Retsikas, Kostas

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South East Asia Research, 13, 3, pp. 417–422Book reviewsTim Lindsey and Helen Pausacker, eds, Chinese Indonesians: Remember-ing, Distorting, Forgetting. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies,2005, 215 pp.Reviewed by Konstantinos RetsikasThis edited volume is a tribute to the work of Charles Coppel, theAustralian Indonesianist, whose work for more than three decades nowhas been dedicated to researching varied aspects of the lives of theChinese in Indonesia, ranging from politics and legal issues to historyand religion. The volume’s contributors consist of former PhDsupervisees, colleagues and friends of Coppel, drawn mainly fromAustralia, but also from Indonesia, Singapore and Europe, all acknow-ledging their intellectual debts and closely following and reflecting onhis many writings.The collection is loosely based on the theme of ‘remembering, dis-torting, forgetting’, a theme that is used to draw attention to what Coppeldescribes as the ‘marginalization’ and ‘alienation’ of Chinese Indone-sians from the surrounding society, while setting the record straightwith regard to the largely unacknowledged contributions the Chinese‘community’ has made to the religious, cultural, artistic and politicallife of the country. All in all, there are some nine articles making up thevolume, plus an introduction by Coppel, in which he provides a sum-mary of his academic life and work. The first four articles, written byPurdey, Lindsey, Suryadinata and Budiman, are basically concernedwith charting and evaluating the changes that the fall of Soeharto frompower in 1998 brought about with respect to the position the Chineseoccupy in Indonesia. The remaining five articles, written by SomersHeidhues, Salmon, Gelman Taylor, Pitt and Pausacker, are of a morehistorical nature, examining the pre-modern and colonial periods – theimpact of Chinese trading networks on Islamization (Gelman Taylor),the revival of Confucianism in late nineteenth century Surabaya(Salmon), the dilemmas that modernity forced on young Chinese withrespect to courtship and marriage (Pitt), their involvement with wayangperformances in Java (Pausacker), and the politics of remembering418 South East Asia ResearchChinese victims of Japanese massacres in West Kalimantan (SomersHeidhues).The articles are of varying quality, ranging from well researched,analytically sophisticated and challenging works to less accomplishedones that at times merely repeat well rehearsed arguments and areoften somewhat deficient in supporting the claims they make. Purdey’sarticle is an excellent example of the first category, a thoughtful andprovoking assessment of approaches to (anti-Chinese) violence thatsee it as either state-orchestrated or narrowly linked to economic andclass antagonisms. Purdey rightly points to violence as a ‘justice-seek-ing’ form of political action, and describes the set of memories anddiscourses that legitimate it. Similarly, Lindsey’s contribution providesa succinct summary and realistic assessment of the changes in the legalsphere that the reformasi has brought about with respect to the statusof Indonesian citizens and aliens of Chinese descent, while highlight-ing the far-reaching potential of new legislation concerned with humanrights. In the same vein, Gelman Taylor’s paper provides a vividaccount of the archipelago’s coastal towns in the pre-modern periodand, through attempting a unified analysis of Chinese and Arab tradingnetworks, she brilliantly suggests that Chinese traders were instrumen-tal, albeit in an indirect fashion, in the Islamization of Java and Sumatra.On the other hand, papers such as those offered by Suryadinata andBudiman are less original and thought-provoking, while still others,such as Pausacker’s, are far less convincing. Both Suryadinata andBudiman’s accounts cover material that is well known among socialscientists working on Indonesia, while their consideration of thepolicies that have provided the frameworks within which Chinese identityis created and negotiated fails to take into account the colonial periodand its long-lasting effects. This is coupled with the rather impression-istic nature of evidence that is brought to bear with regard to changesin the inter-ethic relations and perceptions in post-Soeharto Indonesia,especially in Budiman’s case. Similarly, Pausacker’s treatment ofperanakan Chinese’s involvement in the production of wayangperformances is rather thin in terms of the evidence provided tosupport the claim of intense exchanges culminating in the syncretismof ‘Javanese’ and ‘Chinese’ cultures up to the 1960s.Taken as a whole, the most important criticism to be made of thevolume is that, with a couple of exceptions, it suffers from taking‘Chinese Indonesians’ too much for granted as a category of thoughtand action. In other words, it does not sufficiently scrutinize the Other(s)Book reviews 419in relation to whom ‘Chinese Indonesians’ are defined and re-definedat different historical periods and who maintain a rather ghostlypresence throughout. Moreover, it does not adequately question thediversity of those hetero-categorized as ‘Chinese’, a diversity that isfurthermore only partially grasped by the distinction between peranakanand tokok Chinese, and involves additional differences of religion, aswell as of class. These two issues taken together have the ironic effecton the volume of solidifying and perpetuating the very separatenessthat it sees as the basis of the ‘marginalization’ and ‘alienation’ of‘Chinese Indonesians’. A possible way out of this methodological ‘trap’could well be that of investigating ‘Chinese Indonesians’ within thecontexts of transnationalism and diaspora. Alternatively, it might alsobe worth considering their ‘marginality’ within the context of otherIndonesian cases of political and economic marginality, such as thoseof peoples labelled as suku terasing (isolated tribes) by the Indonesianstate.John Strauss, Kathleen Beegle, Agus Dwiyanto, Yulia Herawati, DaanPattinasarany, Elan Satriawa, Bondan Sikoki, Sukamdi and Firman Witoelar,Indonesian Living Standards Before and After the Financial Crisis:Evidence from the Indonesia Family Life Survey, Santa Monica: RandCorporation; and Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2004, xxi+ 402 pp.Reviewed by Anne BoothThe financial crisis that affected the Indonesian economy in the latterpart of 1997 led to a severe growth collapse in 1998; gross domesticproduct contracted by over 13%. A decline of this magnitude was un-precedented in Indonesia’s post-independence history and there wasmuch concern about its implications for poverty and living standards.The three decades of Soeharto’s rule had led to a considerable declinein poverty in Indonesia, together with a rapid growth in educationalenrolments, decreases in infant and child mortality rates and improvedaccess to healthcare facilities for most Indonesians, both in denselysettled Java and in other parts of the country. What would the impact ofthe crisis be on poverty, and access to health and educational facilities?

Review of “Chinese Indonesians: Remembering, Distorting, Forgetting” edited by Tim Lindsey & Helen Pausacker

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