ABSTRACT
This chapter does not deal with the 'art and craft' aspect of Indonesian batik. Instead, it first examines the way batik making in Java has adjusted itself to the ever-changing circumstances of modem society and developed as a form of an economic enterprise since the last century. A brief sketch of the development of batik industry in Java will demonstrate how a contemporary craft, with its rich heritage from pre-modem times, retains traditional elements under both favourable and difficult conditions imposed by the modernity. In order to think about tradition in a meaningful manner, I assume that the tradition is not a product of the past but a particular conceptual framework by which we see things around us. It does not belong to the past but to the contemporary experience of ours.
