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Prehistory of the Indo-Malaysian Archipelago »
Revised Edition
Authored by: Peter Bellwood
Publication date: March 2007
Since its publication in 1985, Peter Bellwood’s Prehistory of the Indo-Malaysian Archipelago has been hailed as the sole authoritative work on the subject by the leading expert in the field. Now that work has been fully revised and includes a complete up-to-date summary of the archaeology of the region (and relevant neighboring areas of China and Oceania), as well as a comprehensive discussion of new and important issues (such as the “Eve-Garden of Eden” hypothesis and its relevance to the Indo-Malaysian region) and recent advances in macrofamily linguistic classification.
Moving north to south from northern Peninsular Malaysia to Timor and west to east from Sumatra to the Moluccas, Bellwood describes human prehistory from initial hominid settlement more than one million years ago to the eve of historical Hindu-Buddhist and Islamic cultures of the region. The archaeological record provides the central focus, but chapters also incorporate essential information from the paleoenvironmental sciences, biological anthropology, linguistics, and social anthropology. Bellwood approaches questions about past cultural and biological developments in the region from a multidisciplinary perspective. Historical issues given extended treatment include the significance of the Homo erectus populations of Java, the dispersal of the present Austronesian-speaking peoples of the region within the past 4,000 years, and the spread of metallurgy since 500 B.C. Bellwood also discusses relationships between the prehistoric populations of the archipelago and those of neighboring regions such as Australia, New Guinea, and mainland Asia.
Reformist Muslims in a Yogyakarta Village »
The Islamic Transformation of Contemporary Socio-Religious Life
Authored by: Hyung-Jun Kim
Publication date: March 2007
This study examines the religious life of reformist Muslims in a Yogyakarta village. The foci of this discussion are on Muslim villagers’ construction, with the help of the reformist paradigm, of the image of the ‘good Muslim’ and ‘Muslim-ness’, on their efforts to incorporate an (reformist) Islamic framework to question taken-for-granted practices and ideas, on the position of traditional practices and ideas and their relation to reformist Islam, and on the interplay of villagers who show a strong commitment to reformist Islam with those who do not. Another topic investigated in this study is the interactions between Muslim and Christian villagers and the impacts of Christian presence on the process by which Muslims define themselves, their neighbours, their religion and their religious community.
Arndt's Story »
The life of an Australian economist
Authored by: Peter Coleman, Selwyn Cornish, Peter Drake
Publication date: March 2007
‘H.W. Arndt has been Australia’s leading scholar of Asian economic development for over thirty years’
- Former World Bank President James D Wolfensohn.
The year of Heinz Wolfgang Arndt’s birth, 1915, was not a good time for a German boy to be born. His country was soon to be defeated in a great war, his school years were shadowed by the rise of Hitler. Yet when Heinz’s long-buried Jewish background led his academic father to lose his chair in chemistry and flee to Oxford, Heinz followed. As Heinz put it, the calamity of Hitler’s rise to power led him to ‘the incredible good fortune of an Oxford education and a life spent in England and Australia.’
This was a man of inexhaustible energy and optimism, who returned from months behind barbed wire interned in Canada to write a historical classic—The Economic Lessons of the Nineteen-Thirties. He seized the opportunity of an unexpected job offer to set off with his young family for Sydney where he quickly established himself as a leading authority on the Australian banking system, embarked on his fifty year career as a gifted university teacher and enjoyed the first of many vigorous forays as a public intellectual.
But it was at ANU that Heinz took the bold step which led him to become the Grand Old Man of Asian Economics. In 1966, just after the Sukarno coup and the year of living dangerously, he determined the time had come to study the Indonesian economy. It took all his charm, persistence and formidable intellect to persuade the Indonesians to open their doors to him. The result was a world-leading centre of Indonesian economics which greatly contributed to the development of modern Indonesia.
The Archaeology of the Aru Islands, Eastern Indonesia »
Edited by: Sue O'Connor, Matthew Spriggs, Peter Veth
Publication date: February 2007
This volume describes the results of the first archaeological survey and excavations carried out in the fascinating and remote Aru Islands, Eastern Indonesia between 1995 and 1997. The naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, who stopped here in search of the Birds of Paradise on his voyage through the Indo-Malay Archipelago in the 1850s, was the first to draw attention to the group. The results reveal a complex and fascinating history covering the last 30,000 years from its early settlement by hunter-gatherers, the late Holocene arrival of ceramic producing agriculturalists, later associations with the Bird of Paradise trade and the colonial expansion of the Dutch trading empires.
The excavations and finds from two large Pleistocene caves, Liang Lemdubu and Nabulei Lisa, are reported in detail documenting the changing environmental and cultural history of the islands from when they were connected to Greater Australia and used by hunter/gatherers to their formation as islands and use by agriculturalists. The results of the excavation of the late Neolithic — Metal Age midden at Wangil are discussed, as is the mysterious pre-Colonial fort at Ujir and the 350-year old ruins of forts and a church associated with the Dutch garrisons.
The Islamic Traditions of Cirebon »
Ibadat and Adat Among Javanese Muslims
Authored by: A.G. Muhaimin
Publication date: November 2006
This work deals with the socio-religious traditions of the Javanese Muslims living in Cirebon, a region on the north coast in the eastern part of West Java. It examines a wide range of popular traditional religious beliefs and practices. The diverse manifestations of these traditions are considered in an analysis of the belief system, mythology, cosmology and ritual practices in Cirebon. In addition, particular attention is directed to the formal and informal institutionalised transmission of all these traditions.
Origins, Ancestry and Alliance »
Explorations in Austronesian Ethnography
Edited by: James J. Fox, Clifford Sather
Publication date: October 2006
This collection of papers, the third in a series of volumes on the work of the Comparative Austronesian Project, explores indigenous Austronesian ideas of origin, ancestry and alliance and considers the comparative significance of these ideas in social practice. The papers examine social practice in a diverse range of societies extending from insular Southeast Asia to the islands of the Pacific.
Inside Austronesian Houses »
Perspectives on domestic designs for living
Edited by: James J. Fox
Publication date: September 2006
The eight papers in this volume examine the spatial organization of a variety of Austronesian houses and relate the domestic design of these houses to the social and ritual practices of the specific groups who reside within them. The houses considered in this volume range from longhouses in Borneo to the meeting-houses of the Maori of New Zealand and from the magnificent houses of the Minangkabau of Sumatra to the simpler dwellings of the population of Goodenough Island in Papua New Guinea. Together these papers indicate common features of domestic design from island South-East Asia to Melanesia and the Pacific. This volume is a publication of the Research School of Pacific Studies’ Comparative Austronesian Project.
The Poetic Power of Place »
Comparative Perspectives on Austronesian Ideas of Locality
Edited by: James J. Fox
Publication date: September 2006
This collection of papers is the fourth in a series of volumes on the work of the Comparative Austronesian Project. Each paper describes a specific Austronesian locality and offers an ethnographic account of the way in which social knowledge is vested, maintained and transformed in a particular landscape. The intention of the volume is to consider common patterns in the representation of place among Austronesian-speaking populations.
State, Communities and Forests In Contemporary Borneo »
Edited by: Fadzilah Majid Cooke
Publication date: July 2006
The name ‘Borneo’ evokes visions of constantly changing landscapes, but with important island-wide continuities. One of the continuities has been the forests, which have for generations been created and modified by the indigenous population, but over the past three decades have been partially replaced by tree crops, grass or scrub. This book, the first in the series of Asia-Pacific Environmental Monographs, looks at the political complexities of forest management across the whole island of Borneo, tackling issues of tenure, land use change and resource competition, ‘tradition’ versus ‘modernity’, disputes within and between communities, between communities and private firms, or between communities and governments. While it focuses on the changes taking place in local political economies and conservation practices, it also makes visible the larger changes taking place in both Indonesia and Malaysia. The common theme of the volume is the need to situate local complexities in the larger institutional context, and the possible gains to be made from such an approach in the search for alternative models of conservation and development.
The Military and Democracy in Asia and the Pacific »
Edited by: R.J. May, Viberto Selochan
Publication date: March 2004
In The Military and Democracy in Asia and the Pacific, a number of prominent regional specialists take a fresh look at the military’s changing role in selected countries of Asia and the Pacific, particularly with regard to the countries’ performance against criteria of democratic government.
Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Burma, Pakistan, Bangladesh, South Korea, Fiji and Papua New Guinea all fall under the spotlight as the authors examine the role which the military has played in bringing about changes of political regime, and in resisting pressures for change.
Under the auspices of The Australian National University’s Department of Political and Social Change, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, and within the context of the Regime Change and Regime Maintenance in Asia and the Pacific project, the following contributors compiled The Military and Democracy in Asia and the Pacific: Emajuddin Ahamed, Suchit Bunbongkarn, Stephanie Lawson, R. J. May, Hasan-Askari Rizvi, Viberto Selochan, Josef Silverstein, Michael Vatikiotis and Yung Myung Kim. The Military and Democracy in Asia and the Pacific provides a sequel to Viberto Selochan’s earlier collection, The Military, the State, and Development in Asia and the Pacific (1991).