Abstract: |
The Javanese Collection features documents, all of them in English, covering a variety of cultural and socioeconomic information. Most of the documents deal with the post 1949 period in which the Javanese, as citizens of the newly founded Indonesian Republic, witnessed political violence and rapid economic transformation. The place focus is central Java where a group of scholars, sponsored by Massachusetts Institute of Technology, conducted ethnographic research in early 1950s. The outputs of this study included the works of the scholarly couple Hildred and Clifford Geertz, and several other researchers. Major themes covered include kinship and family system, religion and culture change, social organization and village life, marketing behavior of peasants. Together, these studies provide a comprehensive account of Javanese culture and society as observed in the 1950s-1970s. These earlier studies are supplemented by other documents in the collection which, based on information from 1980s to mid-2000s, examine more specific themes. Coverage includes family life, aspects of culture including concepts of self, shame, place, gender and power. Other documents in the collection include broad ethnographic descriptions of Javanese culture by an Indonesian anthropologist
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