The Stranger-Kings of Sikka is the first monographic study of an origin myth and history of an indigenous eastern Indonesian state and the first contemporary ethnography of the Ata Sikka of Flores. The book will be of interest to anthropologists, ethnologists of Austronesia, historians and political scientists whose interests include Southeast Asia. During the 1920s, in the regency of Sikka on the island of Flores, D.D. Pareira Kondi and A. Boer Pareira, two notable men among the first literate Sikkanese, began writing about the history and culture of their people. Among their many...

The decolonization of countries in Asia and Africa is one of the momentous events in the twentieth century. But did the shift to independence indeed affect the lives of the people in such a dramatic way as the political events suggest? The authors in this volume look beyond the political interpretations of decolonization and address the issue of social and economic reorientations which were necessitated or caused by the end of colonial rule. The book covers three major issues: public security; the changes in the urban environment, and the reorientation of the economies. Most articles search...

Sanctity is a concept recognized by Muslims throughout the Islamic world, and often motivates observances with highly localized characteristics. Julian Millie spent a year attending a supplication ritual in which Muslims of West Java directed their prayers to Allah through 'Abd al-Qadir al-Jaelani (d. 1166). This man, whose tomb even today is a popular pilgrimage site in Baghdad, is widely considered the most powerful intercessor of all the saints of Islam. The supplication takes the form of reading or singing the narrative proofs of 'Abd al-Qadir's saintliness in a ritual context. The ritual...

From Monologue to Dialogue: Radio and Reform in Indonesia analyses how radio journalism since the late 1990s has been shaped by and contributed to Reformasi, or the ambition of democratizing Indonesian politics, economy and society. The book examines ideas and practices such as independent journalism, peace journalism, meta-journalism, virtual interactivity, talk-back radio and community radio, which have all been designed to renew audience interest in media and societal affairs. It pays special attention to radio programmes that enable hosts, experts, listeners and other participants...

The book is structured around the translation of a Javanese shadow theater performance entitled Srikandhi Mbarang Lengger ("Srikandhi Becomes an Itinerant Dancer" or "Srikandhi Dances Lengger"), performed only in the Banyumas region (in west Central Java) by the locally renowned puppeteer, Ki Sugino Siswocarito. This study is a translation of the story both in a strict textual-linguistic sense and in a more general interpretive sense, providing an understanding of what the performance means to its Banyumas audience. More important, it shows how the puppeteer transforms the culturally...

The period 1200-1600 CE saw a radical transformation from simple chiefdoms to kingdoms (in archaeological terminology, complex chiefdoms) across lowland South Sulawesi, a region that lay outside the 'classical' Indicized parts of Southeast Asia. The rise of these kingdoms was stimulated and economically supported by trade in prestige goods with other parts of island Southeast Asia, yet the development of these kingdoms was determined by indigenous, rather than imported, political and cultural precepts. Starting in the thirteenth century, the region experienced a transition from swidden...