Page 25 - Ranah Studi Agraria: Penguasaan Tanah dan Hubungan Agraris

Ranah Studi Agraria

disappearing, and enormous variations in the level of bawon
payments, from as high as ¼ and 1/3 to as low as 1/36. 15
The careful work of some SAE researchers on specific as-
pects of harvesting and other labour relations in the sample

villages serves to confirm this wide variation and to warn us
against the assumption of a single, unchanging traditional sys-
tem. Gunawan Wiradi’s research Note “Proses Panen dan Alat-
alat yang Digunakan” (‘The harvest system and harvesting
technology’ (Wiradi 1974) and Soentoro’s “Sistim Perburuhan
Ngepak-ngedok di 6 Desa Sample di Jawa” (Soentoro 1973)
are examples of the patient groundwork done by the SAE re-
searchers, showing the complexities of labour relations in rice
agriculture and their relationship to village social structure,
whose details sometimes escaped the attention of the foreign
researchers and economists generally. Gunawan Wiradi’s note
on harvesting, for example, is one of the first to explain how
social relationships influence the level of bawon payments,
with close kin earning harvest shares of as much as 1:2, tied
workers who had contributed pre-harvest labour 1:5, and ca-
sual harvesters sometimes as little as 1: 23 (Wiradi 1974: 3), a
theme further elaborated by Ann Stoler (1977).

D. The SAE and Debates on Land, Labour and Class

Formation
In 1975 the SAE initiated a new research programme
known as the ‘Rural Dynamics Study’ (Studi Dinamika Pede-
saan or SDP). The SDP was a deliberate effort to place more

15 White 2000, pp. 81-87.

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