Description

As the world slides into the worst economic recession since the 1930s, anthropologists and other social scientists should not allow ‘recession studies’ to be hijacked by economists. How do people experience turbulent economic times? To what extent do economic crises provoke, and in turn provide researchers with a window on, major societal reconfigurations? And how should we explore these questions through comparative research?

This paper explores the experience of the economic recessions of the 1930s, 1960s and late 1990s in the region of Yogyakarta in southern central Java. Each downturn generated its own ‘winners’ as well as ‘losers’. Patterns and institutions of social solidarity and ‘social safety nets’ may be key elements in the vulnerability or resilience of particular social groups and individuals. Finally, crises generate, and responses to them are influenced by, specific discourses of crisis.

Ben White (1946) is Professor of Rural Sociology at the Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, and Professor in Social Sciences at the University of Amsterdam. He has a B.A. from Oxford University, and a PhD in Anthropology from Columbia University. He is Chair of the Editorial Board of the interdisciplinary development studies journal Development & Change. His main research interests focus on agrarian change processes and the anthropology and history of childhood and youth. He has been engaged in research on these topics in Indonesia since the early 1970s.