An outstanding advanced text intended to complement and supplement Indonesian language materials now available. The author takes the student through a series of original essays and previously published material on a variety of subjects, not merely explaining grammatical and vocabulary matters, but offering detailed discussions of nuances, alternative meanings, synonyms and antonyms. This unique vocabulary exploration device forms about one third of the book, and makes the lessons powerful aids to efficient and in depth language learning."

Errington explores linguistic evidence of social change among the traditional priyayi elite of Surakarta in south-central Java. Employing data from texts, interviews, observed speech, and questionnaires, he shows a progressive leveling in the language used to denote traditional status differences, and he demonstrates how perceptions of speech styles reflect etiquette and the views of the users.
Errington suggests that a reciprocal assimilation process changes the way members of Java s traditional elite deal with each other in a modern urban milieu. The argument and the material on which...

This translation of Ibrahim Syukri's Sejarah Kerajaan Melayu Patani (SKMP) makes available a little known but important manuscript published privately ca. 1950 and printed in jawi (Malay written in a modified Arabic script). Shortly after its publication, the book was banned in both Thailand and Malaysia. It appears that a few copies of the original printing survived.

The SKMP represents a valuable contribution to the limited literature available on the Malay population of present-day southern Thailand. While the account of Patani's history is based on a distinctively...

Social scientists have long recognized many apparent contradictions in the Minangkabau. The world s largest matrilineal people, they are also strongly Islamic and, as a society, remarkably modern and outward looking.
Focusing on Minangkabau proper, and treating several adjacent areas as well, this collection examines the resilience and adaptability of the Minangkabau in the face of outside political and economic pressures and of distortions in social science and legal theory. Individual studies address issues of kinship and other forms of social organization, ideology, and political and...

There is a tendency to regard African literature as a homogenous product. Certainly it is true that African writers have created a vibrant, modern literature. Nevertheless, they come from specific societies and reflect vastly differing worlds.
"Wanasema" attempts to show some of the many faces of African literature. Dramatists, poets and novelists speak in these pages. They write in French, English, Portuguese, Arabic and indigenous languages. Some are Christian; others are Muslim. A variety of subjects are discussed, including the status of women, history, religion, politics, dress and...

Switzer looks at how South Africa s communications industry, the largest and most powerful on the continent, promotes dependency among the subject African populations. This study of the Ciskei Homeland, which has long been a fountainhead of African nationalism and a zone of conflict between blacks and whites, focuses on the privately owned, commercial press and its role in helping to frame a consensus in support of the political, economic and ideological values of the ruling alliance.
The conceptual framework employed differs from that normally used in communications research. Further,...

In 1904 the British Protectorate of Brunei had reached the nadir of its fortunes. Reduced to two small strips of territory, bankrupt, and threatened with takeover by the Rajah of Sarawak (Sir Charles Brooke), Brunei received M. S. H. McArthur who was dispatched to make recommendations for Brunei's future administration. As a result of McArthur's Report on Brunei in 1904, the British government decided to underwrite the separate existence of the sultanate, thus giving a reprieve to the "dying kingdom." The report is the most important document in the history of modern Brunei and is here...

This volume consists of seventeen articles by scholars including Robert Blust, Paul Hopper, A. L. Becker, Sarah Bell, J. C. Catford, Talmy Givon, J. W. M. Verharr and John U. Wolff. Tagalog, Cebuano, Ilokano, Chamorro, Malay, Old Malay, Javanese, Old Javanese, Indonesian, Niases, Loniu, and Niuean are some of the languages discussed in the study. The essays explore the issues of ergativity in Western Austronesian languages, historical morphology, phonology, phonetics and morphophonemics."

Preface by Douglas Pike
Dr. Nguyen Anh Tuan, former Minister of Finance of the Republic of South Vietnam, addresses a common perception of Vietnam: that South Vietnam was a fragmented society which did not deserve to succeed because of its internal weaknesses. According to Tuan, however, South Vietnam in the last decade of its life developed considerable governmental cohesion and internal social strength. Before the final failure of will, the South and its defenders were well on the way to becoming a viable society that had managed with American assistance to lift itself by its bootstraps...

One of the most controversial aspects of Javanese gamelan music is its musical mode, "pathet." From her experience as a performer of "sindhenan," or female singing, Walton analyses the melodies and defines the basic laws of mode for "sindhenan." She explains more convincingly than previous authors how two systems of mode operate simultaneously in gamelan music to enhance its aesthetic appeal.