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Abstract
This article explores the modes by which Australian scholars construct knowledge of Indonesia with particular reference to the debates on West Papua in the post-Suharto period. It examines their perceptions, beliefs and attitudes towards human rights issues with a view to analysing the underlying forces, motivations and implications of activism. This article casts doubt on a common, yet often unacknowledged, perception in Indonesia about Australian Indonesia-specialists who are categorised as: intellectuals who always see Indonesian government policies as ‘negative’.Footnote2 I demonstrate that the theorisation of Indonesian society has been diverse in Australia as exemplified by the West Papua debates. Australian scholars’ social positions and mobility, not government policy, shape their beliefs, attitudes and knowledge construction of Indonesia. Thus, considering Australian scholars from a monolithic perspective misses the reality that contemporary intellectual culture in Australia is no longer based on a traditional class.Footnote3 I argue there are two major opposing groups in West Papua studies which I label as the ‘affirmative revisionist’ scholars who tend to be more optimistic towards resolution of conflicts in West Papua and the ‘sceptical reformist’ scholars who are dubious about any major changes in West Papua. This latter group believes the people of West Papua should be given the opportunity to remain integrated with Indonesia or to opt for selfdetermination. They tend to use the perceived failure of Indonesia in the protection of human rights in West Papua to attack the Indonesian government and Australian governmental agencies dealing with Indonesia. This article argues that this criticism may adversely impact on future Australia-Indonesia relations.
Notes
1. This research was funded by the Department of Education, Science and Training (recently named: Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations), Australian Government, under a 2007 Endeavour-Indonesia Research Fellowship, which was carried out at the Department of Political and Social Change, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, College of Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University. I owe a special debt to Edward Aspinall, Greg Fealy, Barbara Hatley and Rommel Curaming for offering me insightful commentaries on the initial draft of this paper. I am extremely grateful to Kathy Robinson and Jemma Purdey for providing me with several indispensable articles, a number of Australian Indonesia-specialists, whose names I cannot mention one by one, who gave generously of their time to talk to me, and the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful commentaries and support. None, however, is responsible for any remaining errors.
2. ‘Indonesia specialists’ refer to both scholars who have and who do not have formal Indonesian studies or training who get involved in the study of Indonesia and Indonesian society. Whenever I use ‘Indonesianists’, I refer to scholars who have formal Indonesia studies or training. By Australian scholars, I mean scholars who are Australian by ‘residence’.
3. For an excellent discussion on contemporary intellectual culture, see Eyerman (Citation1994).
4. The conceptual categories of ‘pro-‘ and ‘anti-‘ Indonesia should not be taken as black and white. They are used in this work to help identify or classify scholars from a wide spectrum ranging from one who is apolitical, critical to one who is overly critical towards Indonesian government.
5. Based on Pierre Bourdieu's concept of cultural capital, Martin and Szelényi suggest that while exercising their authority, intellectuals, as owners of cultural capital, can challenge other authorities, including the owners of economic capital, such as the institutions that hire them. Thus, they have ‘symbolic mastery’, rather than merely ‘practical mastery’ because of their cultural capital which is seen to be ‘genuinely autonomous’ from material production (Martin and Szelényi Citation1987:16-18).
6. During New Order Indonesia there were several cases banning Australian scholars from entering Indonesia. The Indonesian government did not provide reasons for their actions. Generally, scholars were informed by the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (Lembaga Ilmu Pengetahuan Indonesia) that they had failed to get research approval.
7. Indonesia is not alone in censoring Australian academics. For an account of the dismissal of academics from Australian universities, perceived as an attack on academic freedom, see, for example, Martin (Citation2002).
8. See ABC Online (Citation2006).
9. In February 2005, Edward Aspinall of the Australian National University was also banned from Indonesia. He was accused by the Indonesian government of harbouring anti-Indonesia sentiments, particularly in the support of the Free Aceh Movement. See smh.com.au (Citation2005).
10. Subagio Sastrowardoyo and Burhan Magenda's characterizations of Australian scholars of Indonesia are over 20 years old and refer to the attitudes of scholars to Indonesia under the New Order government. So far, it seems that no observer has made the same assessments of Australian scholars in the post-Suharto period. There are now much larger numbers of Indonesian postgraduate students at Australian universities, researching under the supervision of Australian academics, with diverse values and views on Indonesia.
11. This examination of the scholars’ social position and mobility may seem a bit thin. Of course, it is also possible to explore the links in terms of intellectual influences, institutional associations and doctoral supervision of these scholars to Burhan Magenda's third category of Western scholars in the mid New Order era of Indonesia. However, that is the subject of another separate study.
12. I do not deny that Australian scholars have made a significant contribution to political and social science research on Indonesia, outside Java and Bali in the New Order period. For example, Anthony Reid on Aceh, James Fox on Rote and Richard Chauvel on Maluku. However, scholars tended to research Java and Bali.
13. There were some, but not many papers on West Papua written by Australian scholars in the New Order period which contributed to our understanding of the situation of the region at that time. For example, the work of Herbert Feith (with Ian Bell and Ron Hatley) (Bell, Feith and Hatley Citation1986), Peter Hastings (Hastings Citation1986) and Stephen Harris and Colin Brown (Harris and Brown Citation1985).
14. When the Dutch ended their hostilities and transferred full sovereignty to Indonesia in 1949, West Papua was not relinquished to the new state. For more than a decade Indonesia and the Netherlands made claims for the region, and were involved in an armed-conflict in January 1962. The dispute raised serious concerns with US authorities. Based on proposals from the United Nations and a retired US Ambassador, West Papua was transferred to the United Nation's jurisdiction (United Nations Temporary Executive Authority), subsequently to Indonesia with the condition that after a period of Indonesian administration, the Papuan may opt for self-determination. An agreement between the Netherlands and Indonesia was signed in New York in August 1962 with Indonesia's commitment to implementing an Act of Free Choice in 1969 to determine whether the Papuan wished to remain part of Indonesia or choose independence. In mid 1969 the Act of Free Choice was conducted in which 1,205 Papuan tribal leaders voted unanimously on behalf of their people to join Indonesia. After it was conducted, the United Nation Assembly adopted Resolution 2504 in November 1969 by a vote of 84 to 0 in favour of Indonesia with 30 abstentions.
15. The central government's attempt to establish Central Irian Jaya was abandoned, or at least put on the backburner, after riots in 2003.
16. Chauvel published several pieces on Papua in the late Suharto period.
17. It might be worth noting that these scholars’ views, as well as those of many Papuan intellectuals and politicians, on the Act of Free Choice have been influenced by the work of John Saltford and more recently Pieter Drooglever. See, for example, Saltford (Citation2003).
18. For a debate on genocide, see (King Citation2006) and Aspinall (Citation2006b).
19. Needless to say, some variations occur among scholars within each category, either the ‘affirmative revisionist’ or the ‘sceptical reformists’.
20. For the importance of the distinction between model for and model of, see chapter seven of Winichakul (Citation1994).
21. This may not be an explicit pattern of behaviour encouraged by corporate politics of Australian universities. With collegial governance on the slide since the introduction of new regulatory frameworks in Australian higher education in mid 1990s, what we can expect is that scholars can cooperate (rather than only compete in the new funding mechanism) in order to accumulate social capital not only to negotiate with the Australian government, but also to serve many other purposes.
22. Peter King, Scott Burchill and Clinton Fernandes, among other scholars, are just a few examples of the ‘new generation’ of non-Indonesianists who have recently got involved in the study of Indonesia.
23. By making the distinction between Indonesianists and non-Indonesianists, I have no intention of echoing the disapproval of Dutch scholars of the U.S. and Australian post-war scholars of Indonesia, George McT Kahin, Herbert Feith, Benedict Anderson, John Legge and Jamie Mckie, to mention a few. In the eyes of the Leiden and Utrecht establishment, these interlopers were not trained in Javanese and other regional languages, Sankrit and Arabic, customary law and civil service. On the contrary, I want to point out that non-Indonesianists have played a significant role in Australian public and academic debates about Indonesia and Australia-Indonesia relations long before the fall of Suharto. For example, Peter Hastings, Denis Warner, Bruce Grant, Jim Dunn, Hamish McDonald, David Jenkins, Paul Dibb and Richard Woolcott. Moreover, there are fairly broad political and/or ideological spectrums among both the ‘Indonesianists’ and ‘non-Indonesianist’ observers and scholars.