The poverty of involution: A critique of Geertz' pseudo-history

Abstract

Of the many foreign social scientists who have carried out fieldwork in Indonesia since the second world war, few have gone on to reach the eminence of Professor Clifford Geertz. His books, written largely on the basis of his work in Java and Bali in the 1950's, have become classics (Editorial, Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies 1988, p. 31). …dual organization …plural economy …loosely structured social system …agricultural involution …have found wide acceptance … and have become standard concepts of textbook social science (Evers, 1980, p. 2). Although Geertz uses the Java case as his only example, the concept has wider implications and ‘involution’ is an expected response in other cases developing in other areas. (Pirie, 1984, p. 134) …processes of social change in the Third World viewed from a culturological or interpretative rather than a Marxist or partisan viewpoint (Social Science Encyclopedia, 1985, p. 328). Where feminists and Marxists find oppression, symbolists find meaning (Keesing, cited...