Back Door Java: State Formation and the Domestic in Working Class Java

by Janice Newberry

Overview

In the densely populated urban neighbourhoods of Java, women manage their houses and their communities through daily exchanges of food, childcare, and labour. Their domestic work is based on local ideas of community cooperation and support, but also on the Indonesian government's use of women as unpaid social workers. Consequently, women are a pivotal point in both state-sponsored programs of domesticity and in the local practice of community exchange managed from individual houses. Back Door Java explores the everyday lives of ordinary urban Javanese from a new perspective on domestic space and the state. Using rich ethnographic description of a neighbourhood in Central Java, Newberry illuminates the ways in which state rule is intimately connected to the household and the community.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781442635821
Publisher:	University of Toronto Press
Publication date:	04/01/2006
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	208
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Jan Newberry is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Lethbridge, Alberta.

Table of Contents

List of Figures

Acknowledgements

Chapter One: Through the Missing Back Door, an Entrance

Chapter Two: Kampung

Chapter Three: The House

Chapter Four: The Household: Making Do

Chapter Five: The Home

Chapter Six: Through the Back Door of Domesticity: An Exit

Epilogue: Housewife Ethnographer

References

Index

What People are Saying About This

Sheldon Garon

In this fine ethnography, Jan Newberry illuminates the mundane, yet important, ways in which the Indonesian state has entered the lives of women and their families. What we see is neither top-down control nor the 'authentic' traditional community, but rather an interactive dynamic in which the state and community shape each other. Exhibiting similarities to the patterns of cooperation used in Japan to create 'good citizens' and advance economic development, her Indonesian case will interest scholars of East and Southeast Asia alike.

Penny Van Esterick

Newberry takes us on a guided tour of gendered domestic space, revealing the innards of an urban community and providing a rare glimpse into the work of ethnographer / couples, where the writer is judged as both ethnographer and housewife.

Mary Steedly

An important contribution to studies of gender and the state in Southeast Asia, this eminently readable book is at once engaging and profound.

Editorial Reviews

Newberry's book will be of great interest to scholars of Indonesia, but it also should be read by scholars of feminist and political theory. Her research reveals the value of ethnographic depth for analyses of state formation, as it highlights how the New Order state not only generated and distributed abstract ideas about domestic and national life, but brought them together in material forms that generated interpretations about gender and class, egalitarianism, and failure. These strengths also make the book an excellent text with which to teach.—The Journal of Asian Studies
In this fine ethnography, Jan Newberry illuminates the mundane, yet important, ways in which the Indonesian state has entered the lives of women and their families. What we see is neither top-down control nor the 'authentic' traditional community, but rather an interactive dynamic in which the state and community shape each other. Exhibiting similarities to the patterns of cooperation used in Japan to create 'good citizens' and advance economic development, her Indonesian case will interest scholars of East and Southeast Asia alike.—Sheldon Garon, Princeton University, author of Molding Japanese Minds: The State in Everyday Life
Newberry takes us on a guided tour of gendered domestic space, revealing the innards of an urban community and providing a rare glimpse into the work of ethnographer / couples, where the writer is judged as both ethnographer and housewife.—Penny Van Esterick, York University
An important contribution to studies of gender and the state in Southeast Asia, this eminently readable book is at once engaging and profound.—Mary Steedly, Harvard University

From the Publisher

Newberry's book will be of great interest to scholars of Indonesia, but it also should be read by scholars of feminist and political theory. Her research reveals the value of ethnographic depth for analyses of state formation, as it highlights how the New Order state not only generated and distributed abstract ideas about domestic and national life, but brought them together in material forms that generated interpretations about gender and class, egalitarianism, and failure. These strengths also make the book an excellent text with which to teach.

The Journal of Asian Studies