Indonesia is in the midst of an epic transition as it moves from decades of authoritarian government to a new era of democratic opening, from years of secular government to a time of struggle over the role of Islam in public life, and from the breakdown of a "miracle" economy to a search for resilience in the face of global forces.

In this timely work, leading scholars analyze the causes of the social, political, and economic crises that erupted in Indonesia in the late 1990s, the responses of the elite and civil society, and the prospects for continuing reform. In the process, they explore such issues as the relevance of the nation-state in an age of globalization, the role of Islam in politics and violence, the strengths and weaknesses of a negotiated route to democratic governance, the relationship of corruption and structural reform to economic growth, and the prospects for stability in Southeast Asia.

The first book to grapple with the scale and complexity of this historic transition, this work offers a clear and compelling introduction to the Indonesian experience for students with an interest in the problems of post-colonial states, to scholars in comparative Asian studies, and to anyone seeking a serious yet accessible introduction to the world's largest Islamic democracy.

Praise for Indonesia: The Great Transition

"More than a half century after its birth as an independent nation, Indonesia remains inchoate, unsettled, and difficult to define. Here, five leading specialists on the country -- political scientists, historians, economists, and anthropologists -- sum up its volatile history, its present prospects, and its probable futures with balance, insight, and precision. A landmark work."

--Clifford Geertz, Institute for Advanced Study

"Post-crisis Indonesia is a different Indonesia, but how different is it and what does it mean for the future? Explaining Indonesia requires an understanding of what has truly changed and what has not. These knowledgeable authors are ideally placed to assess the country's 'great transition.'"

--Hadi Soesastro, Centre for Strategic and International Studies, Jakarta

Table of Contents

What is Indonesia? (Donald K. Emmerson)

Social Legacies and Possible Futures (Robert W. Hefner)

Politics: From Endurance to Evolution (Annette Clear)

Economic Recovery and Reform (John Bresnan)

Indonesia and the World (Ann Marie Murphy)

Engineering as a profession in the United States and other developed nations may soon face a crisis. As a result of sophisticated telecommunications and the digitization of engineering work processes, increasing portions of engineering work can be done without close proximity to particular persons, places, or other processes. In principle at least, this work can be done anywhere in the world that has access to (1) global telecommunications networks and requisite software packages and (2) adequately trained personnel. Undergraduate engineering students in relatively advanced developing nations, such as India and China, follow a curriculum roughly comparable to the one taught in developed nations. Thus, even as barriers to performing conventional engineering work remotely are eroding, a global pool of conventionally trained engineers is growing. This means that U.S. engineers are now in global competition with engineers in developing nations whose wages are 40 to 80 percent lower than ours.

In this paper, our discussion is limited to work that is relocated but still services markets in developed countries (rather than work done to meet the needs of local markets in developing countries). Offshoring of this work can not only directly replace existing workers, but can also capture jobs that would have been added to the U.S. economy, especially for fast-growing entrepreneurial ventures that must lower cash expenditures and speed up product development. Recent examples include Silicon Valley high-technology start-up companies that establish offshore subsidiaries very early in their life cycles. In these cases, offshoring does not reflect direct job displacement but redirects job growth to lower cost developing nations, at the same time making the start-up more competitive.

Between 1979 and 1992, the JKS became a leading academic forum for the publication of innovative in-depth research on Korea. Now under the editorial guidance of Gi-Wook Shin and John Duncan, this journal continues to be dedicated to quality articles, in all disciplines, on a broad range of topics concerning Korea, both historical and contemporary.

This edition's contents:

Articles

1. Contention in the Construction of a Global Korean Community: The Case of the Overseas Korean Act. Jung-Sun Park, Paul Y. Chang
2. Development as Devolution: Nam Chong-hyon and the "Land of Excrement" Incident. Theodore Hughes
3. Systematization of Film Censorship in Colonial Korea: Profiteering From Hollywood's First Golden Age, 1926-1936. Brian Yecies
4. Negotiating Cultural Identities in Conflict: A Reading of the Writings of Paek Kyonghae (1765-1842). Sun Joo Kim

Perspective

1. Two Key Historical Moments of the Early 1960s: A Preliminary Reconsideration of 4/19 and 5/16. Woo Jin Yang

Book Reviews

Introductory-level Korean Language Textbooks for the Anglophone Adult Learner: A Survey of Three Recent Publications

1. College Korean by Michael C. Rogers, Clare You, and Kyungnyun K. Richards
2. Integrated Korean: Beginning 1 and Integrated Korean: Beginning 2 by Young-Mee Cho, Hyo Sang Lee, Carol Schulz, Ho-Min Sohn, and Sung-ock Sohn
3. You speak Korean! by Soohee Kim, Emily Curtis, and Haewon Cho. Reviewed by Ross King
4. A History of Korean Literature, edited by Peter H. Lee. Reviewed by Scott Swaner
5. Three Generations by Yom Sang-seop. Reviewed by Theodore Hughes
6. Japan's Korean Encouragement Policies in Colonial Korea: Japanese Who Learned the Korean Language, by Yamada Kanto. Reviewed by Mark Caprio and Aoki Atsuko