Perspectives on the Bird's Head of Irian Jaya, Indonesia: Proceedings of the Conference, Leiden, 13—17 October 1997

Dutch and Indonesian research interests are increasingly divergent, as the former bring theoretical developments to bear on their research design, while much Indonesian social science continues to be directed toward the country's development goals; all the more reason, says Masinambow, to regard the ISIR project as a missed opportunity for mutual education. Other than brief references to the "security situation" in the papers by Timmer, Sarlito Wirawan Sarwono, and Aprilani Soegiarto, there is no hint of any of the issues that have preoccupied many Irianese people during the last decade, such as the accelerating pace of immigration from elsewhere in Indonesia, the loss of land and of employment opportunities, or the debate over independence and autonomy. Yet the inclusion in the volume of papers such as Sarwono's, a very thin analysis of the "psychology" of the Amungme and Kamoro communities in the area of the Freeport mine, is puzzling: with thirty years of abuse of their basic human rights to reflect on, Amungme graduates who have written about the history of their community will indeed be interested to learn that they "think in the present tense only" (359).