ABSTRACT
How do we account for the 'productive' side of Javanese households and its implications for theories of social reproduction and labour relations when configuring the boundaries of household as an analytical unit (cf. Netting et at. 1984; Medick and Sabeanl986)? We must first consider the social organization of family firms and women's position in managing home-based production in Java, two topics which have, by and large, eluded ethnographers of Javanese society. The migration of young women to work in large factories in the export zones of major cities has been the subject of much sociological research in the last two decades. This has tended to focus on 'factory daughters', who increasingly come into conflict with parents, and divergent interests centred in the households of workers themselves, rather than those of the firm owners (Wolf 1992; Elmhirst this volume). In this essay though, I shall analyse several aspects of the homes of factory owners themselves, particularly the social context of households within which one sees negotiation of labour and corporate relations as a curiously domestic management of enterprise by elite women.
