National Integration in Indonesia begins with an outline of the historical and geographical differences between Indonesia's regions. It closes with an account of how the goal of integration has influenced government policies, especially in economic development, and how effective they have been. But most of it is taken up by presentation of statistics from the 1980 census. Aggregated at the level of provinces, these are given in full in appendices, summarised in an excellent set of more than fifty maps, and (sometimes a little tediously) recapitulated in the text, along with interpretive analysis. The variables studied are grouped into three domains: sociocultural (knowledge and use of Indonesian, religion, literacy, membership of cooperatives and scouts, ownership and access to radios and television, etc.), interaction (roads, vehicles, aircraft passengers, telephone ownership and use, imports, exports, etc.), and economic (per capita income, poverty and deprivation, use of electricity for lighting, expenditure by provincial and central governments, employment in agriculture, etc.). Factor analysis is then used on a subset of the variables in each of the three domains, to produce four principal sociocultural components, three interaction components, and two economic ones.
National Integration in Indonesia is an intriguing historical snapshot, though limited. Drake makes some comparisons with the 1971 census, but it would be good to see a similar presentation of more recent data. One wouldn't want to rely too heavily on any of the individual statistics: as Drake herself hints in places, some of the data are probably skewed (most obviously figures for Irian Jaya). And there is, curiously, no description of the census or its methodology.
January 2000
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