ABSTRACT
Since the 1965 bloodbath which ended its failed experiment with consti tutional democracy, Indonesia has been ruled by a highly centralized, military-dominated government which has moved unilaterally to mod ernize the country’s economic infrastructure and indoctrinate Indonesians into the ways and sentiments of its own version of nationalism.1 This self-named New Order has quashed all opposition to its top-down imple mentation of policies which have as their goal, among others, the national integration of rural communities such as those in south-central Java which I discuss here. A self-legitimizing modernist ideology has licensed the New Order’s self-assumed right to overseepembangunan (‘development’) and pembinaan (‘improvement’) of the lot of Indonesia’s vast, heteroge neous peasantry, and has underwritten as well the perceived superiority of state officials. “All Indonesians I have ever met,” one outspoken Indone sian intellectual has commented, “feel that they are the subordinates (bawahari) of the government. Moreover there are very many of our offi cials in the regions or outlying areas who feel confident that they really are the superiors (atasan) of the people”.
