Indonesia, Vol. 104, October 2017

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    Table of Contents 104
    (Cornell University Southeast Asia Program, 2017-10)
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    Editorial Note, Indonesia, Volume 104, (October 2017)
    (Cornell University Southeast Asia Program, 2017-10)
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    Front Cover, Indonesia, Volume 104 (October 2017)
    (Cornell University Southeast Asia Program, 2017-10)
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    Review of Recruit to Revolution: Adventure and Politics during the Indonesian Struggle for Independence
    Federspiel, Howard (Cornell University Southeast Asia Program, 2017-10)
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    Review of Antiphonal Histories: Resonant Pasts in the Toba Batak Musical Present
    Weintraub, Andrew N. (Cornell University Southeast Asia Program, 2017-10)
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    Review of The Komedi Bioscoop: Early Cinema in Colonial Indonesia
    Cohen, Matthew Isaac (Cornell University Southeast Asia Program, 2017-10)
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    Review of Islam and Democracy in Indonesia: Tolerance without Liberalism
    Aspinall, Edward (Cornell University Southeast Asia Program, 2017-10)
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    Review of Racial Science and Human Diversity in Colonial Indonesia
    Anderson, Warwick (Cornell University Southeast Asia Program, 2017-10)
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    The History of a History: The Variant Versions of the Sulalat al-Salatin
    Chambert-Loir, Henri (Cornell University Southeast Asia Program, 2017-10)
    This essay details the variation that the text of the Sejarah Malay has taken over time, explicating the work that philologists have done to discern the original source. Chambert-Loir analyzes the many variants, compares them to one another, and separates what is text from what is commentary or addition, elucidating the evolution of the text alongside the scholarly commentary that always accompanies it.
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    Java’s “First People’s Theater”: Thomas Karsten and Semarang’s Sobokartti
    Coté, Joost (Cornell University Southeast Asia Program, 2017-10)
    In exploring further Matthew Cohen’s concept of “the invention of performing arts” in the context of a modernizing colonial Java, this article traces the founding history of the iconic Sobokartti Theater building (which was recently restored to its original form and purpose) and its contribution to the development of theater arts in Java. The paper considers how this theater project negotiated the balance between “modernity and tradition” and succeeded in engaging its urban Javanese, Chinese, and European (Indisch) audience. In tracing the European and Javanese references embedded in the project’s rationale, design, and function, the article investigates how the envisioned theater consciously drew upon both contemporary metropolitan European “new arts” influences and then-current “experiments” in Javanese and Sundanese performing arts. As well, the essay considers the significance of the theater building itself, a traditional Javanese pendopo-derived design, which was central to the theater project. It was to create a new space within which a modernizing Javanese urban community could engage anew with its cultural roots. This reflected a crucial element of the architect’s vision for “modernizing” Javanese culture and society.
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    Fujianese Pioneers and Javanese Kings: Peranakan Chinese Lineage and the Politics of Belonging in West Java, 1890s–2000s
    Seng, Guo-Quan (Cornell University Southeast Asia Program, 2017-10)
    Here is an exploration of the micro politics of cultural belonging in West Java in the historical experience of one Peranakan-Chinese-lineage community over the duration of the twentieth century. This article examines how that lineage group renegotiated its belonging to West Javanese local society on the three intertwined scales of kinship connections, the provincial cult of Javanese kings, and anticolonial nationalist hagiography. The author combines recent Indonesianist studies to examine how local actors deploy “sites, bodies, and stories” to appropriate nation-endorsed narratives for the construction of local ethnic and religious group identities. The article further traces how Thung-Tubagus actors interchanged their genealogical identity between Confucianist and Javanese cosmologies, and the rise of the Chinese, Indies, and Indonesian nations, while staying rooted to West Java’s locale over time. The process of negotiating genealogical change followed not only a nationalist script but also relied on mutual recognition by the real and fictive kin, as well as by religious gate-keepers of the respective communities on the ground. Analysis at the micro level of genealogical identities reveals a heretofore unexplored provincial element in the constitution of the ethnic boundary between the Chinese and indigenous groups in twentieth-century Java.
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    Glimpses of Indonesia’s 1965 Massacre through the Lens of the Census: Migration and Refuge in East Java
    Chandra, Siddharth (Cornell University Southeast Asia Program, 2017-10)
    The anti-Communist violence that followed the kidnapping and assassination of senior Indonesian generals on the morning of October 1, 1965, marked the beginning of the most traumatic period in modern Indonesian history. Prior work on this subject focuses almost exclusively on the killings themselves rather than on any movements of population that may have occurred as the violence unfolded. This paper presents evidence of widespread migration associated with the violence using estimates of one-time changes in population based on data from three Indonesian censuses that were taken shortly before or after the killings. Specifically, this paper demonstrates that information about locations in which cadres of the Indonesian Communist Party (Partai Komunis Indonesia, PKI) were regrouping in the wake of the killings, as identified by the intelligence apparatus of the Indonesian military, coincide with locations for which there is substantiation, based on census data, of a large, one-time in-migration during 1965–66. These destinations tended to be located in established PKI strongholds, which the army was unable to effectively penetrate, and where refugees could expect to find shelter among like-minded people. The findings of this paper also provide clues about district-level locations in East Java in which researchers may find additional information about such movements of people and about the 1965–66 killings more generally from survivors and witnesses.
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    Facets of Hospitality: Rohingya Refugees’ Temporary Stay in Aceh
    Missbach, Antje (Cornell University Southeast Asia Program, 2017-10)
    This article examines different explanations for why a group of more than one thousand Rohingya refugees, stranded in Aceh in May 2015, were treated differently from other asylum seekers and refugees residing in other parts of Indonesia. By documenting the tensions inherent in many hospitality practices, this article seeks to shed light on the motivations of various stakeholders and groups providing hospitality in Aceh, which are not necessarily as altruistic as they are widely claimed to be. Given the overall lack of a legal framework for refugee protection in Indonesia, the “Aceh model” has been heralded by the Indonesian government as a success, and the assumed potential of that model as an alternative to state-sponsored humanitarian aid has been praised widely. Yet the subtle instrumentalization of hospitality by non-state actors for non-refugee-related purposes is a cause for concern and calls for deeper scrutiny. This article contributes to the current debate on regional protection and the state’s other responsibilities for asylum seekers and refugees in Southeast Asia, and reiterates the call for more engagement by the state.
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    World Turned Upside Down: Benedict Anderson, Ruth McVey, and the “Cornell Paper”
    Kammen, Douglas (Cornell University Southeast Asia Program, 2017-10)
    Benedict Anderson and Ruth McVey’s legendary publication, A Preliminary Analysis of the October 1, 1965, Coup in Indonesia, was completed in January 1966 and shared at that time with fewer than two dozen individuals. It was not published formally until 1971. Nevertheless, the paper’s contents leaked in early 1966 and its line of analysis elicited great interest worldwide among diplomats, journalists, and academics, long before most observers could have seen a copy. While the essay and its conclusions have been the subject of intense scholarly and political debate and criticism, little attention has been paid to how a confidential paper by respected Cornell University scholars gained such notoriety and prompted so much anxiety. This article explores the social history of the so-called “Cornell Paper” (including common theories about the leak) and examines the paper’s relationship to Anderson’s scholarship on Indonesia more generally and whether Anderson’s views about the events of October 1, 1965, changed over time.