A scholar's love affair with Indonesia

A scholar's love affair with Indonesia

YOGYAKARTA (JP): For many Indonesian scholars, he is a living
legend. For the international academic circle, he is their
reference on Indonesia.

Clifford Geertz, a 70-year old American anthropologist, has
been associated with Indonesia for almost four decades.

He is one foreign scholar who has brought Indonesia to the
world's attention. The San Francisco-born Geertz is renowned as
an ardent researcher of Indonesian, and Javanese society in
particular. His books and theories on Indonesian society have
become important references for those who want to gain an insight
into the country and its people.

Noted Indonesian scholar Ignas Kleden said, "Geertz has made
Indonesia a fertile land for the concepts of social sciences,
anthropology and sociology in particular".

Among his famous books are The Religion of Java, Agriculture
Involution and Negara: The theater State in Nineteenth Century
Bali.

"Don't ask me anything about the Indonesia's current social
and political situation. I know nothing about it," Geertz said
during his recent visit to Indonesia.

Geertz was the star at the International Conference of Tourism
and Heritage Management held in Yogyakarta late last month.

"I am extraordinarily pleased to be back here in Yogyakarta
where forty-four years ago I started my studies," Geertz
recalled.

Between the l950s and the late l960s, Geertz and his then wife
Hilda Geertz conducted intensive research which he called the
Mojokuto project. His in-depth research resulted in several basic
social science theories. Though many contemporary scholars regard
his theory as outdated, Geertz is still respected worldwide.

The 70-year old scholar is now a professor at the Institute
for Advanced Studies at Princeton University in New Jersey, the
United States. He received a prestigious Fukuoka Asian Cultural
Prize from the Japanese government for his contribution in
conducting thorough comparative studies on Asian and American
cultures.

Surrounded by journalists eager to get his comments on the
recent religious conflict in Situbondo, East Java and other
political issues, Geertz chose to keep silent. Geertz's previous
theory focused on Islam Society in Java.

"The government and the involved parties should restrain from
further conflicts, otherwise they will spread elsewhere in the
country. More understanding and tolerance is needed," said
Geertz.

He deliberately turned the political topic into the cultural
and tourism issues which brought him to the conference.

Geertz recalled the explosion of international tourism in
Indonesia occurred around him as he studied in the fifties and
sixties.

"I am so amazed by the present development of Indonesian
tourism," he said cynically.

But he still wondered how Indonesian people viewed tourism.

Four years ago, Geertz was asked by an American magazine to
write a piece on the extraordinary 250 events included in the
Festival of Indonesia (KIAS) which was held in fifty cities
across the United States from l991 to l992.

He said the festival was both enormous and enormously
expensive. It was an Indonesian government effort to promote
tourism and present authentic, Indonesian concepts of their
culture.

Mochtar Kusumaatmadja, Indonesia's former foreign minister,
called it 'cultural diplomacy'. The festivals included a large
variety of art exhibitions and cultural performances from
Indonesia's 27 provinces.

"To me, the most novel thing about it was that the objects of
tourists' interest were being brought to them, rather than the
other way around," he said.

The situation was no longer one of active tourists searching
out passive "objects" to look at. The active party deciding what
the tourist was to witness.

"I just wonder whether the message was received by the
Americans. How should the culture of a nation as diverse as this
one is be summed up for foreigners. The worry is that the inner
significance of Indonesian cultural forms would be lost. Their
meaning would be distorted," he said.

The festival reflects the organizers' lack of understanding
about their own cultural heritages. "The Indonesian heritages
were presented at the festival as ancient artifacts and art
objects," he said.

According to Geertz, the cultural heritages of people, places
and a nation are not solid, immovable blocks. It is something
constantly changing in response to new circumstances and emerging
needs.

"I call my theory an 'anti-essentialist' view of heritage," he
said.

The so-called "museum" or "culture park" view of heritage as
something that has only to be preserved is not only utopian but
mischievous, he said. Heritage does not stand still, it is always
a complex integration of the old and the new, the domestic and
the foreign.

People should also change their view of tourism and its
relationship to culture.

"We should not make tourism just an economically productive
force, but a culturally productive force as well," he said.

To make a better tourism plan, archaeologists, site managers,
tour planners and the like, should provide decision makers with
the necessary information.

"They need to see themselves as engaged in a project of
rethinking the whole idea of what tourism is, what it consists
of, how it works, what its effects are, and what its goals should
be," he explained.

Many people find Geertz's theory on tourism and heritage quite
difficult to understand.

Ignas Kleden commented that Geertz's theories and arguments
were often complicated but contained clear and bold ideas.

So what does Kleden think should be expected from a man like
Geertz? His theories on Indonesian society could be wrong or no
longer relevant to modern Indonesia, but Geertz has been trying
hard to learn, to dig up all available information on Indonesia
to support his studies.

"As I knew more about Indonesia, I deeply fell in love with
the country," Geertz once said.

Indonesian could learn from Geertz how to understand and
appreciate their own cultures. (raw)