ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on research experiences on the Indonesian island of Java. Java’s distinctiveness emerges from its unique combination of biotic richness, physical geography and complex human history, and therefore typifies primatology’s new “sites of relevance”. Simultaneous attention to both socioecological data and ethnographic insights reveals the complexity of primate life in Java. A person can have control of the former, but is of course subject to the fickleness of the latter. The theory of island biogeography posits that the number of species found on an island is determined by the isolation distance and overall size of the island. Java’s geographic location has made it a historically important crossroads for centuries, with Java’s valuable timber being at the centre of economic and political control. Indonesia’s formal economy is dominated by the extraction and export of natural resources including oil, gas, rocks/minerals, as well as timber and non-timber forest products.
