This one-day seminar is part of CLARA's attempt to bring together scholars who are working on labour in Asia annually to facilitate the exchange of views and findings from 'the field'. Historians, political and social scientists from various Dutch institutions attended to contribute their presentations and comments. The presentations focused on highly diverse topics affecting Asian labour relations. These ranged from the geopolitics of Southeast Asia to more localized village studies; from analyses involving specific historical periods to those focusing on the present situation.

By Ratna Saptari

Jeff Harrod (University of Amsterdam) focused on the recent financial crisis in Southeast Asia which has brought with it fundamental geopolitical changes. These changes are being used as a platform for European and North American corporations and banks which is distinct from the nature of their past involvements (which were based more on investments in the Newly Industrializing Countries). These will have profound effects on labour within unorganized small enterprises, among casual workers and on labour practices in the agricultural sector which he will be discussing as will be examining the emerging contradictions and conflicts. However, in understanding the role of global changes and their effect at local level, the trap of falling into simple generalizations should be avoided, as Peter Boomgaard (KITLV) reminded us. Examining the 1930 depression period in Java and its effect on labour resistance, he stressed that (unlike the present monetary crisis) the depression of the 1930s had a worse effect in the outer islands than in Java. Although Java did not escape unscathed, various new employment opportunities emerged. This goes part of the way towards explaining the absence of workers' militance during this period in contrast to the period before in which strikes and protests were a regular occurrence.

Babette Resurreccion (Institute of Social Studies) brought up the issue of the changing gender division of labour among the Kalanguya peopla in an upland village in the northern part of the Philippines. Prior to the Second World War, the gender division of labour was based on a 'separate but equal' basis in which men hunted and cleared forest spaces for swiddens, while women cultivated and managed the crop (sweet potato). After World War II which ended in 1945, with the introduction of commercial logging, Kalanguya men found employment as menial wage labourers with logging contractors, while the women continued to cultivate their swiddens. By the time most Kalanguya men were laid off with the mechanization of the logging machinery, sweet potato yields were on the decline which led most residents to shift to paddy rice agriculture. Whereas Kalanguya women had had relatively more latitude in resource management in the past, today they are secondary farm-hands since the men have now become the principal resource managers in the village.

Violence
Edsel Sajor (Institute of Social Studies) discussed the persistence and dominance of reciprocal exchange labour and family labour in an indigenous upland village despite the intensification of farming due to the spread of commercial vegetable gardening and the modern rice variety introduced in the last two decades. The reasons wage labour continues to occupy a minor role in this village are a) the persistence of traditional reciprocal inter-household credit and the increasing practice of local merchants-suppliers of providing consumption credit to favoured clients without any direct labour tie-up; b) the peculiar circumstance of the upland village elite who (unlike that of the lowland rural elite) has been basically denied of any major form of state patronage, despite the increasing intrusiveness of the Philippine state in the rural economy of the country in the last decades.

Erwiza Erman (Centre for Asian Studies Amsterdam) examined the nature of violence and the politics of resistance in the Ombilin coal-mines in West Sumatra during the period 1892 to 1925. She discussed the various factors which instigated the politics of resistance among the labourers. These factors were related to labour control measures imposed by the state and management and the culture of violence among the labourers themselves. Labour control measures were structural. First and foremost, physical punishment was resorted to as a tool for labour control. Secondly, there was also an embedded culture of violence among the labourers. The presence of criminals employed as convict labourers; competition to obtain scarce resources such as food, money, and sex; the existence of homosexuality; and ethnic differentiation were important elements contributing to the emergence of the culture of violence and politics of resistance of the labourers.

Heidi Dahles (Free University, Amsterdam/Universiy of Amsterdam) focused on the impact of tourism and tourism policy on the employment opportunities of women in the informal sector in Sanur, Bali. While all small entrepreneurs are subject to government regulations which are aimed at the upgrading of tourist destinations, the effects of these regulations diverge along gender lines. In Sanur the government regulations have not destroyed the opportunities for lower-class women to profit from tourism. Some women benefit from these changes by finding their activities have been 'upgraded' and 'formalized'. Although these activities are subject to many restrictions, the government measures still leave enough room for the women to exploit new niches in the tourism market. The rub is that these niches have also created a hierarchical and segmented labour market for women of different backgrounds.

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