The Stepchildren of Progress: The Political Economy of Development in an Indonesian Mining Town

Dramatic changes caused by a foreign-owned nickel mining company in an Indonesian town provide the setting for this ethnographic study. Robinson notes the changes that took place in Soroako, a village in Sulawesi. The book outlines the effects of this new development, principally in regard to the 1,000 indigenous Soroakans whose former agricultural land is now the site for the mining town. It presents an analysis of developing capitalist relations in the mining town, investigating changes not only in the sphere of production manifested in daily life as new forms of work, but also in culture and ideology. The book also investigates related changes in other areas of social life, in particular that of women’s roles, marriage and the family, and the importance of ideologies of race and ethnicity in regulating relations between different groups in the mining town. Furthermore, Robinson shows that new ideological forms have arisen in the context of the evolving class structure.