Military Politics and Democratization in Indonesia

Jun Honna

This book looks at the role of the military in the downfall of Suharto and their ongoing influence on the succeeding governments of B.J. Habibie and Abdurrahman Wahid. The author also examines such key features as human rights, reconciliation, civic-military discourse and ongoing security dilemmas.

London, RoutledgeCurzon, 2003.

Sisters And Lovers: Women and Desire in Bali

Megan Jennaway

This ethnography focuses on the romantic experiences of women in a rural village in North Bali from adolescence to maturity. Punyanwangi’s proximity to a thriving tourist centre allows Megan Jennaway to explore as well the striking gender disparities in the ways sexuality and desire are culturally mediated. By allowing key informants to tell their stories in their own voices and by skillfully interweaving fictionalised interludes, the author gives us not only a rigorously researched ethnography, but an intimate and fully realised portrait of Balinese women’s innermost desires.

Lanham, Rowman and Littlefield, 2003.

Puppet Theater In Contemporary Indonesia: New approaches to performance events.

Jan Mrazek (ed.)

Written by both scholars and performers, the nearly two-dozen essays that comprise this volume examine performance events in contemporary contexts to show how performances are involved in the changing sociocultural climate, economy, and politics of Indonesia. Issues include the life and work of performers, changing performance aesthetics, changes in ritual functions, interaction with mass media, local identity, gender, and the epistemologies and politics of writing on performance in the colonial and postcolonial periods.

Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 2003.

Two Is Enough: Family planning in Indonesia under the New Order (1968–1998)

Jan Mrazek (ed.)

This book provides a comprehensive description of the Indonesian family-planning program during the New Order regime of Suharto and explains the fertility transition that took place in Indonesia during the same period. The fertility decline is placed against a background of social, cultural, and economic change, and is related to the way the family planning program was designed and implemented.

Leiden, KITLV Press, 2003.

Gender, Islam, Nationalism and the State in Aceh: The paradox of power, co-optation and resistance.

Jacqueline Aquino Siapno

This book provides a historical, ethnographic, literary, and politico-economic analysis of the competing, contradictory, and paradoxical configurations of gendered struggles for power, Islamic identity, nationalism, militancy, activism, and piety in Aceh.

London, Routledge-Curzon, 2002.

Raiding the Land of the Foreigners: The limits of the nation on an Indonesian frontier.

Danilyn Rutherford

Danilyn Rutherford calls for a rethinking of the nature of national identity in a study focusing on Biak — a set of islands off the coast of western New Guinea, in the Indonesian province of Irian Jaya. Taking in the dynamics of Biak social life and the islands’ long history of millennial unrest, Rutherford shows how practices that indicated Biaks’ submission to national authority actually reproduced antinational understandings of space, time, and self.

Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2003.

Indonesia’s Population: Ethnicity and religion in a changing political landscape.

Suryadinata, Leo with Evi Arifin and Aris Ananta

This book presents an analysis of basic information contained in the 31 volumes of the official Indonesian census conducted in the year 2000. It focuses on Indonesian ethnicity and religion and their relevance to the study of politics. The 2000 population census is the first comprehensive census since the colonial period in 1930 to include ethnic data. The book provides a general analysis of the 2000 census, followed by discussions on 11 major indigenous groups, the ethnic Chinese, six major religions and 11 selected provinces of ethnic and political significance.

Singapore, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2003.