial advisor (a position he held until his death in 2015).
A translation of short stories by the well-known Indonesian author, Pramoedya Ananta Toer. Written in the 1950s, these stories are intensely regional in flavor and modern in approach. This collection ...includes such works as "Stranded Fish," "Creatures.
PDF
