Comments on: The tourist hunters http://blogs.haverford.edu/indonesia/2008/06/23/the-tourist-hunters/ Just another News.haverford.edu weblog Mon, 11 Aug 2008 21:31:55 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 By: Dave http://blogs.haverford.edu/indonesia/2008/06/23/the-tourist-hunters/#comment-23 Dave Mon, 14 Jul 2008 20:10:40 +0000 http://blogs.haverford.edu/blogs/indonesia/?p=6#comment-23 The comment about the “the Jews and the Whites” is reductive and, in my opinion, not very accurate or helpful in terms of any of the groups you’ve roped into the analogy. I think it would be more helpful to investigate the Chinese diaspora and how the Chinese became such a strong merchant class. What cultural issues might be involved? How did past political decisions affect how which groups came to dominate which parts of Indonesian society? How did Sukarno and Suharto deal with or work with or exploit anti-Chinese sentiment? Is there a religious element here? What about the Dutch colonial gov’t? How did it operate with respect to ethnicity in Indonesia? I hope these questions spur some investigation… :-)

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