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CONTENTS

Vol. 15, No. 2: AprilJune 1983

Celia E. Mather - Industrialization in the Tangerang Regency of

West Java

Benjamin White - Agricultural Innovation and Its Critics: Twenty

Years After

Rodolphe De Koninck - Getting Them to Work Profitably: How the

Small Peasants Help the Large Ones, the State and Capital

Richard W. Franke - East Timor: The Responsibility of the United

States

Torben Retboll - East Timor and Indonesia Richard W. Franke - Indonesia / A Short Review

Indonesian Workers and Their Right to Organize, by Indonesian

Documentation and Information Centre (ed); INDOKUMENTA:

Maadoverzicht Arbeiders in Indonesie; and Mesenrechten in

Indonesie, by INDOC

Timothy Brook - Friends and Enemies of the People / A Review

Essay. Chinese Perspectives on the Nien Rebellion, by Elizabeth

Perry; The People versus the Taipings: Bao Lishengs Righteous

Army of Dongang, by James Cole

Sung Il-Choi - South Korea under Park Chung Hee: Development or

Decay / A Review Essay. Studies in the Modernization of Korea,

1945-1975, 8 vols., published by the Harvard Council on East AsiaStudies

BCAS/Critical Asian Studies

www.bcasnet.org

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CCAS Statement of Purpose

Critical Asian Studies continues to be inspired by the statement of purpose

formulated in 1969 by its parent organization, the Committee of ConcernedAsian Scholars (CCAS). CCAS ceased to exist as an organization in 1979,

but the BCAS board decided in 1993 that the CCAS Statement of Purpose

should be published in our journal at least once a year.

We first came together in opposition to the brutal aggression of

the United States in Vietnam and to the complicity or silence of

our profession with regard to that policy. Those in the field of

Asian studies bear responsibility for the consequences of their

research and the political posture of their profession. We are

concerned about the present unwillingness of specialists to speak

out against the implications of an Asian policy committed to en-

suring American domination of much of Asia. We reject the le-

gitimacy of this aim, and attempt to change this policy. We

recognize that the present structure of the profession has often

perverted scholarship and alienated many people in the field.

The Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars seeks to develop a

humane and knowledgeable understanding of Asian societies

and their efforts to maintain cultural integrity and to confrontsuch problems as poverty, oppression, and imperialism. We real-

ize that to be students of other peoples, we must first understand

our relations to them.

CCAS wishes to create alternatives to the prevailing trends in

scholarship on Asia, which too often spring from a parochial

cultural perspective and serve selfish interests and expansion-

ism. Our organization is designed to function as a catalyst, a

communications network for both Asian and Western scholars, aprovider of central resources for local chapters, and a commu-

nity for the development of anti-imperialist research.

Passed, 2830 March 1969

Boston, Massachusetts

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Vol. 15, No. 2/Apr .-June, 1983

Contents Celia E. Mather 2 Industrialization in the Tangerang Regency of West Java:

Women Workers and the Islamic PatriarchyBenjamin White 18 "Agricultural Involution" and its Critics: Twenty Years

AfterRodolphe De Koninck 32 Getting Them to Work Profitably: How the Small Peasants

Help the Large Ones, the State and CapitalRichard W. Franke 42 East Timor: Th e Responsibility of the United States

Torben Retboll 59 East Timor and IndonesiaRichard W. Franke 62 Indonesia/short reviewIndonesian Workers and their Right to Organize, by Indone-sian Documentation and Information Centre (ed);INDOKUMENTA: Maandoverzicht Arbeiders in Indonesie;

and Mesenrechten in Indonesie, by INDOCTimothy Brook 64 Friends and Enemies of the People/reviewessayChinese Perspectives on the Nien Rebellion, by ElizabethPerry; The People versus the Taipings: Bao Lisheng' s "Righteous Army ofDongang," by James Cole.

Sung-il Choi 67 South Korea Under Park Chung Hee: Development orDecay/review essayStudies in the Modernization ofthe Republic ofKorea:1945-1975, 8 vols., published by the Harvard Councilon East Asia Studies72 List of Books to Review

Contributors Timothy Brook: Harvard University, Cambridge, Celia E. Mather: The Institute of Development Studies,Massachusetts University of Sussex, Brighton, EnglandSung-il Choi: Department of Political Science, Hobart and Torben Retboll: Department of History, Arhus Katedral-William Smith Colleges, Geneva, New York skole, Arhus, DenmarkRichard W. Franke: Department of Anthropology, Mont- Benjamin White: Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, Theclair State College, Upper Montclair, New Jersey NetherlandsRodolphe De Koninck: Department of Geography, Uni-versite Laval, Quebec

The cover illustrations and the fine drawings of Indonesia appearingthroughout this issues are by Hans Borket , Leiden, The Netherlands.

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Industrialization in the Tangerang Regency ofWest Java:Women Workers and the Islamic Patriarchy

by Celia E. MatherNyi

I f she had followed in her mother's footsteps, Nyiwould have become a domestic servant. For the women ofher hamlet who have no land to cultivateor capital to trade,becoming a servant in the neighboring town has long beenthe best way to earn a living before being married. Now,many factories have arrived in the villages where Nyi grewup, and Nyi has become a factory worker instead. Her jobis packing medicines.In many ways, Nyi says, working in a factory is betterthan being a servant. Servants must live in the homes of thepeople they work for, where they are at the beck and call oftheir employers from before dawn to late into the evening.Being a servant is exhausting work. Employers like to bossservants around; they never seem to leave you alone. And,though you get your food and lodging, the pay is no morethan pocket money. You can't buy your own clothes butmust rely on gifts and cast-offs from other people. Butworst of all, for Nyi, would be the isolation; far from yourfamily and friends, you are not allowed even to go out andmake friends among the other servants nearby becauseyour employers are afraid you will all gossip about them.Nyi knows that being a servant is a lonely occupation, andfew of he r friends want to do it these days.By contras t, factory work is not so bad. Some factoriesare dirty and the work heavy, but this is not so differentfrom life as a servant. Pharmaceutical factories, on theother hand, can be light and clean, and though the work isnon-stop, they let you do it sitting down. The bosses alsoorder you about and can be very rude, but that is nothingnew. What is new is that the working day has its limits, from7 a.m. to 5 p.m., say, and once you have gone out thefactory gates your boss no longer has any say in your life.An d best of all, there are many other girls your age on yourshift, and you can make friends with them. The very bestpart of the day is walking home with the other girls, sharinga joke about your supervisor.Once home, Nyi has more work to do. She bathes heryounger brothers and sisters while her mother finishescooking the evening meal and finds time to say her eveningprayers. After dinner, Nyi washes up. In the morning,before work, she sweeps the floor, washes clothes, andfetches water. When a child in the house is ill, Nyi faces a 2

dilemma; if she takes a day off to look after him she loseshe r pay.Nyi gets very little money for the hours of work sheputs in at the factory. Though she has been there for tenmonths already, she is still on "probation" and is paid onlyRp.200 (US 32) a day, provided she reaches a certaintarget, plus Rp.50 for a meal which she must buy at thefirm's canteen. He r money buys kerosene, soap andmatches for the household bu t little else; her food comesfrom what her father can make selling ices outside factorygates, and her mother's income selling cakes. They find itvery difficult to make ends meet and they say that a factorywage coming into the family has not particularly raised theirstandard of living; in some ways they are poorer now asthere is very little agricultural work left.

Nyi and her friends have never dared ask the factorymanager to raise their wages; they say they would never beso brave. Nyi has never yet spoken to such a powerful andimportant man, inside or outside the factory. Some migrantworkers did once speak up, but they lost their jobs.Nyi has just had her seventeenth birthday. Two yearsago she was married to a boy from a neighboring hamlet butit didn't work ou t and after less than a year he left her. Nowanother man is interested in her; he seems quite nice but heis already married and Nyi is not that keen on becoming asecond wife. She thinks that such a man is not alwaysreliable, and sometimes a first wife tries to create troublefor a second wife. I f she did marry him she would still livewith her parents, at least for the first few years; and shewould still work in the factory, at least until she got pregnant. She would have to hope that her new husband wouldsupport his child and give her family money to replace herfactory wage, that he would be able and willing to do so.

But all that is still in the future, and God will resolvethese problems for her, says Nyi. Meanwhile, people sayshe ought to marry again soon; it's not right for a youngwoman like her to be without a husband. Nyi, like hermother before her, still has no choice in that.The New Industrialization

Industrialization under the "New Order" Govern

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,,./1I-"Cross-hatching shows the location o/the study. From a map by Hans Borkent.

ment in Indonesia has now been proceeding apace forfifteen years. I ts main purpose has been to generate growthin the Indonesian economy and in this respect there hasbeen some success, especially in the first part of the 1970s,with manufacturing increasing its share of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) from nearly 9 percent in 1971 to 12percent in 1977, and contributing to high growth rates inthe economy as a whole. Since then there has been someslackening off, with manufacturing production overshadowed in significance by oil and gas, but national andinternational planners continue to stress the role of industrialization in their strategy for Indonesia's"development. "Throughout, foreign capital has been encouraged totake the lead and investors in manufacturing come from allthe major industrial countries and many neighboring Asiancountries, but above all from Japan, Hong Kong andAmerica as well as multinational sources. It is difficult toassess how much foreign capital has been invested in Indonesian manufacturing in this period. Under the ForeignCapital Investment (PMA) scheme, with its special tax andfiscal concessions for foreign investors, almost US$1,620million went into 458 PMA industrial projects between1967 and mid-1978, 1 but much foreign capital also comes in

1. The figure given here is for actual PMA investment not approvals,which is the more usually published figure. The one should not be confused with the other, since actual PMA investment is generally only 40percent of that approved. Bank Indonesia, Penanaman ModiJl Asing Per 30

through joint ventures in "domestic" capital investmen(PMDN) enterprises, 2 as well as firms outside either ofthese schemes ("non-fasilitas"), though there are no reliable figures to estimate the size of these latter flows. In allforeign capital now dominates all the main sectors of manufacturing industry in Indonesia.Foreign capital has been attracted by several factors.At first, it was thought that Indonesia would have a potentially large domestic market for consumer goods, and mostfactories have been built on an import substitution basis.However, this internal market has been slow in growingwith the majority of Indonesian people still too poor to buymany consumer goods. Instead, as in many countries, international advisers such as the World Bank are nowen-couraging a shift away from import-substitution towardsthe production of goods for export. The 33 percent devaluation of the rupiah in November 1978 was expressly intended to benefit export producers. Above all the mainattraction for investors from abroad has been the largesupply of cheap labor which Indonesia can provide.Changes in land ownership patterns and agricultural tech

2. See Yoshi Tsurumi, "Japanese Investment in Indonesia: Ownership,Technology Transfer and Political Conflict," in G.F. Papanek (ed.), TheIndonesian Economy. Praeger Special Studies, New York, 1980; and LouisT. Wells, J r. , "Foreign Investment from the Third World: The Experienceof Chinese Firms from Hongkong," Columbia Journal o/World Business.Spring 1978, p. 39-49. The capital value of PMDN approvals to mid-1978amounted to some Rp.3,OOO million (US$7.2 million at pre-devaluationJuni 1978. (Foreign Capital Investment to 30 June 1978), Jakarta, 1978. prices), Kompas. 9 August 1978.3

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productive industries which are usually owned by IndoThe public attitude deemed most appropriate forwomen is "malu." This refers to both the mental andphysical atti tudes of women, encouraging them to appear shy, embarrassed and retiring, deferring to superiors and remaining at a distance from them, averting their eyes, and so on. Women are also encouragedto feel afraid (takut) of new experiences and new people. The opposite "berani" applies to behavior whichis assertive and forceful, and this is considered mostinappropriate, even dangerous, for the women ofKelompok, though as with much that is dangerous itholds its own fascination.

niques have been at the expense of small-holders. Pettytrade absorbs many of those with little or no access to land;indeed, Java today seems an island peopled by street vendors and minor middlemen, but the income they earn isminimal. This means that literally millions are desperatefor a livelihood and will accept very low wages. A Britishbased textile thread manufacturer has published its international labor costs and these give a good idea of Indonesia's ranking on the world scale. On its index which ranksthe UK at 100 (2.678 per worker per hour) and WestGermany at 133, Brazil is 31, India 13, and Indonesia thelowest of all at only 6 (0.166 per worker per hour) whichon double or treble shifts can be reduced to 5.3 However,most of the large electronic assembly and garment-makingup plants which roam the world seeking cheap labor havenot yet been attracted to Indonesia. Many are put off byconfusion and corruption in the Indonesian bureaucracyand the lack of services such as good roads, telephone andtelex systems, dependable water supply, and so on. Theystill prefer other countries such as Malaysia, even thoughthe labor costs there are marginally higher than inIndonesia.

I t has been said by Indonesian national economic planners and their international advisers that this industrialization will provide part of the solution to Indonesia's severeemployment problems. However, many now agree that thejob record of the new manufacturing industries has beenand is likely to be a continuing disappointment. Though3.5-4 million people are employed in the manufacturingsector, this is only 6 to 7 percent of the total labor force. 4Only three-quarters of a million of them work in the largeand medium-sized firms where most foreign capital is invested. s The rest are employed in the small-scale, less

3. Financial Times, London, 29 June 1981.4. Actual employment figures are the subject of debate. See particularly,Peter McCawley and Maree Tait, "New Data on Employment in Manufacturing 1970-76," Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies, (BIES), Vol.XV, No.1, March 1979; David Dapice and Donald Snodgrass, "Employment in Manufacturing 1970-77: A Comment," and Pete r McCawley andMaree Tait, "A Reply," BIES, Vol. XV, No.3, November 1979; H.W.Arndt and R.M. Sundrum, "Employment, Unemployment and Underemployment," BIES, Vol. XVI, No.3, November 1980.5. McCawley and Tait, BIES, March 1979, ibid., Table 4.

nesian nationals, and some say that employment here isgrowing while the large firms, increasingly capital-intensive, employ relatively fewer people. 6 Moreover, thoughthere has been some indirect employment created to service the factories, many people have lost their sources ofincome, particularly those making handicraft goods whichcannot now compete with cheap plastic or textile manufactured goods. Given this poor record, it is worth askingjust how much investment in manufacturing would beneeded to make any meaningful contribution towards solving Indonesia's unemployment problem, among a laborforce that is growing by 1.3 million every year. 7Industrialization and the creation of labor forces is notmerely a question of numbers employed. Nor is it solely oreven predominantly a question of shifting people from lessto more productive work, as some have argued. 8 For thepeople being employed, the terms and conditions underwhich they work are as vital, i f not more so, for assessingthe impact of industrialization on employment problems.These questions are much less frequently discussed byeconomists and planners who usually work with an assumption that industrialization will provide jobs at "rising realwages."9 Yet wages in the industrial sector have not keptpace with inflation, in some cases have been reduced in realterms from levels common in the early 1970s, and are evenlower than in the late colonial period. 10 Moreover, securityof employment is just as important for those employed asthe level of wages. Yet here again the evidence is that fewindustrial workers have any security; many are employedon a casual daily (harian lepas), probationary (percobaan),seasonal (musiman), or fixed-term contract (kontrak) basis,all of which entitle the industrial management to hire andfire workers at will, without the need to refer to any agreements with a trade union, or to existing labor law. I I Suchquestions are equally important as job totals in assessingthe contribution of industrialization towards progress anddevelopment.Moreover , the wider social effects of industrializationare deep and penetrating. After all, industrialization radically changed the nature of those societies which we nowcall industrialized. While it is not likely that Indonesia willbecome an industrialized nation in anything but the longterm (though some Indonesian planners have the year 2000in mind), few planners and policy-makers have paid muchattention to social questions.

6. Donald R. Snodgrass, "Small-Scale Manufacturing Industries: Patterns, Recent Trends and Some Implications," Development DiscussionPaper No. 54, Harvard Institute for International Development, HarvardUniversity, March 1979.7. McCawley and Tait, BIES, March 1979, op. cit.8. Arndt and Sundrum, BIES, November 1980, op. cit.9. See, for example, G.F. Papanek, "The Effect of Economic Growthand Inflation on Workers' Income" in G.F. Papanek (ed.), 1980, op. cit.p. 120; and also Juergen B. Donges, Bernd Stecher and Frank Wolter"Industrialisation in Indonesia," in ibid., p. 357. None of these writeracknowledge the role of Indonesian st ate intervention in holding wagedown.10. Papanek, ibid., p. 83.11. INDDC, Indonesian Workers and Their Right to Organise, IndonesianDocumentation Centre, Leiden, 1981, p. 119-121.4

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In this article we shall redress the imbalance a little,and look at some of the social effects of the industrialization policy. To do this we shall focus on a localized area, agroup of three neighboring villages (desa) on. the outeredges of the "industrial zone" around Jakarta, where fieldwork was carried out during 1978-79. 12 In particular weshall look at the recruitment policies of the new factoriesbuilt there during the 1970s and see what implications thesemay have for the lives of the people of these villages,especially for the women.The Creation of a Labor Force

Indonesia's manufacturing industry is mostly found ina few enclaves in and around the major cities. Jakarta itselfwas announced to be "full" by 1972, and the governmentbegan encouraging new and existing industries alike tomove out into the hinterland, in particular drawing up theJABOTABEK (JAkarta, BOgor, TAngerang, andBEKasi) Development Plan for the area within a 40 kilometer radius of the capital city. We shall be looking in detailat a part of the western area of this industrial hinterland, atthe industrial development in the Regency (kabupaten) ofTangerang.Tangerang saw a remarkable explosion in industrialinvestment during the 1970s, from 212 firms with a totalcapital investment of only Rp.307 million (US $0.73 million) in 1969-70 to 528 firms (PMA, PMDN and nonfasilitas) with a total capital investment of Rp.214,293 million (US$516 million at pre-devaluation prices) in mid1978. 13 Products range from chemicals and plastics, metaland rubber goods, construction materials, ceramic andpaper products, to food and drink processing. By far thelargest enterprises are several Japanese polyester fiber andother synthetic textile plants built between 1972 and 1976with a declared capital investment ofUS$9-30 million each.These provide the yams for a large number of weaving andknitting mills in the area. In all, these factories employedan estimated 60,000 people in 1978. This represents about9.5 percent of the adult population who are potentiallyavailable for work (those aged fifteen to fifty years) excepttha t no official population figures account for the thousandsof migrants who constantly flow in and out of the Regency;nor does this percentage take account of young teenagersand children, many of whom are employed in the newfactories. Another estimated 32,300 people in TangerangRegency work in 27,428 "handicrafts" (kerajinan) andother small-scale workshops, whose total capital value wasonly about Rp.I447 million (US$3 million). 14

As this industrialization pushed outwards along themain road running westwards from Jakarta throughTangerang town, many previously rural villages became

12. A year's anthropological fieldwork was carried out in these villagesduring 1978-79. The assistance of the Indonesian Academy of Sciences(LlPI) and the British Social Science Research Council is gratefullyacknowledged.13. DINAS Perindust rian, (Industry Office), Regencyof Tangerang; andPemerintah Daerah Tingkat II Kabupaten Tangerang, Gambaran UmumKabupaten DT II Tangerang. (General Outline of the Regency of Tangerang), Tangerang, 17 July 1978, p. 6-7.14. Ibid.

Ten-year aids at work in a textile factory in Bandung. West Java. (INDOe.Leiden. The Netherlands)

saturated with manufacturing and speCUlative capital. Thethree neighboring villages of our survey, here togethernamed Kelompok, house a total of about 18,000 people infourteen hamlets (kampung). Lying some thirty-five kilometers out of Jakarta, these villages sit on the very edge ofthe industrial area, where the factories meet the rice fields.At the end of the 1970s, the villages still appeared largelyrural, with the new factories dotted in and around thedensely-populated hamlets and their wet and dry agriculturallands. In spite of this agrarian appearance, the industrial development had already become the dominant forcein the area, influencing all aspects of social, economic andpolitical life there.The area of Kelompok has never been an agriculturally rich one. Until the 1920s it, like much of the rest of theJakarta hinterland, was the domain of estates (particulierelanderijen), many of which were owned by Chinese landlords who controlled their subservient population in afeudal and tyrannical manner quite un typical of the rest ofJava. These estates were disbanded from 1920 onwards.Only then did the Dutch colonial regime begin establishingits authority over the hinterland of Batavia (Jakarta), andinvesting in irrigation, roads, etc. Kelompok, with onlysmall patches of wet rice fields in between the dry hillocks,5

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remained a backwater, in spite of its position on the mainroad, neve r receiving much attention from the central government, neither under the Dutch nor under the new independent Republic after the Japanese occupation. Meanwhile the land continued to yield very poor results, beingrain-dependent and subject to drought or floods. Manyhouseholds were dispossessed of their land in the 1930sDepression, and from then onwards the land failed tosupport a substantial proportion of the people. Insteadthey turned to Tangerang town, only six to eight kilometersaway, or to the capital city, to make a living as hawkers anddomestic servants. This, then, was an area much in need ofattention and investment and, given the poor prospects foremployment in agriculture, not unsuited to becoming anindustrial area.From the early 1970s to early 1979, some fifty-sixfactories were built in Kelompok, mostly producing consumer goods for the domestic market, including tires, plastic goods, pharmaceuticals, air-conditioning units, electrical cables, steel rods, motorbike parts, confectioneryand biscuits, amongst others. Four were PMA firms, fifteenPMDN, and thirty-seven (66 percent) non-fasilitas. Whichever they were, most were owned by a combination ofnational and foreign capital, where national capital wasusually from domestic Chinese sources in collaborationwith individuals from the national or local bureaucracy,and foreign capital ranged from American, Japanese andThai sources but was mostly from overseas Chinese interests in Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Of thesefifty-six firms at the beginning of 1979, three were not yet inproduction, and twelve had already ceased production.Of the forty-one factories in production nearKelompok at that time, seventeen were large firms employing 100 or more workers, nineteen were medium-sized with20-99 workers, and five were small with 5-19 workers. Thelabor force of all these factories together numbered some6,000 people, which represented more than half of the totalregistered population of 10,500 men and women betweenthe ages of eleven and fifty years, tha t is half of the potentiallabor force. At first sight this suggests that the new indust-

By recruiting young people, especially young girls,from these hamlets [of Kelompok] into the factories,the industrial capitalists are able to make use of thetraditional forms of subordination of women to men,and youth to age, to create a labor force that is relatively easy to dominate.

rial development in Kelompok was successfully re-employing a significant proportion of the many people who hadinsufficient access to agricultural land, both those who werelandless or nearly so before the arrival of the factories andthose dispossessed in the 1970s by industrialists, speculators and land-dealers, (together totalling as many as 78percent of the households in the hamlet where a detailedhousehold survey was carried out). Upon closer inspection,particularly if we look at who are and who are not employed in the factories of Kelompok and the conditions oftheir labor, this optimistic picture shows many of the flawsinherent in an employment strategy based upon this kind ofindustrialization.

The factories of Kelompok recruit only certain typesof people into their workforce. The majority of the enterpr ises have a short-term strategy. They use low-technology equipment and have low productivity (often installingsecond-hand machinery from other Asian countries); andthey specialize in simple manufactured products which sell

In a cigaretteJactory in Java.6

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Table 1 Industrial Wages and Salaries in Kelompok, Tangerang Regency, West Java, Indonesia, February 1979

Male Female RemarksRp.* Rp.

Unskilled Wages per day per dayCasual day-laborer 200-300 150-250 No job security, no "extras" such as sick pay, (harian lepas) paid holidays, etc. Probationary (percobaan) 200-350 150-250 Few "extras" or benefits, e.g., food allowance ofRp.50 per shift. "Probations" can last for many years.Permanent day-laborer 250-600 200-400 A limited range of benefits and extras granted, e.g.,(harlan tetap) paid holidays, sick-pay. In some factories, a low dailywage (e.g., Rp. 150) is supplemented by a monthlybonus, which is reduced proportionately for daystaken off.Skilled Wages I. 2driver 650-1000 Entitled to sick-pay, medical expenses, transport mechanic 1000-1800 money, food allowance, paid holidays, etc. welder 2000-3000 Salaries2 per month permonthlow (clerk, supervisor, 10,000technician, security guard) 50,000 medium (lower management) 50,000400,000 high (top executives, 400,000 Indonesian/foreign) upwards

* Rp. 625 = US$II. Standardizing wages for the purpose of comparison is difficult because individual factories vary greatly in their practices "basic pay" and "extras" orbenefits granted. The figures given represent typical total wages divided on a per diem basis.2. Few people from the indigenous village population receive skilled daily wages or monthly salaries. Source: Fieldwork Data, Department of Manpower, (DEPNAKER), Tangerang Regency

at low prices. To achieve profits under these conditions, month contracts, others had their wages cut in real terms.they keep unit costs per worker as low as possible, paying Therefore, the factory jobs in Kelompok are very badlyvery low wages and usually not allowing even the barest paid and insecure. The people recruited to do them areminimum of "extras" such as pa id holidays or sick leave those who are most likely to accept work under these(Table 1). Few invest to protect the welfare or safety of condit ions, usually the very young and ill-educated, with atheir workers and accidents are frequent. Also, because high proportion of young women.many of these enterprises a re highly susceptible to financial Though the factories employ about equal amounts offluctuations, they insist on the right to layoff workers young men and women, the distribution is not random,during a crisis, and this they frequently do. The workers are with one gender or the other employed for different typesemployed on a daily, seasonal or short-contract basis, or as of products or parts of the production process. Young"probationers" even for many years, so that they can be women are paid only 70 percent of the wages of the younglaid off at a moment's notice. After the devaluation of the men for comparable work, and they are found doing heavyrupiah in November 1978, which badly hit this type of work such as humping tires from place to place as well asenterprise, many factories in Kelompok cut back produc so-called "lighter," if boring, jobs such as packing. Thetion and laid off workers, unable to pay their wage bill factory managers openly state that young women arewhile bank credits were frozen. When the workers were cheaper and more easy to control than young men. Thoughtaken on again, some of them found new compulsory three- it is not always clear why each particular factory manage7

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ment chooses the distribution of young women and youngmen that it does, in general terms managers do so in orderto keep thei r wage bills as low as possible and to avoid apotential ly troublesome workforce.This is also the reasoning behind employing mostlyill-educated young people. At the beginning of the 1970smany new enterpr ises recruited workers with high- or middle-school education. However, many of these workersbecame dissatisfied with the lack of training and promotionin the factories; this led to industrial unrest including demonstrations , sit-ins and violence against managers. Consequently, during the mid-1970s there was a change towards recruiting poorly-educated workers, for examplethose with only a few years at elementary school, who, itwas reasoned, would have sufficient discipline to carry outtheir tasks but who would be less likely to make demandsabout thei r rights and to initiate industrial action. A typicalpattern inside the factories is now the employment of largenumbers of barely-educated girls supervised by young menof high- or middle-school education.Moreover, the factories employ mostly young people,especially aged thirteen to twenty years. This is done notonly to facilitate control within the factories, but also tokeep wages down. Even here where people marry at anearly age, the employment of young people increases thelikelihood of employing single people, especially thosewithout children, which in tum relieves the pressure to paya "social" wage insufficient for dependents. In other industrial areas of Indonesia, large industrial concerns are notorious for ensuring that they employ workers without children, by sacking those who get married or pregnant, oreven carrying out physical checks on women recruits to seeif they have ever given birth. IS There is no evidence thatthese practices are widespread in Kelompok, but they arenot necessary since the low wages paid here make it difficult, in spite of the high levels of unemployment, for anyone with dependents to accept factory work. Few adultmen or women with children or aged parents to support canaccep t wages that are barely sufficient to support one person (Table 2) let alone provide for others, and indeed few ofthem are taken onto the workforce. Occasionally, for example, a divorced or widowed woman who needs to support her children in between marriages may try factoryemployment, but the money earned is usually insufficientto buy their food and other household goods and to replacethe necessary labor she puts into the household, so thattheir already low standards of health and nutrition l6 maydecline further, endangering the lives of her children. For

15. INDOC, 1981, op. cit.. p. 43-44.16. A household survey revealed that most adults in Kelompok eat 0.500.75 liters of rice per day with a small piece of dried saIted fish (ikan asin)and some leaf vegetable (sayuran). If the cash income is high enough, wetfish (ikan basah) or soya bean curd (tahu) or cake (tempe. oncom) is added;though these are high quality foods they are not eaten in great quantity.Most Kelompok people, even the comparatively well-off. eat chicken onlyonce a year at the Lebaran holy festival. Eggs and fruit are sold for cashrather than eaten. Children tend to eat a lot of rice but fewer vegetablesthan adults; malnutrition in the form of pot-bellies is common. as aredysentery and skin diseases. A comparison between the typical wage foran unskilled woman worker (table 1) and food prices (table 2) will showhow difficult it is for a lone woman to support her children on an industrialwage.

Table 2 Prices of Selected Goods in Kelompok, Tangerang Regency, West Java, Indonesia

February 1979

Milled Rice (beras)high qualitylow qualityCassava (ubi singkong) Chilli (cabe) Sweet Com (jagung) Peanuts (kacang tanah) Banana (pisang ambon) Chicken (ayam) Chicken's Egg (telorayam) Fish fresh (ikan basah) salted (ikan asin) high quality low quality Soya Bean Curd (tahu) Soya Bean Cake (tempe) Sugar (gula jawa) Salt (garam) Coffee (kopi) Tea (teh) Cooking Oil (minyak goreng) Kerosene (minyak tanah) Soap (sabun) Milk tinned (susu kaleng) powdered (SGM)

* Rp. 625 = US$1Source: Fieldwork Data.

Rp.*150/liter 130/liter 25/kg 7oo/kg20/piece 6OO/kg 250/bunch 14oo/piece50/piece

750/kg1600/kg4OO/kg125/ 10 pieces75/piece230/kg30/piece100/100 gmI5/smaIl packet310/bottle30/liter250/large piece250/tin 850/tin

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older people with dependents, factory labor is a poor option among a range of poor options, including very marginal petty trade, the little agricultural work that is left, ortemporary and infrequent work on c o n s t r u c ~ i o n projectsand road building; factory work gives as precarious anexistence as all of these and has not improved their prospects for a be tter life.Rather than take factory jobs for themselves, adultssend their young daughters and sons, or sisters andbrothers, into the factories. Since the industrial wage is solow, instead of becoming the central source of income for afamily, it is often regarded only as "supplementary." I tmay be the only regular cash income coming into the household and is vital to buy the necessary commodities such askerosene for lamps and cooking, matches and soap, but it israrely sufficient to purchase much more than these. Ayoung woman's wages are more likely to be contributedinto the household to buy these goods than are those ofyoung male laborers, who have more of a discretionaryright to spend their wages how they wish, but in both casesthe low wages mean that these young workers are depen

dent upon others, parents or older brothers and sisters, fora good proportion of their subsistence needs. The lowestwage recorded (Rp.I50) is only enough to buy, say, a literof rice and two bananas, and so clearly all other needs of aworker on this pay, the rest of her food, clothing, shelter,leisure and so on, must be provided for from some othersource. When asked why they let their daughter work formoney which cannot feed her, parents reply that "shewould in any case eat our rice." In other words, whateverwork she was doing, they would be responsible for feedingher. There is, then, a tacit agreement between parents andfactory managers that these young workers, especiallydaughters, are dependent, and this allows the capital investors in the area to pay wages which do not cover thedaily subsistence cost of their workforce. What the parentsof Kelompok workers do not express, though it is nevertheless the case, is that, as poor as they are, they are subsidizing the factories.Not only are industrial wages in Kelompok absolutelylow, but they are also low relative to those in other industrialareas. Wages here are, for example, up to 50 percent belowthose generally paid in Jakarta. This is not because prices inthis part of Tangerang are lower; in some cases (includingrice) they are slightly higher. Yet in spite ofth is difference,the workers of Tangerang seem much less willing than theircounterparts in Jakarta or Bogor to its south to engage inindustrial action to improve those wages and other conditions of work. Strikes and other forms of direct action dooccur from time to time in the factories of western Tangerang, but they appear to be much less frequent than in otherareas. 17 This suggests that the workforce here is much moresubdued than elsewhere. We have seen that the factories

17. In the absence offree trade union organization and of official recognition for existing labor law and negotiation machinery. the expression ofgrievances has, since 1978, increasingly taken the form of direct action,wildcat strikes, etc., which have in tu m been met with further intensifiedrepression by the military and police authorities. First-hand observationan d careful study of newspaper reports throughout 1978-80 reveal thatsuch direct action is no t as prevalent in th e western Tangerang area.

Rehearsals of RevolutionThe Political Theater of BengalRustom Bharucha280 pages, iIIus., Novem ber, $25.00s, ISBN 0-8248-0845-2" I t is very gratifying to find that the authorchooses to write on perhaps the most vital component of theatre in India and in a daringmanner-unassuming and unbiased-expose thecontradictions and political undercurrents thatrun through this theatrical scene in Bengal. Thisis an important work for theatre workers allover the world, an immense contribution toAsian scholarship, and an indispensable work tograce the shelves of any self-respecting libraryor theatre student." -Gautam Dasgupta, publisher, Performing Arts Joumal PublicationsAt the heart of the book are two chapters on thework of Utpal Dutt and Badal Sircar, the most im-portant theater practitioners in Bengal today, whohave achieved recognition in the international theatrical arena as well. Many of their productions aredocumented here for the first time in English. BertoltBrecht and Augusto Boal's models for political theater are considered in relationship to theater practicein Bengal. Written with style and wit, this bookbrings Bengali theater alive for the reader.

"In an impoverished statewhere millions of people aredenied the basic necessitiesof life-food, water,electricity, accommodation,sanitation, fuel-the theatercannot afford to be mereentertainment. The povertyand destitution of themasses demand a stringentlypolitical theater-a theater that confronts the basicproblems of the people and exposes the socioeconomic injustices that are responsible for theseproblems. " -FROM THE PREFACERustom Bharucha acted, directed, and designedsound for theater productions in Calcutta beforecoming to the United States in 1977. He received adoctoral degree in dramatic criticism from the YaleUniversity School of Drama and has worked as adramaturg at the Yale Repertory Theatre and theRepertory Theatre of St. Louis. He now teaches atSUNY, Stony Brook.To order send check, money order, or VISA orMasterCard information (account number, expiration date, signature). $25.00, plus $1 per copy forshipping.

U Diversity of Hawaii Press 2840 Kolowalu Street Honolulu, Hawaii 96822 9

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employ only certain categories of people in order to keepwages down and prevent industrial action, but this is truealso in the other industrial areas where the young workershave been more ready to voice their discontent. Rather wemust find some other element which encourages the work?f Kel.ompok to accept very low wages and not engagem disruptIon.Islam and the Subordination ofWomen

Many writers l8 have observed that women in Javahave a remarkable degree of independence from their menfolk. They report tha t many Javanese women head theirown households, inherit and own land and trading capitalin their own right, earn a living without dependency onmen, retain their children in case of divorce, and so on.This has led some to claim that Javanese kin relations are"matrifocal" and that the women there are as equal insociety as men. Whatever the truth of these findings forCentral and East Java, in the villages of West Tangerangthey do not ring true.Kelompok lies several hundred kilometers to the westof the areas of Central and East Java where these studieswere made. In this part of West Java, it is not possible to

have such an optimistic opinion about the position ofwomen. In particular, the people of Kelompok adheremore strictly to Islamic principles than do those in Centraland East Java. Kelompok straddles a frontier area, on the

18. See, for example, H. Geertz, The Javanese Family: A Study of Kinshipand Socialisation. New York, Free Press of Glencoe, 1961; and Robert Jay,Java nese Villagers: Social Relations in Rural Modjokuto, Cambridge, Massachusetts, MIT Press, 1969.

edges of the industrial zone radiating out of Jakarta to theeast, and at the same time entering into the rural area ofEanten to the west. Eanten is particularly noted for itsorthodox and scholarly (santri) Islamic principles. Here,male Islamic leaders, teachers and preachers (kiyai) head along-established and well-organized hierarchy and it is toEanten that the people of Kelompok look for their spiritualideological inspiration. In Kelompok the clergy, guardians of the moral code drawn mostly from medium to richlandowners and wealthy traders, leads a patriarchy whereyoung people of both genders are encouraged to submit tothe authority of older men in general (and the authoritiesofthe mosque in particular) and where women of all ages aresubordinate to men.Like women in other areas of Java, the women ofKelompok have traditionally sought incomes at one time oranother outside the household. Apart from handicrafts

~ b a m b o o ~ o v e n hats, now nearly defunct) and rice plant109, weedmg and harvesting within the orbit of the hamlet,they also engage in their own trade (usually foodstuffs,batik cloth, and household goods) which can take themtouring other hamlets, and young girls have undertakendomestic service in the towns. Their income is usually theirown to spend. Women in wealthy households can and doown capital and inherit land and goods in their own right.The property they take with them into marriage remainstheir own upon divorce, and they are entitled to half theproperty gained during marriage.Women's property rights and their contribution toproduction are in practice recognized as only secondary.Many women complain that they do not usually receivethei r full divorce entitlement. In inheritance men are gen10

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erally said to have "more of a burden to bear than women,"and are entitled to (though not always claiming) double theshare of their sisters. Moreover, the work women do isgenerally gender specific, that is "women's work" not doneby men. The domestic tasks which are always carried out bywomen are considered women's primary work. Indeed,women's work other than domestic tasks, for examplehandicrafts and petty trade, is often termed "pekerjaannanggur," literally "the work of the unemployed,"19 sug-gesting that it is thought secondary to both their own domestic work and to men's work.As many have pointed out, within the household andthe domestic sphere between households, women in Javahave considerable status and autonomy.20 Upon them fallsthe burden and responsibility of organizing and carryingou t most of the work surrounding the reproduction of thefamily, keeping them fed, clothed and clean, tasks which incircumstances of gross poverty they carry out remarkablywell. For this, much of women's income, in spite of its"secondary" label, is spent, here as in many parts of theworld,21 on necessary daily living expenses (biaya dapur),especially for the children. By contrast, men's contributionto the household, though believed primary and thoughobligatory according to Islamic and secular law, is in practice discretionary and, according to many women interviewed, not to be relied upon. There is no evidence that inthe majority of Kelompok households women control a"joint purse"; on the contrary, many complain of diffi-culty they experience in establishing a pattern of pooledincome and fair distribution between themselves and theirhusbands.The evidence from other areas of Java, and also fromthe Serpong Family Planning Project carried out in some"villages only some fifteen kilometers away fromKelompok, has been presented as if households are madeup mostly of stable nuclear families or simple extendedfamilies, where "a married couple" live together over along period with their children, and possibly with theirparent(s) and/or a young sibling.22 The evidence is open toalternative analysis; certainly many households inKelompok do not fit easily into this picture. Divorce, remarriage and polygamy are all common, with many people,both men and women, marrying several times in a lifetime.Children move between the homes of their separate parents , grandparents , elder brothers and sisters, and so on.Families, even former nuclear ones, often become split upand spread over many different dwellings. Meanwhile, inspite of this fluidity, women continue to organize the con

19. Hans Borkent, "The Economic Structure in the Sub-District of Serpong," Family Planning Project Serpong, Serpong Paper No.8, Universityof Indonesia and Leyden State University, 1974, p. 34.20. See especially Ann Stoler, "Class Structure and Female Autonomy inRural Java," in B.B. Hering (ed.), Indonesian Women: Some Past andCurrent Perspectives, Universite Libre de Bruxelles, Centre d'Etude deSud-Est Asiatique et de I'Extreme Orient, 1976; and Ann Ruth Willner,"Expanding Women's Horizons in Indonesia: Toward a Maximum Equality with Minimum Conflict" in the same volume.21. Ann Whitehead, "I'm Hungry, Mum: The Politicsof Domestic Budgeting," in Kate Young, Carol Wolkowitz and Roslyn McCullagh, (eds.),OfMarriage and the Market: Women's Subordination in International Perspec-tive, CSE Books, London, 1981.

FLOWERS IN SALT~ The BeginningsofFeministConsciousness inModernJapanSharon L. Sievers. This book traces the roots of Japanesefeminism to women's struggle fo r individual rights an dnew political, social, an d economic roles in the changingsociety that followed the Meiji Restoration of 1868. I tconcentrates on those Japanese women who were outspoken critics of their society an d the roles women wereassigned in it, bu t also assesses the contributions womenmade to Japan during a period of rapid modernization.Th e author treats such topics as the struggle to gain political rights , the creation of a women's reform movement, the involvement of women in the early socialistmovement, the protests of women textile workers, andthe women's literary movement. Illus. $22.50Stanford University Press

sumption of food (and the washing of clothes) and thosewho gather together to consume what a woman providestend to do so on the basis of their kin or marriage ties to her.In this respect, women do provide the focus of domesticfamily relationships.Women in this and probably most other parts of Javaare dependent upon men in that they all must marry. Inboth my and the Serpong surveys, there were no households headed by women who had never married, and thishas above all to do with the control of their sexuality andreproductive powers, the supervision by men of women'ssexuality and their capacity to bear children. Any womanwho does not conform to this pattern, who makes her own

22. For the Serpong Project see Lida c.L. Zuidberg and Anidal Hasyir,"Family, Marriage and Fertility in Serpong," in A.C.L. Zuidberg (ed.),Family Planning in Rural West Java: The Serpong Project, University ofIndonesia and Leyden State University, Institute of Cultural and SocialStudies, Ge Nabrink & Son, Amsterdam, 1978, pp. 74-75; also, LisaZuidberg, "Marriage, Fertility and Family Planning in the KecamatanSerpong," Serpong Paper No. 16, January 1975; and A.C.L. Zuidberg,"The Household Group in the Kecamatan Serpong, " Serpong PaperNo.7,July 1974. For East Java, see Jay, 1969, op. cit., p. 53; and Geertz, 1961,op. cit., p. 77.A preoccupation with "nuclear families" is symptomatic of a structuralist analysis which is essentially synchronistic; only when we view maritalrelations over time do we see the flows of people in and out of consecutivemarriages and the widespread transitory nature of "nuclear" households.Geertz recognizes this bu t still prefers the "structural significance" that atanyone moment most adults in Java are married over the significance oftemporal change. She also admits that her emphasis on the marital pair(rather than the Javanese individual's own perception of a network of kinthrough the parental line ) is her own construct but she still insists upon it.

I I

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In order to establish a labor force that is cheap anddocile, to avoid a free labor market with the industrialmUitancy which seems to accompany it in other industrial areas, the managers of the industrial capital invested in these villages have chosen to enter into al-liance with the Islamic patriarchs there.

decisions about her sexual life and bearing children outsidemarriage, is called "immoral," a prostitute, and is ostracized. Marriage is almost universal for men too, bu t it doesno t bind them to women to the same extent as it doeswomen to men. They do make their own independentdecisions about their sexuality and procreation of children,able to form liaisons with divorced and widowed womenUanda) without stigma to themselves and able, if they wish,to engage in polygamy. Seventeen percent of male household heads in my Kelompok survey were polygamous (usuaUy from among more wealthy men). 23

First marriage for girls takes place at an early age; theSerpong Project found an average age for the first marriageof girls of just over fifteen years (no higher than in the1930s), which is earlier than in either other areas of WestJava or in Central and East Java. By the age of eighteen, 75percent of girls are already married. By contrast, menmarry later, at an average age of20.5 years. First marriagesare generally arranged by parents, though nowadays usually with the consent and often on the initiative of the youngcouple. Marriages are not necessarily long-term; divorce isfrequent (22 percent of marriages reported for Serpongwomen ended in divorce). Divorce rights, however, ar e notequal. As the Serpong Projec t says, "a husband can easilydivorce his wife for adultery, disobedience or barrenness, "2 4 simply informing her verbally or by letter, whereasa woman can only appeal for divorce to the local religious(male) official responsible for questions of marriage(penghulu) and must prove her case against a miscreanthusband.Rather than being stigmatized, divorced or widowedwomen, unless they are old and beyond child-bearing age,are considered desirable and are very quickly remarried.Young janda are particularly encouraged to remarry

23. There appeaB to be a widespread bias in the gathering of data onmarriage patterns in Indonesia which views marriage as a "women's issue"and fails to take account of male patterns. For example, the IndonesianFertility-Mortality Survey of 1973 only interviewed women about maritalhistories, (see P. McDonald and E.H. Abdurahman, "Marriage andDivorce in West Java: An Example of the Effective Use of MaritalHistories, UniveBity ofIndonesia," Lembaga Demografi, Jakarta, 1974,mimeo); and the Serpong Project records the incidence of both extramarital relationships and polygamy as "limited" (Zuidberg, [ed.], 1978,op. cit., p. 96) without any substantiating evidence. Such serious andgeneralized distortions have led, amongst otheB, to an absence of authoritative data on the prevalence and nature of polygamy in Indonesiatoday, and to bi rth control being seen as limiting women's fertility with nosimilar attention to men's fertility. For a discussion on gender bias inresearch see Barbara RogeB, The Domestication o/Women, Kogan Page,London, 1980.24. Zuidberg and Hasyir, 1978, op. cit., p. 88.

quickly because they become the sexual target of youngunmarried men who visit their verandahs in groups at night(nganjang), and are likely to be denounced for sexual laxityor simply "strange behavior" if they continue as singlewomen for any length of time. About a third ofall Serpongwomen marry twice or more, one husband following another in fairly quick succession. Women heading their ownhouseholds, then, do exist (12 percent of both SerpongandKelompok households) but they are considered "unfortunate," and where the woman is still young she is said to bein a transitQry state "between husbands." Where a jandahas an adult son (over about fifteen years) living with her,even if he is unmarried the son will usually be recognized as"the head. "25 Some women run their own householdswhile their polygamous husband is absent visiting his otherwife or wives. Even while he is away, however, he haspublic authority over all "his" households. I f a husband isfrequently absent from a young wife, she will usually beencouraged to live with her parents or an older marriedsibling so that she does not lead an independent life.A woman is not considered an adult until she marries,a stage reached by boys at a much earlier age after theircircumcision,26 bu t it is upon bearing children that shegains he r full social identity. Bearing and rearing childrenare considered women's most important task, their Godordained role; and children, "gifts from Gods," are themost prominent aspect of the lives of most women. 27Withan earlier marriage age, fertility is also higher than in otherparts of Java. Average child-bearing age begins some twoyears earlier than in Central Java and lasts a little longer;intervals between pregnancies are shorter. At the end ofchild-bearing age, Serpong women have born an average ofseven children (not including the 28 percent of pregnancieswhich do not reach term). (Child mortality is also higherhere, affecting 26 percent of all children. )28According to Islamic teaching, a man may demandsexual intercourse from his wife whenever he wants (apartfrom prohibited periods surrounding birth). I t is a sin forher to refuse, for "the wife is the field to be sown."29 Inpractice, a wife may refuse from time to time withoutserious retribution, but since divorce and polygamy arepermitted and frequently occur when a husband is notsatisfied, wives feel themselves constantly under thisthreat. A marriage isnot considered successful unless thereare many children, and as we have seen childlessness is

25. Olivia Harris, "Households as Natural Units," inYoungetal., (eds.),1981, op. cit. In Kelompok there was only one household where a stillmarried woman was considered the "head" of her household by herneighbors and named as such by village records; she was aged aboutfifty-five yeaB and was the principal wife of a polygamous husband whospent almost all his time with his other two wives.26. Jay, 1969, op. cit., p. 70, confirms the concept prevalent in East Java"that classes children (that is, uncircumcised boys and unmarried girls)with animate items such as livestock and the insane, all of which are seenas incapable of adult behavior and hence as essentially innocent of socialresponsibility. "27. A. Buddy Prasadja and M. Aslam Sumhudi, "The Value of Childrenin a Rural Islamic Community," Serpong PaperNo. 15, August 1975.28. Zuidberg and Hasyir, 1978, op. cit., pp. 91-92.29. Ibid. , p. 89. See also the quotation from AI-Baqarah in N. Rochaini,"Nilai-nilai Wanita dalam Agama Islam," (Women's Status in the IslamicReligion), Prisma, Year 10, No.7, July 1981.12

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justification for a man to divorce his wife. Birth control isnot yet widely practiced in this part of Java. The SerpongProject found in 1972, before the extension of the nationalbirth control program, that less than 10 percent of Serpongwomen had ever practiced birth control of any kind (including herbal treatments, massage and abstinence), 30 wenbelow equivalent figures available at that time for Centraland East Java. Women in Kelompok in 1978-79 were certainly more aware of new methods of birth control (coil, pilland injection) but still very few had yet dared use them.Women who had already borne many children seemedeager to consider birth control, but even then not openlyfor fear of the opinions of both husbands and Islamic leaders. Islamic leaders were not openly in opposition to thegovernment-sponsored program of birth control, but it wasgenerally considered makruh, not appropriate and betternot to be done. 3 1Children, then, are the focal point of women's livesand by them they are identified. A husband often refers tohis wife as "the mother of my children." But this is not tosay that women have a greater claim than men over theirchildren. In contrast to the data from Central and EastJava, divorced mothers do not necessarily retain their children. While the mother continues to care for babies andtoddlers, children over the age of five are encouraged tofollow their divorced father into his new or other marriage( s). In practice this may not necessarily happen and wefind a greater range of patterns, with children attached tograndparents, elder brothers and sisters, uncles and aunts,etc. Even so, the father is recognized to have priority, firstright of option over his children.Men's rights over women and children do not restupon individual power relationships but are embeddedwithin and supported by the organized Islamic patriarchy.We have mentioned how the Islamic authorities standguard over marriage, controlling for example women's ac-cess to divorce; they also arrange marriages in order that nochild is born without a recognized father (providing onewhen the genitor of a baby is unknown). They are responsible for overseeing, and will intervene in any circumstancewhich threatens, the prevailing moral code. The new generation learns of this code not only through socializationwithin the home but also through Islamic education.Though the balance is probably now shifting, it is arguablethat Islamic school (madrosah) education in Kelompok remains as important as secular state education, both for boysand for girls. Many children attend the madrosah in theafternoons, after secular schooling in the mornings. Evenat secular school, religious education is given a priority,and local Islamic leaders are engaged as teachers. Apartfrom school, the youth are encouraged to join in socialactivities organized by the Mosque (e.g. choirs andpageants for major festivals such as Maulud) and to reject,for example, the attractions of the cinema in town. Thoughboys enjoy their traditional freedom to taste such delights,provided they continue ultimately to respect the authorityof their parents and the Mosque, the night-life of the townremains virtually prohibited to girls.

30. Zuidberg, 1975, op. cit., p. 31.31. Prasadja and Sumhudi, 1975, op. cit.

The public attitude deemed most appropriate for women is"malu." This refers to both the mental and physical attitudes of women, encouraging them to appear shy, embarrassed and retiring, deferring to superiors and remaining ata distance from them, averting their eyes, and so on. Women are also encouraged to feel afraid (takut) of new ex-periences and new people. The opposite ..berani" appliesto behavior which is assertive and forceful, and this isconsidered most inappropriate, even dangerous, for thewomen of Kelompok, though as with much that is dangerous it holds its own fascination. Although only the wivesand daughters of extremely orthodox (santri) households,usually more wealthy landowners and traders, are comparatively secluded and remain mostly at home, apart fromvisits to the nearby Mosque, any strongly independentspirit in a woman or among women is strictly limited. Theattitudes of malu and takut encourage women to identifythemselves publicly with their husbands (ikut suami) orfathers (ikut bapak) and not to cooperate together outsideof the limited spheres of the home or harvesting, or outsidethe supervision of the Islamic authorities. The onlyorganizations which exist specifically for women are the Islamicwomen's council (Majlis Tak'lim) and communal Qu'uranreading sessions (ngajih). The secular women's organizations which had begun to penetrate the rural areas before1965 have been completely dismantled. Even in women'strade, there is no evidence of the capital-sharing groups(arisan) now common among urban bourgeois women. Insum, however they behave in the confines of their domesticlife, in public Kelompok women do not gather together toorganize their own lives, but are separated, each identifiedwith reference to the men who dominate and to whom theydefer.The Islamic Patriarchy and the Factories

By recruiting young people, especially young girls,from these hamlets [of Kelompok] into the factories, theindustria l capitalists are able to make use of the traditionalforms of subordination of women to men, and youth to age,to create a labor force that is relatively easy to dominate.The young girls entering the factories consistently repeatthat they feel malu and takut, so deferential to their bosses(usually men) that direct confrontation, individually or ingroups, is almost unthinkable. They say that they are toomalu to be straightforward about any grievances, too takutto complain about low payor about unfair treatment, andwould rather leave the factory than "make trouble" ( ..dari-pada bikin ribut, lebih baik pulang saja"). They show anunwillingness, based on their inexperience, to organizetogther and it is easy for the management to atomize themand isolate one from another, to dismiss those who "createscenes" or engage in other types of inappropriate behavior(berani). In these ways relations of subordination in villagelife before the arrival of the factories can be transferreddirectly into the labor process of the new factories.Factory managers have yet more ways of keeping theworkers from the local villages under control. For example,they employ local male dignitaries (tokoh ), sometimes fromthe village-level (desa) administration (every jaro head ofthe fourteen hamlets in Kelompok was hired by one ormore factories in his locality), but also from the local

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Islamic leadership, including several men honored by thetitle kiyai (teacher), some Mosque functionaries, and manyrespected hajis (who have made the pilgrimage to Mecca).These men are used to recruit laborers for the factories andto ensure peace in the surrounding hamlets. Contact ismade, for example, by inviting the tokoh of the nearbyhamlets to a meal to celebrate the building of a particularfactory (slametan, potong kambing, potong kerbau), wherewilling tokoh can be identified and enlisted. Interviews withsuch dignitaries in Kelompok revealed that a substantialproportion of them were retained by local factories. Aslabor agents, they may provide a factory with its initiallabor force, being requested to supply, say, 100 girls fromtheir local area, and thereafter re-recruiting as required.Each labor agent is paid a reta iner (salary) or a commissionfor his efforts. As security agents Uago keamanan), they areresponsible to the factories for ensuring peace in theirhamlets, for which they normally receive a monthly salary(typically Rp.30,OOO).Such local leaders who are employed by the factoriesare able to select workers on the basis of personal contact,probably a lifetime's knowledge of the workers' families,and are in a very good position to filter out those who mightbe "trouble-makers." Then, those workers whom they dorecruit become their" anak buah," clients in a relationshipof patronage.32 These clients are warned not to maketrouble in the factories because this would give both themand their patron a bad name, and this helps to preventworkers from taking any action on their own behalf. Assecurity agents, the tokoh are also in an unrivalled positionto detect and attempt to eliminate potential trouble fromwithin the villages aimed at the factories. In these ways, thetokoh leaders become mediators in the relationship not onlybetween the capitalists and their labor force in the factoriesbu t also between the factories and the surrounding communities in general.Such an alliance does not eliminate the airing of grievances by the industrial workers of Kelompok but it may beone reason for the comparative lack of industrial action inthe factories here. In other industrial areas where strikesand workers' organizations are now becoming common

32. As mentioned previously, not only are women subordinate to men butalso youth to age, and similarly of course employees to employers, on theland as well as in the factories. As in some other areas of Java (see forexample Frans Husken, "Landlords, Sharecroppers and AgriculturalLabourers: Changing Labour Relations in Rural Jav a," Journal ofContemporary Asia. Vol. 9, No.2, 1979), in Kelompok during the post-1966period, relationships of subordination have generally become characterized by patronage and paternalism, masking and perhaps in reaction to themore assertively antagonistic period of the early 1960s which led into themass violence of 1965-66. Ben Anderson (Java in a Time of Revolution,Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 1972, p. 43, 16n) has described thepaternalistic 'bapak-anak buah' relationship with reference to men. G.1.Hugo, ("Population Mobility in West Java," Indonesian Population Monograph Series No.2, Australian National University, Department of Demography, Gadja Mada University Press, Yogyakarta, 1978, pp. 125 and193) also refers to the importance of "tokoh" leaders and the "bapak-anakbuah" relationship in West Java villages. Through these agencies inKelompok today, not only are many young women being recruited intothe factories through clientage to "tokoh" but so are young men. It isargued in this article here that young women workers are trebly subordinate, as client employees and as young people (similarly to young men),but additionally as discussed in the preceding section, as women.

place, it may be that the incoming investors have not benefitted from a workforce subdued by Islamic patriarchs.When workers in Kelompok do get upset about the conditions of the ir work, this more usually takes the form of masshyster ia (as has been recorded also in Malaysia and Singapore). Occasionally production is held up by mass weeping,or rumors that dangerous spirits infect the machinery or thefactory site (especially after a series of accidents). Suchsporadic and spontaneous outbursts are also from the patriarchal mold and are often resolved by bringing Islamicleaders into the factories to calm the workers down again.

That state-appointed officials (in all three villages theadministration was not popularly elected) should allythemselves with industrialization is to be expected; but it isperhaps at first sight surprising that the indigenous Islamicleadership should do so. One thinks, for example, of theleaders of the Islamic revolution in Iran so clearly hostile tothe effect of capitalist industrialization on their society. InIndonesian Islamic and nationalist circles too there is aconsiderable body of opposition to the government's "development" program with its emphasis on outside, "western"-led growth. I t is quite conceivable that the leaders ofthe established Islamic hierarchy in this part of West Javawould feel themselves threatened and react negatively. Inthe rural areas, especially towards Banten, a strongly conservative (kolot) stream of thought remains influential, andBanten has a long history of rebellion against non-Islamicinfluences. The patriarchs might well feel their positionundermined by the employment of large numbers of villagegirls in the factories, which takes the girls away from thedomestic hearth and allows them to gather together, meet"outsiders" and learn to exchange new aspirations. Such atrain of thought has been shared by many, including liberaland Marxist progressives, who have encouraged incorporation into the wage labor force precisely to spur on women'semancipation.The evidence from these villages shows that the mat teris just not tha t clear cut. Though there are influential villagepeople not reconciled to recent changes, one simply doesnot find the level of conflict between conservative Islamicelements and either industrial capital or labor to supportany such theoretical pronouncements about potentialemancipation. I t is worth examining Why.First let us consider what the village girls who work inthe factories themselves feel about their possible emancipation. There is no doubt that many of the girls regardworking in the factories as better than the alternative workavailable to them, whether this be domestic work in theirown homes or as servants in other people's homes. Wherethe conditions in factories are light and clean this is muchbetter than they might otherwise expect; where it is dirtyand the work very heavy this is no worse. For them, theadvantages of factory work include the fixed hours and theopportunity to make friends with other workers. Domesticservice, by contrast, they say is intolerably hard work, foruncertain and long hours, in isolation from family andfriends. I t is a reflection of this attitude that the urbanbourgeoisie of Tangerang town now finds it extremely difficult to get servants, needing to search in rural villages atleast twenty kilometers away to find candidates. The girlsalso dislike working only at home, not so much because it ishard work but because the social environment is limited to14

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family and close neighbors. There are senses, then, inwhich the girls perceive changes for the better, though itcan be seen how limited these are. Their perceptions are areflection of the reality, for the conditions for their emancipation are indeed limited.The girls who go into the factories are from landless orland-short families that have always sought an income outside the home. Factory work is thought as legitimate a wayas any for them to do this. The daughters of relativelyorthodox-and usually more wealthy families who weretraditionally secluded-do not go into the factories. Theirfathers actively discourage them and there are few whoexpress a desire to get a factory job. Factory recruitment,then, makes little change in this state of affairs. Just as workoutside the home did not mitigate against women's subordination before the factories arrived, nor does it now.Within the factories the girls are in a highly controlledenvironment, supervised by men managers and overseers.Outside the factories they return to their homes, where aswives, mothers, sisters and daughters they are still subordinated. Since the factories are built on the edge of, or evenwithin, their own hamlets there is not even a long journeyhome which the girls might make their own. Moreover,employment in the factories is only temporary, each girlworking only for a few years until her first child is born. Thegirls also move from factory to factory so that in four years'industrial employment a girl will probably have beenthrough as many factories. For these reasons, the girls havelittle chance to learn new ways over a long period. Materially too, they are little better off than they were. Aftercontributing towards household expenses, there is almostnothing for a girl to spend on herself, let alone contributetowards any material independence. The payment of lowwages remains within the traditional view that women'scash income is supplementary rather than central, andwages are so low that these girls are forced to remaindependent upon their families for survival. Female labor,undervalued prior to the arrival of the factories, remains sotoday.Therefore, the employment of young women fromKelompok in factories under these conditions does notparticularly interfere with their domestication, and doesnot necessarily threaten the patriarchy. Indeed there is aconvergence of opinion between the incoming capitalistsand the Islamic patriarchy, who both see women as submissive, dominated objects. Individual Islamic leaders cantherefore justify encouraging this form of recruitment fortheir own gain without serious challenge to their own viewsconcerning women. The patriarchs only show serious concern if factory work is likely to jeopardize the control ofwomen's sexuality. For example, some factories wish toemploy women on the night shift. This is restricted by lawon health grounds (Law No.1 1951), but neither factorymanagers nor local tokoh consider health a problem.Rather, tokoh believe that employing girls at night maythreaten the moral code, and they press the industrialmanagers either to employ all men on the night shift (eventhough this raises the wage bill) or to employ girls only fromthe immediately neighboring hamlet under the supervisionof a man from their own community, typically someonewith respected religious status. The nightwatchman Uagokeamanan ma/am) has less to do with preventing theft of

equipment than guarding the morality of the girl workers,and that includes keeping an eye on the factory managersthemselves.I t is also clear that what we are examining here are thesocial patterns brought about after only a few years ofindustrialization. What may be the longer term socialchanges is impossible to predict, but we can note some

possibilities and trends in the future status of women inKelompok caused by their employment in factories. Thegirls are likely to learn from their new experiences of making a wider circle of friends, and of new forms of socialorganization where they are treated in collectivities ofworkers, such as shifts, rather than as individuals. Theirpublic identity may change away from close identificationwith their fathers and husbands. They may well learn totake initiatives together. Moreover, their wage-earning potential as daughters, or the strain of low factory wageswhich do not support the children they bear as wives, maylead to a weakening of household structures, to later marriage and child-bearing ages. I t is the worry of many youngworkers that they cannot afford to marry and, if they do, toraise children. A pregnancy where both mother and fatherwork in factories, let alone where the father is unemployed,can be a disaster. Such changes in "family life" could cometo reflect on the patriarchy itself, and perhaps lead to agreater independence for women. It is, however, too earlyto prove or predict any certain trends in this direction.Migrant Workers

In these villages of Kelompok, as in other industrialareas, there are now many migrants (orang merantau) whohave been attracted by the prospect of jobs, and it is notunreasonable to imagine that they might have a considerable effect on social relationships in the villages, on thepartiarchy organized by the tokoh. Many have come fromvery distant areas of Java, Sulawesi, Sumatra and Bali;some of them are not Islamic but are Christian or Hindu.They do not come from the more "domesticated" andsubordinated sections of Kelompok society and, unlike theworkers raised in these villages, they apparently enter thefactories as "free" workers, that is free of traditional constraints, under contractual relationships only to their in-dustrial employers. Owning no allegiance to the tokoh, it isquite possible that they would be disruptive to both thepatriarchy in the villages and the discipline in the factoriesestablished in alliance with that patriarchy. How then dothe tokoh and managers cope with the migrants?The migrants living in Kelompok can be divided intothree categories. First, there are the wives and sisters ofsoldiers stationed in the Battalion situated in one of thevillages. These will not concern us here except to note thatmany of them do work in the factories and, being under theauthority of a military command, even if only indirectly,they provide another form of subdued labor. Second, thereare many migrants living in dormitories inside factory compounds. These too we will leave to one side, although it isworth mentioning that these dormitories are a great causefor concern for the village Islamic authorities. Rumorsabound about the "inadequate supervision" of single-sexdormitories that are "too close together" leading to "immoral ity" and unwanted pregnancies. Apart from making

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representations to the management to "regularize" thesituation, and requesting government officials to make inspections, the Islamic authorities have no control over whathappens in the dormitories, and the issue continues tosmolder.

Third, there are the migrants who live in the villages.Not every hamlet has large numbers of migrants livingthere, but in those that are closest to the main road thereare substantial numbers, even as high as 30 percent of theadult population. Some migrants comprise marriedcouples, with or without children, but by far the majorityare young, single people, both men and women33 who tendto stay only temporarily for a few months or a year or two.Some single men have no permanent lodgings but movearound to sleep in the verandahs offriends' houses or in themosques or prayer houses (langgar), as young men of thevillage themselves do. Married couples and sometimesgroups of men only or of brothers and sisters rent wholehouses. But the majority, including all the long single girlsthat I interviewed, rent rooms either within the homes ofindigenous people or, and this is a growing trend, in complexes of rooms built by tokoh close to or surrounding theirown homes , from which the tokoh gather considerable rent.By contrast to indigenous workers, many of thesemigrants stand ou t as straightforward, openly friendly andapproachable, no t at all malu or takut. Frequently they havea higher education level than the indigenous youth. Theyhave come from far afield, often upon their own initiative,and in the case of girls sometimes having left home to avoidan arranged marriage. For these young women to have lefttheir natal home against their parents' wishes is enough initself to classify them as be rani . They tend to adopt styles ofdress, make-up and hair-cut that are considered "modem"(bright, synthetic dress, even shorts and sleeveless tops).They laugh and chat openly with young men from theirfactories, occasionally go in groups to the cinema in town.It might be thought that these migrants, behaving in such acontrasting manner to the indigenous youth, represent asource of antagonism with those interested in preservingthe existing code of female subordination. Such conflict hasbeen recorded in Penang, Malaysia,34 yet in these villagesof West Java it was remarkable how little antagonismseemed to exist.We have noted that many girls rent rooms within thehomes of the local population. Here they are often treatedless as lodgers than as daughters (and this includes theChris tian girls as well as Muslims). They become domesticated, doing chores and helping to look after childrenduring their time off. Though they frequently do this inreturn for extra food as a way to supplement their meagerwages, they willingly enter into such a family relationship

33. The 1973 LEKNAS (Indonesian National Institute of Economic andSocial Research) survey of migration to fourteen Javanese cities foundthat about 70 percent of both men and women migrants were undertwenty-five years old, with the largest proportion in the fifteen to eighteenage bracket. Fifty-eight to 59 percent of men and women were withoutspouses (single, divorced, or widowed). See Bisrat Aklilu and John R.Harris, "Migration, Employment and Earnings," in Papanek (ed.), 1980,op. cit., Tables 5.2 and 5.4.34. M. Blake, "A Case Study of Women in Industry," UN Asian andPacific Centre for Women and Development, Bangkok, 1980.

fo r the protection this can give them against their vulnerability in this male-dominated society. This is the case alsofor girls renting rooms in complexes, where the ownerusually presides over his charges in a paternal manner whilehis wife treats them with motherly care.Th e return part of such a bargain is that the girls'sexuality becomes the concern of their new "family." Theyar e expected to respect the mores of the hamlet and showrestraint, in particular entertaining their men friends onlyin the public arena ofthe front verandah. Some ofthe girlscomplain that they are expected to be "whiter than thewhite" and achieve a higher moral standard than is the casefo r indigenous daughters. But girls who are unwilling toaccept this discipline are first subject to innuendo andrumor, then ostracized and eventually told to leave thehamlet.

With migrants as with indigenous workers, the effectsof a low wage regime reveal the tensions in the alliancebetween patriarchs and capitalists. We have seen how thevillage girls need to stay with their families and eat fromwhat others provide in order to be able to live on such lowwages. Migrant workers do not usually have their familieswith them; they must somehow either exist on their wagealone, or supplement it from some other source. As mentioned, some do domestic work in their "time off" in returnfor food; others receive regular gifts of money and clothingif they are lucky enough to have a relative elsewhere able tosend these. But girls who have no other means to supportthemselves do also take to prostitution. Within the villagesthemselves there was little evidence of this, for it was nottolerated by Islamic leaders within their own communities.However, the Battalion and the local town were nearby,where destitute girls could easily be absorbed as prostitutes. Therefore girls who can no longer support themselves except by prostitution leave the villages, to be replaced by new arrivals who will in their tum be told toconform or leave. Only by making destitute migrant girlsinto social outcasts can the patriarchs continue their controlover women's sexuality in the hamlets on the one hand andthe capitalists their control over the wage rate on the other.The girls are the expendable element in this accommodation of interests.

We have also noted that young migrant men oftenconform to the existing patterns of behavior expected ofthe local young men. Were they to rent rooms in privatehouses, this might be a threat to the privatization ofwomen's sexuality. Instead, they do not usually move inunless they marry in. Moreover, by using the mosques theycome under the authority of the functionaries and the maleummat (Islamic community). I f they live in complexes, theytoo are subject to the paternal supervision of the tokoh.Furthermore, most factory jobs are not available in the freelabor market, but must be obtained through a "contact"already inside the factory to speak on one's behalf. Therefore male as well as female migrants must either seek thefriendship of a wide circle of other workers, or, in the caseof many factories, be hired through a labor agent. Clientage to such an agent then also brings them into the patriarchy, into subordinated relationships with the tokoh.

Thus, instead of presenting a challenge to the patriarchy, many migrants are in one way or another beingdrawn into it, and so their arrival, in great numbers is not as

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threatening to the prevailing social order as might at firstsight have been thought. Migrants do tend to be much moreoutspoken than their indigenous counterparts; some ofthem reveal great resentment at their trea tment within thefactories and speak with despair at the unwillingness of thevillage youth to understand the need for solidary industrialaction. Some also understand how being bonded to a laboragent inhibits them from taking the action they want to.Yet I found no evidence that they had thought about theirincorporation into the "family life" of the hamlets as problematic in this respect. Even so we can suggest that thedomestication of migrant workers into village life can provide an effective brake on their industrial militancy in wayssimilar to those applying to indigenous workers.

We discussed earlier some of the contradictory ways inwhich capital, while strengthening the Islamic patriarchy,may at the same time be undermining it. Changes in thesocial order on which the power of the patriarchs rests maylead to possible changes in women's subordination. I t isnow possible for us to outline several more examples of thissocial process.I t is clear that the presence of so many young migrantswill influence future changes in social relationships in thesevillages, even if again this will be in ways that are notpossible to predict. We can already see certa in indications.For example, indigenous girls are fascinated by the"berani" behavior of the migrants, and have begun imitating them even i f only in tentat ive ways. Religious teachersin their speeches warn against increasing "immorality"among village youth such as visiting the local town in theevenings. They urge parents to encourage children to readreligious texts instead in the evenings after their day atthe factory. Moreover, marriages to outsiders (to both menand women migrants) are now quite common; over timethis is likely to lead to increased mobility in the search forjobs, taking both sons and daughters away permanently.Meanwhile, still more migrants flow in, and this populationflow is no t conducive to maintaining the traditional patriarchal order which, being based on paternalism, can onlybe maintained through long-term familial or pseudo-familial bonds.Furthermore, as tokoh continue to expand their interest in rented accommodation, they will themselves beginto break down the patriarchy upon which thei r own presentpower rests. I t will not be possible for them to preside in thesame paternal manner over many complexes, or over complexes which are built further away from thei r own homes.Indeed, some of these tokoh are now moving thei r homesaway, into the neighboring town. There are also the firstsigns of other urban rentiers investing in housing complexes for workers. Such absente