ANT E105 Lecture Notes - Lecture 17: Monocropping, Research Question, Clifford Geertz
Document Summary
Environment results in low population density, sparse settlements, defined as small, separate political groups. Some areas permit denser concentrations during the rainy months, but also require greater dispersion during the dry months. This results in larger groups, and the maintenance of tribal identities over larger areas. Outer islands: sparse population, imported labor, swidden agriculture, plantations and other economic enclaves. Java: extremely dense population, peasants, irrigated rice sawah agriculture, extremely complex social organization and culture. Not the imitation of a tropical forest, but the fabrication of an aquarium . Irrigated sawah areas used for colonial sugar cultivation. Sugar, rice and population all flourish in the irrigation areas intensification, involution, Culture patterns which, after having reached what would seem to be a definitive form, nonetheless fail either to stabilize or transform themselves into a new pattern but rather continue to develop by becoming internally more complicated . Involution characterized agriculture, but also all the social/cultural relations:
