Page 24 - Ranah Studi Agraria: Penguasaan Tanah dan Hubungan Agraris

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which the new arrangements were thought to be displacing,
based on the Geertzian, poverty-sharing model of an inclusio-
nary agrarian system operating “to provide everyone with some
niche, however small, in the overall system”. Collier, Wiradi
13
and Soentoro (in Chapter 1 of this book) suggested that “by
tradition, Javanese and Sundanese rice farmers do not restrict
anyone who wishes to participate in the harvest of their rice
fields.“, and “the traditional shares were seven, eight or nine
for the owner to one for the harvester” (Collier et al. 1973: 36-7).
A review of studies of rice harvesting in Java prior to the
“green revolution” of the 1970s, however, suggests that the
idea of a timeless tradition of open harvests and high, fixed
bawon shares is to a large extent a myth; while some elements
were stable and near-universal, others were flexible, variable
and contested. The relatively stable features were the use of
the ani-ani, the system of labour payment in kind rather than
in cash, and the prevalence of women in harvest work. More
14
variable and volatile were the modes of labour recruitment
and payment, which varied from place to place and also
changed over time, in response to changes in the larger eco-
nomy and to local, short-term changes in labour supply and
demand; we may find open and closed harvests appearing and

13 Geertz 1963, p. 82.
14 Even these, however, were not completely universal or unchang-
ing. Van der Kolff’s fascinating study of changing agrarian rela-
tions in Tulungagung (East Java) from the 1880s to the 1930s shows
shifts from in-kind to cash harvest wages in the 1920s, reverting
again to in-kind payments in the ‘money famine’ of the 1930s
depression (van der Kolff 1936).

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