Description
Book SynopsisFocuses on Laweyan, a production center of batik textiles that had embraced modernity under Dutch colonial rule, only to fend off the modernizing forces of Indonesia during the twentieth century. This book portrays a merchant enclave clinging to its forms of social life and highlights the power of women in the marketplace and the home.
Trade ReviewWinner of the 2000 Harry J. Benda Prize, Southeast Asia Council of the Association for Asian Studies "Brenner has made an intelligent use of her ethnographic experiences to formulate a compelling and highly readable text on issues of current theoretical concern. Her work displays an admirable grasp of the complex social and economic transformations which have taken place in Java over the last century ...[A] timely and impressive book."--Jennifer Alexander, Pacific Affairs "Suzanne Brenner's book is an engaging account of the making of modernity and its reversals ... In the batik-producing district of Laweyan, Solo, Java."--Maila Stivens, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
Table of ContentsList of FiguresAcknowledgmentsA Note on the Use of Foreign Terms and Proper NamesIntroduction3Ch. 1A Neighborhood Comes of Age24Ch. 2Hierarchy and Contradiction: Merchants and Aristocrats in Colonial Java52Ch. 3The Specter of Past Modernities87Ch. 4Gender and the Domestication of Desire134Ch. 5The Value of the Bequest: Spiritual Economies and Ancestral Commodities171Ch. 6The Mask of Appearances: Disorder in the New Order206Ch. 7Disciplining the Domestic Sphere, Developing the Modern Family225Notes255Glossary281Bibliography283Index295
