Review of “agricultural involution: the processes of ecological change in Indonesia” by Clifford Geertz

Abstract

The Processes of Ecological Change in Indonesia is considered a brilliant application of the principles of cultural ecology placed within the context of Indonesia from the onset of Dutch colonialism in 1619 to after its independence in 1945. Geertz was one of the most accomplished and respected symbolic anthropologists of the twentieth century, however, above and beyond that discipline, Geertz also utilized ecology, geography, economics, sociology and history to further his thesis concerning the phenomena of agricultural involution. Geertz’s main goal was to compose a detailed account of the processes responsible for the phenomenon. As Paul Robbins might put it in political ecology terms, “…an intellectual investigation of the human-environment interaction… a political exercise for greater social and ecological justice” (Robbins, 2005, p. xix). This phenomena, as it relates to Indonesia (and particularly Java) was the result of colonialism, rapid population growth and cultural lag produced by social instability and ineffectual public institutions. These factors created an increase in agricultural productivity per hectare, though without the accompanying economic increase per capita, which generated a desperate cycle of poverty and static opportunity, i.e. involution.