Launch of Two Books on Modern Indonesia
Join us on
Thursday July 14th for the
Launch of Two Books on
Important Issues in
Modern Indonesia
The Oil Palm Complex: Smallholders, Agribusiness and the State in Indonesia and Malaysia edited by John McCarthy
will be launched by Professor Peter Kanowski
Youth Identities and Social Transformations in Modern Indonesia
edited by Professor Kathryn Robinson
will be launched by Associate Professor Sharon Bessell
About the Books:
The Oil Palm Complex: Smallholders, Agribusiness and the State in Indonesia and Malaysia looks at the way the oil palm industry has transformed rural livelihoods and landscapes across wide swathes of Southeast Asia, generating wealth along with economic, social, and environmental controversy. Who benefits and who loses from oil palm development? Can oil palm development provide a basis for inclusive and sustainable rural development? This book considers the impacts of specific communities and plantations. It analyses the regional political economy of oil palm, examining how the oil palm industry in Malaysia and Indonesia work as a complex, in which land, labour and capital are closely connected. It unpicks the dominant policy narratives, business strategies, models of land acquisition and labour-processes. Understanding this oil palm complex is a prerequisite to developing improved strategies to harness the oil palm boom for a more equitable and sustainable pattern of rural development.
Youth Identities and Social Transformations in Modern Indonesia addresses current struggles and opportunities facing Indonesia’s youth across the archipelago. Contributions to this volume delve into youth aspirations and their everyday lives - education; friendship; work; leisure; sexuality; religion - described through the lens of the young people themselves. They are well educated but employment is hard to find: alternative paths to adulthood can include early marriage or joining street protest movements. In public rhetoric youth is often associated with ‘moral panics’ related to sexual morality, and also to violent religious identities and street protests.
The authors include leading scholars of Indonesia and its youth, reporting on ethnographic research from across the archipelago. Contributors are: Linda Rae Bennett, Patrick Guinness, Noorhaidi Hasan, C. Ugik Margiyatin, Pam Nilan, Lyn Parker, Kathryn Robinson, Patricia Spyer, Puju Semedi, Ben White, Tracy Wright Webster.
Who will be speaking?
John McCarthy with Robert Cramb edited The Oil Palm Complex: Smallholders, Agribusiness and the State in Indonesia and Malaysia. John McCarthy is Associate Professor, Crawford School; Director Resources Environment and Development program. John McCarthy works on questions of governance, institutions and rural development with a focus on forestry, agriculture, food security and land use. At present he has an Australian Research Council funded project regarding social protection and food security in rural Indonesia. He was previously a Research Fellow at the Asia Research Centre, Murdoch University, Western Australia and Leiden University in the Netherlands. He has carried out various assignments with agencies including AusAID (now DFAT), the World Bank, and the Centre for International Forestry Research (CIFOR).
Kathryn Robinson is the editor of Youth Identities and Social Transformations in Modern Indonesia. This book arose from a workshop funded by the Australia-Netherlands Research Collaboration. She is Emeritus Professor, School of Culture, History & Language at the ANU College of Asia and the Pacific. Her current research focuses on local social and economic impacts of mining in Indonesia; gender relations and local-level Islam in Eastern Indonesia
Sharon Bessell will launch Youth Identities and Social Transformation in Modern Indonesia. She is Director of Research at the Crawford School of Public Policy and Associate Professor in the Policy and Governance program. She is also director of the Children’s Policy Centre, a research unit based at the Crawford School of Public Policy.
Peter Kanowski will launch The Oil Palm Complex: Smallholders, Agribusiness and the State in Indonesia and Malaysia. He is Master of University House, and Professor of Forestry, Fenner School of Environment and Society.