[lbo-talk] Indonesia: Democracy wins, but danger remains

[KJ]

I just picked up a book "Social Science & Power in Indonesia", one of 
a series, "Celebrating Indonesia", to celebrate the Ford Foundation's 
50th anniversary in Indonesia. The blurb on the back jacket reads: 
"The premise of Social Science and Power in Indonesia" is that the 
role and development of social sciences in Indonesia over the past 
fifty years are inextricably related to the shifting requirements of 
power. What is researched and what is not, which frameworks achieve 
paradigmatic status while others are marginalized, and which kinds of 
social scientists become influential while others are ignored are all 
matters of power. These and other important themes and issues are 
critically explored by some of Indonesia's foremost social scientists 
in this seminal work".

Coincidentally, I also just looked through the abstracts of the SE 
Asia sessions of last year's AAS Annual Meeting. And I was just 
thinking how Asian studies shifts with the changing focus of 
Washington -- which perhaps should not be altogether surprising given 
the provenance of area studies, but was nevertheless surprising given 
the persons and personalities involved.

So I guess the blurb above, even against the expressed intent of the 
scholars themselves, might be applied to social science elsewhere, 
with the proviso that while, e.g., Indonesian social science is 
largely about and addressed to Indonesia, that in the centres of 
relative world power are about elsewhere addressed to themselves, 
even if the author of what is deemed worthy of attention is from that 
elsewhere.

It applies to this item -- by its multiple silences and absences, and 
amnesia, as also by the very framing of the matter, both of 
"democracy" and of "Islam", or more broadly, religion, in the context 
of Indonesia. And isn't it a bit rich to write "Moreover, the views 
of Islamists on a range of issues - from banking interest to birth 
control - are at odds with what the rest of the world has learned 
about economic development" when the US is putting pressure on the UN 
over abortion?

At 8:50 pm +0500 3/3/05, uvj at vsnl.com wrote:
>The Asian Age
>
>23 October 2004
>
>Indonesia: Democracy wins, but danger remains
>
>- By Sadanand Dhume
>