Page 22 - Ranah Studi Agraria: Penguasaan Tanah dan Hubungan Agraris

Kata Pengantar

One of the first of these reports is reproduced as Chapter 1
of this book, ‘Recent changes in rice harvesting methods—some
serious social implications’ (Collier, Wiradi and Soentoro
1973). These changes were further analysed, in more system-

atic form, in the article reproduced as Chapter 2 of this book ,
‘Sistim Tebasan, Bibit Unggul dan Perubahan Agraria di
Pedesaan Jawa’, also published internationally as ‘Agricul-
tural technology and institutional change in Java’ (Collier,
Soentoro, Wiradi and Makali 1974a and 1974b).
These reports were very influential, both in Indonesia and
outside, because information at the time was so scarce and the
SAE’s multi-sited sample methodology provided more sys-
tematic information than other studies in single villages. The
report on the “rather explosive changes” which the SAE re-
searchers traced to 1972 in various areas in Java was in fact
based on their finding tebasan in only four of the SAE’s 20
sample villages in Java, and reports from other researchers
who had encountered tebasan in some other districts. But
this was enough, for example, for one Jakarta-based Ford Foun-
dation adviser who had read the reports to report to a meeting
of BAPPENAS in 1975 that “tebasan is spreading like a wild fire
across the plains of Java”. These early studies also stimu-
12
lated many other researchers, both Indonesian and foreign,
to explore the dynamics of labour relations in rice agriculture
(Budhisantoso 1975; LPIS 1976; Sairin 1976; Stoler 1975).
To a present-day researcher in Indonesia’s rice-growing
villages, where few people are absolutely destitute or hungry,

12 Personal communication from the adviser concerned to the au-
thor, 1975.

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