The domestication of desire: women, wealth, and modernity in Java

Brenner, Suzanne April

Book

The domestication of desire: women, wealth, and modernity in Java

Princeton University Press • Princeton, N.j. • Published In 1998 • Pages:

By: Brenner, Suzanne April.

Abstract
This book is an exploration of modernity and its reversals in an Indonesian city. It traces the social dynamics that brought this city into being as a self-consciously (if somewhat unevenly) modern community in late colonial Java. It also analyzes the factors that contributed to the community's decline beginning in the 1960s. It shows how residents of this town (mostly engaged in the manufacturing of culturally and economically valued Batik) created their own distinctive forms of modern social life, but also how, under certain circumstances, modernness can give way to traditionalism, turning back the trajectory of progress usually associated with modernization.

Subjects

Gender roles and issues

Social relationships and groups

Status, role, and prestige

Drives and emotions

Social personality

Gender roles and issues

Household

Family relationships

Woven and other interworked fabrics

Clothing manufacture

Mercantile business