The STSI-SOAS Indonesian television project

The Balinese Television Project is a collaborative venture between STSI Denpasar and SOAS, starting in 1990, to record, document, preserve archivally, and transcribe important Balinese cultural television broadcasts for educational and research purposes. The project now has an archive of some 1,500 hours of selected broadcasts, and is supposed to be among the largest archives on non-Western television in the world. Although Indonesia has a very important, active, and rapidly changing television broadcasting network, which is central to its role as a developing Pacific Asian country, the social and cultural implications of television on people's lives have remained largely unstudied. Among the problems is a relative lack of materials and of research on contemporary mass media in Indonesia. Television companies have virtually no archival facilities. So the project began as a pilot scheme in Bali to preserve broadcasts of particular cultural and religious value from destruction, by recording, transcribing, and establishing an archive for the use of both Indonesian and foreign scholars, teachers, and practitioners. The aim was that archive should also form a basis for more extensive research into Indonesian media.     

The boundary dispute between Chile and Argentina

In November 1920, James Young Simpson, Professor of Natural Science in New College, Edinburgh and Trinity College, Glasgow, was invited by the governments of Latvia and Lithuania to chair a commission which would settle the disputed border between the two newly‐independent states. Upon his return to Edinburgh in May 1921, Simpson deposited the papers and final report on the commission's decision with the Royal Scottish Geographical Society, of which he was an active member. This article will explain why and how Simpson came to be involved in diplomatic decisions so remote from his home life and work, and will analyse the significance of the results of Simpson's efforts on the arbitration commission.     

Indonesian quarter-rudder mountings

Ten quarter-rudder arrangements found in Indonesia are described and illustrated with evidence for an 11th arrangement. Some types have been used on vessels of over 100 tons, while others occur on offshore fishing craft and outrigger canoes. The ethno-archaeological evidence gathered in the field is used as a basis for consideration of quarter-rudders used in the Classical and Medieval Mediterranean.     

Islam in and out of politics: The Indonesian case

Accounts of the relationship between Islam and politics in Indonesia often fail to appreciate the contribution that an anthropological perspective can make towards understanding the heterogeneity of Muslim communities in the country. Looking at recent events that have political dimensions in the country, this article shows how paying close attention to the popularity of celebrity preachers can complement a political science approach.     

Gender interests and Indonesian democracy

Using a distinction between practical and strategic gender interests, this paper examines the implications which democracy has for women in Indonesia. A comparison between the 1950s, when Indonesia experienced a period of liberal democracy, and the current New Order era, reveals that the different records of the two regimes in fulfilling women's gender interests can be explained both by the relative success of governments in promoting development and by the level of civil and political liberties tolerated by them. In the present political transition in Indonesia, the prospect of greater freedoms of expression and association offers hope to women seeking to pursue strategic gender interests and the practical gender interests of poorer women.