Clifford Geertz, Life Among the Authors.
Saturday, 4 March 2017
Quotes 2017 #63
"Throughout the country confrontations between intrusive groups and
those previously settled in this place or that---what Indonesians call
PENDATANG (newcomers) and ASLI(oroginals)---have led not just to
sectarian eruptions but to ethnic, cultural, tribal, ideological, and
economic ones as well. (Petroleum deposits, being place-bound, are
not---as Nigeria also demonstrates---altogether conducive to national
unity.) If, as I believe, neither the separation of Indonesia
into more workable and homogeneous parts nor the integration of it
under the aegis of a pervasive, difference-drowning identity is, save
perhaps here and there, on the cards, the country will have to develop
effective ways of containing and stabilizing such multiplex and
multiform differences---something it has hardly as yet begun to do."
