Lynette Parker

• PhD (Anthropology)
• Professor at The University of Western Australia

The Marind live in the southeast corner of Indonesian Papua, traditionally relying on sago cultivation, gardening, hunting and foraging for their daily subsistence. Like many Indigenous People, they have been subject to a series of unsought and often devastating incursions – of disease, sedentarization, cultural dislocation, the theft of traditiona...

This paper identifies the reasons children and young people leave school early in Merauke, Papua, and advances education policy initiatives to address these causes. Indonesia has a policy of 12 years of compulsory schooling, but many in Papua leave school early. The Indonesian government considers that children mainly leave school early for economi...

This paper examines how the eco-theology of St Francis of Assisi is translated into practice in Franciscan schools in Jakarta, Indonesia. We also investigate if the environmental conclusions of the Pope’s Encyclical, Laudato Si’, are understood by students. An ethnographic approach, using participant observation, interviews and focus group discussi...

This article explores a unique form of environmental education (EE) being implemented in schools in Surabaya, Indonesia. An environmental NGO (TENGO) and the national in-school programme, Adiwiyata, attract students to engage in pro-environment activities such as making compost and rehabilitating mangroves. Ethnographic research in and around high...

Very little is known about environmental awareness in Indonesia. This article helps to address that ignorance with data from a survey of 1,000 senior high school students in Yogyakarta and Surabaya. The selected schools participate in environmental education (EE) programmes such as the Eco schools programme and Adiwiyata. Almost 90% of our responde...

This paper examines the sexual agency exercised by married Muslim women in Bandung, Indonesia, in their marital relationships. Dominant discourses teach that women should obey their husbands, and most women believe that they should serve their husbands sexually whenever required. Sex is a taboo subject and women should not discuss sex or initiate s...

This article examines the experience of Muslim female students in high schools in Bali. Since the religion of the majority of the population of Bali is Balinese Hinduism, these young women are part of a Muslim minority – unusual in Indonesia. Data were obtained through interviews and ethnographic fieldwork conducted in 2010. Interviewees were mainl...

This article theorises and contextualises the stigmatisation of janda (widows and divorcees) in Indonesia. It firstly reviews the social science literature on stigma in society, showing a shift towards the study of stigmatisation as an exercise of power by a dominant group in society. It argues that the content of that stigmatisation works best whe...

This article explores the discourses and practices of stigmatisation that shape the experience of widows and divorced women (janda) in Indonesia. The conceptualisation of stigma allows us to see that the experience of being a janda is a gendered, moral experience. The article examines the construction of ideal marriage in Islam and in Indonesia, di...

This paper argues that recent inter-religious conflict in Indonesia highlights a need for the education system to address problems of religious intolerance through religious education and the religious culture in schools. The position of religion vis-à-vis the state and education indicates that such action is appropriate in the Indonesian context....

This paper presents the attitudes of high school students in Indonesia towards inter-ethnic and inter-religious socializing, courtship and marriage. It also explores how different personal characteristics and social conditions such as gender, ethnicity, type of school and community affect these attitudes. The basic findings come from a survey of mo...

This issue of Asian Studies Review includes a themed section that addresses agency in relation to women's everyday lives and experiences in Asia. Four papers follow this Introduction: Siti Aisyah and Lyn Parker (2014) study domestic violence in Makassar, Sulawesi, Indonesia; Laura Dales (2014) explores singlehood for women in Japan; Tamara Jacka (2...

This paper examines women’s experience of domestic violence within marriage in Makassar, South Sulawesi. It analyses the meaning of marriage for men and women, the roles of men and women within marriage, shifts in marriage practices – particularly the shift from arranged to “love” marriage – and unequal gender positions within marriage. We discuss...

The youth demographic is a large and growing cohort in Indonesia, and adolescents embody the currents of social change. Throughout the twentieth century they were significant agents of social protest leading to social and political transformation. This book looks at the importance of adolescents in contemporary Indonesia, and how they are spearhead...

This paper analyses the discourse surrounding the perceived threat of free seks and pergaulan bebas (free socializing) to the moral health of young Minangkabau people, and in particular, young women, in West Sumatra. It uses the sociological frame of “moral panic” to examine contemporary discussions about globalization and the influence of “the Wes...

Scholarly predictions of the secularization of the world have proven premature. We see a heterogeneous world in which religion remains a significant and vital social and political force. This paper reflects critically upon secularization theory in order to see how scholars can productively respond to the, at least partly, religious condition of the...

Abstract This article discusses the need to re-imagine multiculturalism and feminism in order to better accommodate women in minority cultures who are religious. It begins and ends with comments about multiculturalism and ‘difference feminism’ in Australia. In the body of the paper I use anthropological field-work in Indonesia, first to show that c...

In 1998, Indonesia embarked on a journey to democracy. This journey involved the decentralization of education from 2002. The new school-based management (SBM) system required greater community and parental participation in schools—thereby, it was hoped, contributing to a deepening of democracy. Islamic schools (madrasah) also adopted this policy r...

Selected survey data on future aspirations and expectations from 3565 young Indonesians are presented in this study. Muslim-majority Indonesia is an Asian economic success story. The economy has seen solid growth, leading to an expansion of the private sector. The upward credentialling of the labour market and the rapid growth of the middle class h...

This paper examines the meanings attached to sexuality and femininity by Minangkabau teenage girls in schools in West Sumatra, Indonesia. Schools in West Sumatra communicate a hegemonic, normative understanding of womanhood, and a moral consciousness of the female sexual body, to students. Different types of schools – academic, vocational and Islam...

This book analyses the processes by which a conservative and introverted Balinese village has been incorporated into the Indonesian nation-state. It explores the transformation of village subjects of their local `king' to anonymous citizens of the Republic of Indonesia, a process which is incomplete. In focusing on one village, called `Brassika', 1...

This article explores the meaning of literacy in Bali, with reference to the literature on women and development. It seeks reasons for the low levels of literacy of Balinese women in the articulation of beliefs about the power of letters, and beliefs about fertility and the power of the female body. Precolonial and colonial records are analysed to...

This article examines the process of gendering children in Ball, focusing particularly on the way children enmesh the experience of schooling with other gendered experiences. I employ a more agent focused, subject-centred approach than the sex-role socialization theory that has hitherto underpinned studies of children and gender in the anthropology...

Presentation d'un groupe de Balinais d'un village de Klungkung (Bali), mangeurs de chien, et vivant d'equarissage, de mendicite et de detroussement de cadavres (lors des exhumations precedant les cremations). Ces activites hautement impures selon la societe balinaise sont cependant tolerees par le reste du village

The ethnic, religious and linguistic diversity of Indonesia is intrinsic to the concept of Indonesia, and many people value that diversity as one of the country"s great resources. However, after the fall of Suharto, Indonesia seemed to erupt in a conflagration of violence. It seemed that the famed tolerance of Indonesia might be a fragile thing. Ed...