00074918.2015.1111796

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Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies

ISSN: 0007-4918 (Print) 1472-7234 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cbie20

Linking People: Connections and Encounters

between Australians and Indonesians

Chris Manning

To cite this article: Chris Manning (2015) Linking People: Connections and Encounters between Australians and Indonesians, Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies, 51:3, 486-488, DOI: 10.1080/00074918.2015.1111796

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00074918.2015.1111796

Published online: 29 Nov 2015.

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486 Book Reviews

it discuss how local governments experiment with new policy ideas, even though localities often adopt policies from other regions (see Phelps et al. 2014). In addi-tion, although this book has a special section discussing development issues in the country’s periphery, it focuses only on Aceh, Papua, and West Papua, which have special autonomy rights. Regional development in border regions, including in small remote islands, faces signiicant obstacles and is similarly worth our atten -tion. This and other unobserved aspects should set the agenda for future research.

Fahmi, Fikri Zul, Muhamad Ihsani Prawira, Delik Hudalah, and Tommy Firman. 2015.

‘Leadership and Collaborative Planning: The Case of Surakarta, Indonesia’. Planning Theory. doi: 10.1177/1473095215584655.

Firman, Tommy. 2009. ‘Decentralization Reform and Local-Government Proliferation in

Indonesia: Towards a Fragmentation of Regional Development’. Review of Urban &

Regional Development Studies 21 (2–3): 143–57.

Fitrani, Fitria, Bert Hofman, and Kai Kaiser. 2005. ‘Unity in Diversity? The Creation of New

Local Governments in a Decentralising Indonesia’. Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Stud-ies 41 (1): 57–79.

Phelps, Nicholas A., Tim Bunnell, Michelle Ann Miller, and John Taylor. 2014. ‘Urban

Inter-referencing within and beyond a Decentralized Indonesia’. Cities 39: 37–49.

Linking People: Connections and Encounters between Australians and Indonesians. Edited by Antje Missbach and Jemma Purdey. Berlin:

Regiospectra Verlag, 2015. Pp. vii + 298. Paperback: €24.90.

According to the editors of this book, the idea for the symposium on which it is based came out of ‘the “back-to-square-one” sense of inertia and frustration’ about the Australia–Indonesia relationship. The book comes after oficial rela -tions plummeted for almost a year from November 2013, over revela-tions that the Australian government had tapped the phones of Indonesia’s then presi -dent Yudhoyono and the First Lady. Almost all the contributions highlight the importance of ‘soft’ power; the argument is that a broadening and deepening of people-to-people relationships can partly buttress against the inevitable downs in political relationships.

The book does a good job in giving us a glimpse of the wide range of personal and institutional connections that might contribute to soft power, particularly in education and culture. The editors warn, however, that only a few dimensions of these connections are on display in the book. Discussions of civil society, sport, religion, business, and many other areas of interaction between Australia and Indonesia are barely canvassed. The book is also largely a perspective on bilateral relationships from Australia; only one of the main authors resided in Indonesia at the time of writing.

The two chapters likely to be of most interest to BIES readers are those on the economy and on West Papua. Howard Dick (chapter 2) bemoans that Australians

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Book Reviews 487

who have recognised the rise of China have yet to embrace the rise of Indonesia, and points to our ‘struggle with difference’. Budy Resosudarmo, Kiki Verico, and Donny Pasaribu (chapter 3) concur in relation to economic relationships. Economic ties between Australia and Indonesia, while not insigniicant—espe -cially in tourism—are relatively weak for two neighbours with large and diversi-ied economies. Australia ranks only around ninth for Indonesia in bilateral trade and investment, for example, partly because both countries are rich in natural resources and target major markets in China and Japan. The authors note that ties have improved in the past decade but suggest there is potential for them to improve much further. Stronger economic ties might at least provide more ballast when political relations hit one of their inevitably low points.

Richard Chauvel (chapter 4) discusses bilateral challenges in relation to Papua, one area ‘where people to people relations are not encouraged’. Chauvel focuses on two events that drew the ire of Jakarta: Australia’s granting refugee status to a group of Papuans who led Indonesia in 2006, and the threat in 2013 that a ‘freedom lotilla’ would visit Papua to campaign on indigenous rights (a com -mon cause a-mong Australian Aborigines and Papuans facing discrimination and repression). More broadly, Australian tourism in Papua, press interaction, and other interactions between Australians and Papuans are discouraged by both gov-ernments. Chauvel points to Australia’s dilemma in this case: ‘Of all Indonesia’s neighbours, Australia has the greatest interest in a resolution of the Papua conlict but has, it seems, little capacity to inluence or support a resolution’ (p. 87).

The other chapters deal with media, education, and culture. One challenge highlighted in the book is the independence of the government-supported Australian media (including Radio Australia, the ABC’s international service) and, in particular, reporting deemed by politicians and diplomats to be against the national interest. Ross Tapsell (chapter 5) reminds us that the tension between independent media coverage and the interests of soft power in diplomatic rela-tions stretches back to the reports on East Timor in the 1980s and 1990s, and was revived in November 2013 by the ABC’s story, broken jointly with the Guardian, on the tapping of the Yudhoyonos’ phones.

In a discussion of soft power through educational experience, Jemma Purdey (chapter 6) traces Indonesia’s signiicant role as a recipient of Australian Colombo Plan scholarships in the 1950s and 1960s, right through to the substantial increases in Australian aid allocated to scholarships in Indonesia after the 2004 tsunami. She argues that Indonesia’s Australian alumni in many ields ‘constitute a val -uable network that is regularly drawn upon by diplomats, business and our educational institutions in all sorts of ways’ (p. 129). Bod Hadiwinata (chapter 7) addresses the other side of coin: students in the Australian Consortium for ‘In-Country’ Indonesian Studies program studying a range of social and cultural courses in Indonesia. He reasons that this program has been a valuable exam-ple of soft power by creating a group of culturally aware Australians who might be capable of ‘contributing to the limitation of damage to Australian-Indonesian relations’ from periodic political spats (p. 148). The Australian government’s New Colombo Plan seeks to build on this idea.

There is a diverse collection of contributions in the book on cross-cultural connections, dealing with community arts, the cultural sensitivity of children of mixed marriages, the values of intercultural couples, and, in an informative interview with Helen Pausacker, the experience of being one of the few female

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488 Book Reviews

puppeteers (dhalang). The book closes with discussions of Australian outlaw bik-ers in Bali (Ian Wilson) and the complicated issue of Australian requests for extra-ditions from Indonesia (Antje Missbach).

Overall, the soft-power theme uniies the book, although more hard-headed observers such as Ken Ward (author of Condemned to Crisis?, the recent Lowy Institute publication on Australia–Indonesia relations) might argue that most soft-power investments count for little when national pride is at stake. My own view is that the strong people-to-people relationships of the past decade or so have bound our two countries more closely, and have sometimes helped in mitigating conlict or speeding up resolutions. As Jemma Purdey argues, greater cultural and social sensitivities contribute to richer lives and build more robust communities in both countries, which surely cannot be a bad thing.

Sugar, Steam and Steel: The Industrial Project in Colonial Java, 1830–1885. By G. Roger Knight. Adelaide: University of Adelaide Press, 2014. Pp. xi + 242. Paperback: A$44.00. PDF available at https://www.adelaide.

edu.au/press/titles/steam-and-steel/steam-and-steel-ebook.pdf.

Having published Big Sugar in 2013, G. Roger Knight has served up another sweet dish.1_{A renowned scholar and author on the history of Indonesian sugar, he has}

embarked on an ambitious project to bring to life more than two centuries of developments in Indonesian sugar production and manufacturing. This second monograph of three, is actually the start of this story.

Like its predecessor, Sugar, Steam and Steel uses an integral approach and therefore is about much more than sugar. Within the context of industrial sugar manufacturing, it deals with wide-ranging issues like capital, technology, impe-rial families, ecological matters, and the adoption, or adaption, of science. It also offers a (partial) revision of established notions on the Cultivation System (Cultuurstelsel), sugar manufacturing, and the economic history of 19th-century Indonesia. Sections such as ‘The Myth of the “Dark Ages” of Sugar Manufacture in Java in the Mid-nineteenth Century’ (pp. 181–85) speak for themselves.

Knight’s book is well documented, making use of archival sources and a wealth of secondary literature. It is original in using an explanatory framework to over-come the focus on land and labour issues under the Cultuurstelsel in accounting for the continued expansion of sugar production. Indeed, the author rightfully places technology on a par with these traditional inputs. He emphasises the importance of scientiic advancements and industrial maturation, for instance, when describ -ing the complementary inventions of the vacuum pan, the multiple effect, and the centrifuge. These inventions boosted sugar production by drastically cutting

1. Commodities and Colonialism: The Story of Big Sugar in Indonesia, 1880–1942, reviewed in the April 2014 issue of BIES.