Book Reviews

[...]there are two essentially anthropological studies, one of which represents what is called a statistical classification of more than two hundred cultures of Southeast Asia (Tary Obayashi), resulting in a 'dendrogram' apparently showing their relationship; the other, by M.A. Martinis, is a historical and ecological analysis of the population of the Cardamom mountains in western Cambodia. [...]she proposes that, in the most recent period, beliefs in the supernatural merely give the novelist the opportunity to expos their absurdity (p. 93), and that male authors are increasingly tending to depict the woman as career-oriented and sceptical about marriage, which in the end they cannot escape, while their female colleagues make their woman characters move from dependency to liberation (p. 115). The pivotal position of nurses in the professional medical hierarchy inevitably leads to a critical analysis of the relations between nurses and other formal medical specialists: doctors and midwives. Because these nurses are attached to rural health centres, their relationship to traditional medical specialists in rural Central Java is also given due attention. In actual fact, however, nurses do not attach much priority to preventive health care. Since Indonesia adopted a primary health care strategy in 1971, preventive health care is an official policy aim.