Page 184 - 60/20

COMMEMORATING THE 60/20 ANNIVERSARY 184
PART 2 To some extent, these perceptions
have been true over most of the 20th
century, yet many anthropologists
see themselves today as contributing
something different. We are interested
in the distribution of difference, and
the presence of inequalities, within the
modern world, not in creating imagined
divisions between the primitive and
the modern, or the backward and the
developed.
A lot has changed, both in anthropology
and in Indonesia, and there’s more trust
now, and dialogue. There’s also been a
fundamental shift in the right of both
Indonesians and foreign scholars to
question and to have knowledge in and
about Indonesia. I remember in 1993,
a friend who was putting the finishing
touches on his dissertation asked if I
would stop by the flour mill in South
Sulawesi and ask what year it opened. I
went to the mill, but the year it opened
was treated like a national security
issue; they asked for an official letter
granting permission to ask even this
simple question. That’s something that
has by and large changed. Right now I’m
leading my first study abroad tour — it’s
a collaboration between undergraduate
students from the University of
Washington and the University of
Indonesia — and we’re able to do
interviews about the REDD+ (Reducing
Emissions from Deforestation and Forest
Degradation) climate mitigation program.
There’s a really different attitude today
toward the right to ask questions, and this to see that in fact what we’ve got is
is benefiting Indonesian students as well
as people like myself.
On my second Fulbright, more than a
decade later, I taught in Yogyakarta.
Based on that experience I’m writing the
second major work of my career, a book
on avian influenza.
The arch of my career has been
tracking science in Indonesia, and so
I’m interested in how Indonesians do
science and what that tells us about
how truth discourses are produced.
We assume that science doesn’t have
any cultural dimensions to it, right?
But when you look at how science
depends upon the questions you ask
and how national traditions of science
are different, that helps you to see that
science is, in fact, part of culture rather
than a lens that merely gets us closer
to nature.
I am an Indonesianist today because
of the opportunities I received through
Fulbright; the program jumped in at
two places in my career and allowed
me to do some of my most important
work. And today I can see the power of
cultural exchange that programs like
Fulbright create. In this collaboration
between UI and UW students, for
example, you can see how both
sides take their own perspectives for
granted. The U.S. students often have
to learn that they’re not in a third
world country where they have all the
best answers for everything, and the
Indonesian students probably also
have to learn that every international
engagement isn’t a neocolonial plot
against Indonesia. Both sides have
this thing they come to the table with
that can be questioned. And that’s
really the genius of Fulbright, isn’t
it? Getting people on both sides
difference, but these differences don’t
have to overcome our ability to work
together.
1996 - 1997, University of Indonesia, Togean Islands,
Central Sulawesi; 2007 - 2008, Senior Scholar,
Sanata Dharma University, Yogyakarta.