The Technological State In Indonesia The

Coconstitution Of High Technology And

Authoritarian Politics 1st Edition Sulfikar Amir
download
https://ebookbell.com/product/the-technological-state-in-
indonesia-the-coconstitution-of-high-technology-and-
authoritarian-politics-1st-edition-sulfikar-amir-7051494

Explore and download more ebooks at ebookbell.com

Here are some recommended products that we believe you will be
interested in. You can click the link to download.

Technological Empowerment The Internet State And Society In China

Yongnian Zheng

https://ebookbell.com/product/technological-empowerment-the-internet-
state-and-society-in-china-yongnian-zheng-51942242

Technological Empowerment The Internet State And Society In China

Yongnian Zheng

https://ebookbell.com/product/technological-empowerment-the-internet-
state-and-society-in-china-yongnian-zheng-33155758

Technological Competition And Interdependence The Search For Policy In

The United States West Germany And Japan Gunter Heiduk Kozo Yamamura

https://ebookbell.com/product/technological-competition-and-
interdependence-the-search-for-policy-in-the-united-states-west-
germany-and-japan-gunter-heiduk-kozo-yamamura-43334242

General Purpose Technology Spinout And Innovation Technological

Development Of Laser Diodes In The United States And Japan 1st Ed
Hiroshi Shimizu

https://ebookbell.com/product/general-purpose-technology-spinout-and-
innovation-technological-development-of-laser-diodes-in-the-united-
states-and-japan-1st-ed-hiroshi-shimizu-10493592
Matters Of Spirit J G Fichte And The Technological Imagination F Scott
Scribner

https://ebookbell.com/product/matters-of-spirit-j-g-fichte-and-the-
technological-imagination-f-scott-scribner-51831478

Matters Of Spirit J G Fichte And The Technological Imagination 1st

Edition F Scott Scribner

https://ebookbell.com/product/matters-of-spirit-j-g-fichte-and-the-
technological-imagination-1st-edition-f-scott-scribner-38654282

Gunpowder Explosives And The State A Technological History Buchanan

Brenda J Ed

https://ebookbell.com/product/gunpowder-explosives-and-the-state-a-
technological-history-buchanan-brenda-j-ed-42094340

General Chemistry Training Manual Ministry Of Science And Higher

Education Of The Russian Federation

https://ebookbell.com/product/general-chemistry-training-manual-
ministry-of-science-and-higher-education-of-the-russian-
federation-44533030

High Voltage Power Transformers State Of The Art And Technological

Innovations Marino Sforna

https://ebookbell.com/product/high-voltage-power-transformers-state-
of-the-art-and-technological-innovations-marino-sforna-54864910
The Technological State in Indonesia

Using a historical sociological approach, this book illustrates the formation of

the technological state in Indonesia during the New Order period (1966–98). It
explores the nexus between power, high technology, development, and author­
itarianism situated in the Southeast Asian context.
The book discusses how the New Order regime shifted from the develop­
mental state to the technological state, which was characterized by a desire for
technological supremacy. The process resulted in the establishment of a host of
technological institutions and the undertaking of large-�scale high-�tech programs.
Shedding light on the political dimension of socio-�technological transformation,
this book looks at the relationship between authoritarian politics and high tech­
nology development, and examines how effectively technology serves to sustain
legitimacy of an authoritarian power.
It explores the multiple features of the Indonesian technological state, cover­
ing the ideology of development, the politics of technocracy, the institutional
structure, and the material and symbolic embodiments of high technology, and
goes on to discuss the impact of globalization on the technological state. The
book is an important contribution to studies on Southeast Asian Politics, Devel­
opment, and Science, Technology, and Society.

Sulfikar Amir is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Sociology at Nanyang

Technological University, Singapore. His research interests include science and
technology studies, technological politics, development, nationalism, globaliza­
tion, the sociology of risk, and resilience studies.
Routledge contemporary Southeast Asia series

╇ 1 Land Tenure, Conservation and ╇ 8 Revolution, Reform and

Development in Southeast Asia Regionalism in Southeast Asia
Peter Eaton Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam
Ronald Bruce St John
╇ 2 The Politics of
Indonesia–Malaysia Relations ╇ 9 The Politics of Tyranny in
One kin, two nations Singapore and Burma
Joseph Chinyong Liow Aristotle and the rhetoric of
benevolent despotism
╇ 3 Governance and Civil Society in Stephen McCarthy
Myanmar
Education, health and environment
Helen James 10 Ageing in Singapore
Service needs and the state
╇ 4 Regionalism in Post-�Suharto Peggy Teo, Kalyani Mehta,
Indonesia Leng Leng Thang and
Edited by Maribeth Erb, Angelique Chan
Priyambudi Sulistiyanto and
Carole Faucher 11 Security and Sustainable
Development in Myanmar
╇ 5 Living with Transition in Laos Helen James
Market integration in Southeast
Asia
Jonathan Rigg 12 Expressions of Cambodia
The politics of tradition, identity
╇ 6 Christianity, Islam and and change
Nationalism in Indonesia Edited by Leakthina
Charles E. Farhadian Chau-�Pech Ollier and
Tim Winter
╇ 7 Violent Conflicts in Indonesia
Analysis, representation, 13 Financial Fragility and
resolution Instability in Indonesia
Edited by Charles A. Coppel Yasuyuki Matsumoto
14 The Revival of Tradition in 23 Rebellion and Reform in
Indonesian Politics Indonesia
The deployment of adat from Jakarta’s security and autonomy
colonialism to indigenism polices in Aceh
Edited by Jamie S. Davidson and Michelle Ann Miller
David Henley
24 Hadrami Arabs in Present-�day
15 Communal Violence and Indonesia
Democratization in Indonesia An Indonesia-�oriented group with
Small town wars an Arab signature
Gerry van Klinken Frode F. Jacobsen

16 Singapore in the Global System 25 Vietnam’s Political Process

Relationship, structure and change How education shapes political
Peter Preston decision making
Casey Lucius
17 Chinese Big Business in
Indonesia 26 Muslims in Singapore
The state of the capital Piety, politics and policies
Christian Chua Kamaludeen Mohamed Nasir,
Alexius A. Pereira and
18 Ethno-�religious Violence in Bryan S. Turner
Indonesia
From soil to God 27 Timor Leste
Chris Wilson Politics, history and culture
Andrea Katalin Molnar
19 Ethnic Politics in Burma
States of conflict 28 Gender and Transitional Justice
Ashley South The women of East Timor
Susan Harris Rimmer
20 Democratization in Post-�
Suharto Indonesia 29 Environmental Cooperation in
Edited by Marco Bünte and Southeast Asia
Andreas Ufen ASEAN’s regime for
trans-�boundary haze pollution
21 Party Politics and Paruedee Nguitragool
Democratization in Indonesia
Golkar in the post-�Suharto era 30 The Theatre and the State in
Dirk Tomsa Singapore
Terence Chong
22 Community, Environment and
Local Governance in Indonesia 31 Ending Forced Labour in
Locating the Commonwealth Myanmar
Edited by Carol Warren and Engaging a pariah regime
John F. McCarthy Richard Horsey
32 Security, Development and 40 Corruption and Law in
Nation-�Building in Timor-�Leste Indonesia
A cross-Â�sectoral assessment The unravelling of Indonesia’s
Edited by Vandra Harris and anti-�corruption framework through
Andrew Goldsmith law and legal process
Simon Butt
33 The Politics of Religion in
Indonesia 41 Men and Masculinities in
Syncretism, orthodoxy, and Southeast Asia
religious contention in Java and Edited by Michele Ford and
Bali Lenore Lyons
Edited by Michel Picard and
Remy Madinier
42 Justice and Governance in East
34 Singapore’s Ageing Population Timor
Managing healthcare and end of Indigenous approaches and the
life decisions ‘New Subsistence State’
Edited by Wing-�Cheong Chan Rod Nixon

35 Changing Marriage Patterns in 43 Population Policy and

Southeast Asia Reproduction in Singapore
Economic and socio-�cultural Making future citizens
dimensions Shirley Hsiao-�Li Sun
Edited by Gavin W. Jones,
Terence H. Hull and 44 Labour Migration and Human
Maznah Mohamad Trafficking
Critical perspectives from
36 The Political Resurgence of the Southeast Asia
Military in Southeast Asia Michele Ford, Lenore Lyons and
Conflict and leadership Willem van Schendel
Edited by Marcus Mietzner
45 Singapore Malays
37 Neoliberal Morality in Singapore
Being ethnic minority and Muslim
How family policies make state
in a global city-�state
and society
Hussin Mutalib
Youyenn Teo

38 Local Politics in Indonesia 46 Political Change and

Pathways to power Territoriality in Indonesia
Nankyung Choi Provincial proliferation
Ehito Kimura
39 Separatist Conflict in Indonesia
The long-�distance politics of the 47 Southeast Asia and the Cold
Acehnese diaspora War
Antje Missbach Edited by Albert Lau
48 Legal Pluralism in Indonesia 52 Chinese Indonesians Reassessed
Bridging the unbridgeable History, religion and belonging
Ratno Lukito Edited by Siew-�Min Sai and
Chang-�Yau Hoon
49 Building a People-�Oriented
Security Community the 53 Journalism and Conflict in
ASEAN way Indonesia
Alan Collins From reporting violence to
promoting peace
50 Parties and Parliaments in Steve Sharp
Southeast Asia
Non-�partisan chambers in 54 The Technological State in
Indonesia, the Philippines and Indonesia
Thailand The co-�constitution of high
Roland Rich technology and authoritarian
politics
51 Social Activism in Southeast Sulfikar Amir
Asia
Edited by Michele Ford
The Technological State in
Indonesia
The co-�constitution of high technology and
authoritarian politics

Sulfikar Amir
First published 2013
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2013 Sulfikar Amir
The right of Sulfikar Amir to be identified as author of this work has been
asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Amir, Sulfikar.
The technological state in Indonesia: the co-�constitution of high
technology and authoritarian politics/Sulfikar Amir.
p. cm. – (Routledge contemporary Southeast Asia series; 54)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Indonesia–Politics and government–1966–1998. 2. Authoritarianism–
Indonesia. 3. Technology and state–Indonesia. 4. High technology–
Government policy–Indonesia. 5. Technocracy. I. Title. II. Series:
Routledge contemporary Southeast Asia series; 54.
DS644.4.A52 2012
959.803′7–dc23
2012016492
ISBN: 978-0-415-67069-2 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-203-08412-0 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Wearset Ltd, Boldon, Tyne and Wear
For my father who taught me the meaning of learning and my
mother for her endless prayers.
Contents

List of illustrations xii

Preface xiii
List of abbreviations xvi

Introduction 1

1 Authoritarianism and technocracy 19

2 The general and the engineer 40

3 Bureaucratization of technology 57

4 Building strategic industries 77

5 Accelerating transformation 94

6 Take-�off 121

7 Downfall 148

Epilogue 160

Notes 167
Bibliography 177
Index 186
Illustrations

Figures
3.1 Organizational structure of scientific and technological
institutions under Habibie leadership 67
5.1 The IPTN site near Husein Sastranegara Airport, Bandung 101
5.2 The link between the four-�step transformation and social
change and modernization as described in Habibie’s high-Â�tech
formula 104
5.3 The CN235 108
5.4 IPTN employee numbers (1976–2000) 114
5.5 IPTN’s cumulative assets (1976–2000) 116
5.6 IPTN sales and revenues/loss (1976–2000) 117
6.1 The fly-�by-wire flight control system developed for the N250 130
6.2 The N250 roll-�out ceremony 134
6.3 The N250’s first flight in Bandung 141
6.4 Computer-�generated illustration of the N2130 146

Table
5.1 IPTN contractual partners 106
Preface

I grew up in Indonesia when the New Order regime was growing in power.
Changes were taking place almost everywhere, including my hometown, where
economic development unfolded quite impressively. What fascinated me, my
family, and many other people I knew was how the New Order government built
the aircraft industry in Bandung. High technology was celebrated and being an
engineer became a very popular dream for my generation’s youth. This book is
about what happened in Indonesia during the New Order time. Plenty of works
have been published on Indonesia’s New Order that shed light on a broad range
of issues. Scholars on Indonesian studies attempted to explain the nature and
character of the New Order authoritarian regime using conceptual theories in
social sciences. Some of these works strongly criticized what the New Order did
during its reign; others praised the achievements of the regime in transforming
Indonesian society. This book seeks to give an alternative account of the New
Order Indonesia by emphasizing technology as the main feature of developmen­
tal change. As I am intrigued by how ideas shape our material world, I wrote this
book to show how intellectual ideas influenced Indonesian politics and steered
modernization and industrial development during the most important episode in
Indonesia’s contemporary history.
This book was a long time in the making. During the process, I received gen­
erous help, insightful comments, and endless support from so many people and
institutions. The book started as a doctoral dissertation at the Department of
Science and Technology Studies, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the place
where I had an intellectual enlightenment. I am deeply indebted to my chair,
Langdon Winner, who never ceased to support me. His critical mind greatly
shaped my intellectual orientation. I am very grateful to David Hess who encour­
aged me to come to Rensselaer. If it were not for David, I would have never
become a science, technology, and society (STS) academic. I am thankful to
Kim Fortun who continuously provided motivation and inspiration to help me
finish my dissertation. Faculty members at Rensselaer’s STS deserve my grati­
tude for making my sojourn at Renssealer an exciting learning experience:
Atsushi Akera, Steve Breyman, Nancy Campbell, Ron Eglash, and Sal Restivo.
In working on this book, I collected a large amount of information from individ­
uals who played central roles in the making of development and technology
xiv╇╇ Preface
policy during the New Order period. For this, I want to give special thanks to
B.J. Habibie for providing me with two interviews. My thanks also go to a
number of New Order technocrats, most notably Ali Wardhana, Emil Salim, Giri
Suseno Hadihardjono, Muhammad Sadli, Rahardi Ramelan, and Soedradjat Dji­
wandono. My research at the Indonesian Aircraft Industry in Bandung was made
possible by support from senior engineers at the company whom I am unable to
name one by one. However, a few of them should be mentioned here: S. Para­
majuda, Jusman Syafii Djamal, Alex Supelli, Bambang Pamungkas, Said D.
Jenie, Hari Laksono, Budi Santoso, Ilham Habibie, Andi Alisjahbana, and Lili
Irahali.
Much of the concept and content presented in this book has changed from the
original version of my dissertation. It resulted from two years of research during
which I traveled back and forth from Singapore to Jakarta and Bandung. During
my fieldwork, I was warmly welcome by the Ministry of Research and Technol­
ogy (RISTEK) and the Agency for the Assessment and Application of Technol­
ogy (BPPT). The officials at RISTEK and BPPT gave wholehearted support that
allowed me to investigate data and archives indispensable in developing the
concept and which added substantial content in this book. Among of them are
Kusmayanto Kadiman, Carunia Firdausy, Erry Ricardo Nurzal, Sohibul Iman,
and Anwar Darwadi. The Graduate Program of Development Studies at Institut
Teknologi Bandung (ITB) facilitated my research in Bandung for which I thank
Muhammad Tasrif, Sonny Yuliar, Saswinadi Sasmodjo, Widjajono Partowid­
agdo, and all the staff at the program.
The main ideas developed in this book benefited from productive discussions
and inspiring conversations I had with a number of colleagues, most notably
Michael Fischer, Joshua Barker, Warwick Anderson, Suzanne Moon, Itty
Abraham, Gabrielle Hecht, Sören Eriksson, Tuong Vu, Daromir Rudnyckyj,
Greg Clancey, Kenji Ito, Togo Tsukahara, Eun-�Sung Kim, Lane DeNicola, Erick
Schienke, Merlyna Lim, Anto Mohsin, Yanuar Nugroho, and John Dimoia. A
few chapters of the book were presented in seminars and conferences at Cornell
University, University of Tokyo, Seoul National University, Kyoto University,
University of Barcelona, National University of Singapore, and the Society for
the History of Technology. I felt grateful to those who attended my presentation
and gave useful comments. Parts of Chapters 2, 3, and 5 are taken from articles
published in Sojourn, Bulletin of Science, Technology, and Society, and Technol-
ogy in Society, respectively. Special thanks are due to an anonymous reviewer
for his/her encouraging comments and criticism, and Jillian Morrison and Dor­
othea Schaefter of Routledge for their kind support in preparing the manuscript.
I should note here that research for this book was financially supported by the
School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Nanyang Technological University
(NTU). I would like to express my great appreciation to the school for providing
me with remarkable resources ever since I joined NTU. Contributing to my
efforts in writing this book were the good friendships I have with my colleagues
at NTU’s Division of Sociology, especially Kwok Kian Woon, Francis Lim,
Shirley Sun, Patrick Williams, and Saidul Islam. I thank my students, Sharnice
 Preface╇╇ xv
Neo, Nur Amin Shah, and Ezekiel Wong, who assisted me in conducting the
research for the book. Finally, this book would have never been completed
without constant support and love from my wife, Dina Darwis, who tirelessly
pushed me to concentrate on the book every time I was distracted by something
else. I feel so fortunate to have two little angels at home, Adiva and Nadya, who
keep reminding me that there is more to life than just work, especially at the
weekend. Girls, you will get a Wii once this book is out!
Abbreviations

ABRI Angkatan Bersenjata Republik Indonesia (The Armed

Force of Republic of Indonesia)
AIPI Akademi Ilmu Pengetahuan Indonesia (Indonesian
Academy of Sciences)
AMRAI American Regional Aircraft Industry
ATP Advanced Technology Pertamina
ATTP Advanced Technology and Aeronautic Technology
(Pertamina)
BAKORTANAS Badan Koordinasi Bantuan Pemantapan Stabilitas Nasional
(Coordinating Agency for National Stability)
BAKOSURTANAL Badan Koordinator Survei dan Pemetaan Nasional
(Coordinating Agency for National Survey and Mapping)
BAPPENAS Badan Perencanaan Pembangunan Nasional (Agency for
National Development Planning)
BATAN Badan Tenaga Nuklir Nasional (Agency for National
Nuclear Energy)
BBI Boma Bisma Indra
BIN Badan Intelijen Nasional (National Intelligence Agency)
BLBI Bantuan Likuidasi Bank Indonesia (Liquidity Supports of
the Bank of Indonesia)
BPIS Badan Pengelola Industri Strategis (Managing Agency for
Strategic Industries)
BPPT Badan Pengkajian dan Penerapan Teknologi (Agency for
the Assessment and Application of Technology)
BPS Biro Pusat Statistik (Central Bureau of Statistics)
BPUPKI Badan Penyelidik Usaha Persiapan Kemerdekaan Indonesia
(Investigating Committee for Preparatory Work for
Indonesian Independence)
CASA Construccionés Aeronauticas, S.A.
CIDES Center for Information and Development Studies
CSIS Center for Strategic and International Studies
DPIS Dewan Pembina Industri Strategis (Advisory Council of
Strategic Industries)
DPPP Aircraft Research, Experiment, and Construction
Department
DRN Dewan Riset Nasional (National Research Council)
 Abbreviations╇╇ xvii
DSTP Dua Satu Tiga Puluh (Two One Thirty)
FAA Federal Aviation Administration (US)
G30S Gerakan 30 September (September 30 Movement)
GBHN Garis Besar Haluan Negara (State Guidelines for National
Development)
Golkar Golongan Karya
HFB Hamburger Flugzeugbau
IAS Indonesian Air Show
ICMI Ikatan Cendekiawan Muslim Indonesia (Indonesian Muslim
Intellectual Association)
IMF International Monetary Fund
INA IPTN North America
INKA Industri Kereta Api Indonesia (Indonesian Train Industries)
INTI Industri Telekomunikasi Indonesia (Indonesian
Telecommunication Industry)
IPTI Industri Pesawat Terbang Indonesia (Indonesia Aircraft
Industry)
IPTN Industri Pesawat Terbang Nusantara (Nusantara Aircraft
Industry)
ITB Institut Teknologi Bandung (Bandung Institute of
Technology)
ITI Institut Teknologi Indonesia (Indonesia Institute of
Technology)
ITS Institut Teknologi Sepuluh November (November 10
Institute of Technology)
KKN Korupsi, Kolusi, Nepotisme (Corruption, Collusion, and
Nepotism)
KOPELAPIP Komando Persiapan Industri Pesawat Terbang (Executive
Command of Aviation Industry Preparation)
KOPKAMTIB Komando Operasi Pemulihan Keamanan dan Ketertiban
(Operational Command for the Restoration of Security and
Order
LAPAN Lembaga Penerbangan dan Antariksa Nasional (Institute of
National Aeronautics and Space)
LAPIP Lembaga Persiapan Industri Penerbangan (Agency of
Aviation Industry Preparation)
LEN Lembaga Elektronika Nasional (National Institute of
Electronics)
LIPI Lembaga Ilmu Pengetahuan Indonesia (Indonesian Institute
of Sciences)
LIPNUR Lembaga Industri Penerbangan Nurtanio (Nurtanio Institute
of Aviation Industry)
LOI Letter of Intent
LPND Lembaga Pemerintah Non-�Departemen (Non-�department
Governmental Agency)
MBB Messerschmitt-�Boelkow-Blohm
MPR Majelis Permusyarawatan Rakyat (People’s Consultative
Assembly)
OECF Overseas Economic Cooperation Fund
xviii╇╇ Abbreviations
OFP Overseas Fellowship Program
P4 Pedoman Penghayatan dan Pengamalan Pancasila (Guidelines
of the Learning and Implementation of Pancasila)
PAL Penataran Angkatan Laut
PDI Partai Demokrasi Indonesia (Indonesian Democracy Party)
PDIP Partai Demokrasi Indonesia Perjuangan (Indonesian
Democracy Struggle Party)
Persis Persatuan Islam (United Islam)
Pertamina Perusahaan Tambang Minyak dan Gas Negara (State
Company of Oil and Gas)
PII Persatuan Insiyur Indonesia (Indonesian Engineers
Association)
PINDAD Perusahaan Industri Angkatan Darat (Army Industry
Company)
PKI Partai Komunis Indonesia (Indonesian Communist Party)
PPFN Pusat Produksi Film Negara (State Center for Film
Production)
PPI Persatuan Pelajar Indonesia (Indonesian Students
Association)
PPP Partai Persatuan Pembangunan (United Development Party)
PTDI PT Dirgantara Indonesia (Indonesian Aerospace
Corporation, IAe)
PTUN Pengadilan Tata Usaha Negara (State Administrative
Court)
PUSPIPTEK Pusat Pengembangan Ilmu Pengetahuan dan Teknologi
(Research Center for Science and Technology
Development)
Repelita Rencana Pembangunan Lima Tahun (Five-�Year
Development Plan)
RISTEK Kementerian Riset dan Teknologi (Ministry of Research
and Technology)
SESKOAD Sekolah Staf Komando Angkatan Darat (Army Staff and
Command School)
STAID Science and Technology for Industrial Development
STMDP Science and Technology Manpower Development Program
STS Science, Technology and Society
TNI Tentara Nasional Indonesia (Indonesian National Armed
Force)
UI University of Indonesia
UNIDO United Nations International Development Organization
YLBHI Yayasan Lembaga Bantuan Hukum Indonesia (Indonesian
Institute of Legal Aid Foundation)
Introduction

[I]ndonesia’s first domestically produced aircraft, the N250 light commuter plane,
is scheduled to make its maiden flight. Habibie has gambled his reputation on the
N250, a 70-seater that he believes will compete well with European and Ameri-
can short-�haul aircraft .╛.╛. But what if it all goes wrong? Some believe Suharto
would not be able to save his old friend from such a high-�profile disaster. If
Habibie didn’t resign, he would at least have to shed some of his power.1

Above is an excerpt from an article which appeared in Hong Kong-�based

Asiaweek a few days prior to a monumental event that marked one of the striking
features of Indonesia’s New Order authoritarianism. The report refers to the
flight test of N250, a turboprop airplane developed and constructed by Industri
Pesawat Terbang Nusantara (IPTN). It was a moment of truth for the New Order
leaders, in particular President Suharto and his long-�serving Minister of Research
and Technology Bacharuddin Jusuf Habibie, for both led massive efforts to
undertake one of the most ambitious technological projects ever seen in the
developing world organized by the state. Through huge investments of tremen-
dous financial and techno-�scientific resources, Indonesian engineers managed to
design and construct a highly sophisticated propeller airplane. Gatotkaca, a
name inspired by a heroic character in Hindu-�Javanese mythology, was given to
the airplane by Suharto; the airplane was not only lavishly presented as a
national pride and prestige but served a testimony of Indonesia’s ability to
compete with Western states.
Given its remarkable significance, the N250’s maiden flight was critical not
only to Habibie’s political reputation, as Asiaweek skeptically predicted, but also
to the whole program of high technology development to which the New Order
regime had placed a great deal of tenacious attention. However, to the surprise
of those who thought that Indonesia’s first indigenously manufactured aircraft
would fail, Gatotkaca’s maiden voyage was a success. This historic moment
took place in the morning of 10 August 1995, which was deliberately planned
one week before the celebration of the 50th anniversary of Indonesian independ-
ence. All members of Suharto’s family, along with cabinet members, came to
Bandung, a two-�hour drive from Jakarta where IPTN was located, to witness the
2╇╇ Introduction
success of the N250’s flight over the Bandung sky. Tantamount to the excitement
of the American people when cheering Apollo’s moon landing, Indonesians
observed this national achievement via television with much enthusiasm. When
the plane took off, the spectators became overwhelmed with joy and pride. For
the first time in public, President Suharto shed tears of pride while Habibie was
extremely relieved and content about the result.
In the eyes of the New Order elite, the N250 was not just another airplane: it
was an extraordinary high-�tech artifact whose maiden flight signified the apex of
the New Order’s decades-Â�long efforts to establish one of the most successful
developmental authoritarianisms in Asia. At this point, Indonesia loomed as the
potential next Asian Tiger, ready to join the growing influences of East Asian
economies; even the World Bank’s assessment of Indonesia seemed bright. Such
a conviction occupied the minds of the New Order leaders who thought that all
necessary pre-�conditions for a take-�off were in place, as the efforts to master
high technology, regarded as prerequisite for modern nation-�building, brought
an expected success. It all started in 1976 when the New Order government
decided to pour a vast amount of petrodollars to establish IPTN. Within ten
years, IPTN turned into the fastest growing state-�owned aircraft producer in
Asia. The Indonesian aircraft industry was projected to become a global aircraft
developer, able to challenge the dominance of the Euro-�American airplane man-
ufacturers. Conceived as more than just a state-�owned corporation, the aircraft
industry was the cornerstone of the New Order’s technological vision to create
the most technologically advanced society in the developing world. This ambi-
tious vision entailed a colossal enterprise of establishing and administrating a
host of techno-�scientific institutions under the close coordination of the state. All
these elements were arranged in such a way that would enhance the national
capacity in yielding cutting-�edge technologies. Supporting this institutionaliza-
tion of high technology was intensive production of highly educated scientists
and engineers, most of whom were trained in prestigious universities abroad
funded by state budgets. Nevertheless, the New Order’s high-Â�tech vision sud-
denly ceased to exist when its institutional realization fell apart in the aftermath
of Suharto’s unforeseen downfall following the Asian financial cataclysm three
years after the N250’s successful flight. Consequently, the financial crisis ruined
nearly all of the New Order’s economic accomplishments.
The incredible endeavors the New Order government undertook in developing
high-�tech production capacity, and the way in which the state controlled strategic
industrial sectors, suggest that the New Order was aiming for a developmental path
different to those of other East Asian countries. This book argues that the excessive
emphasis on the capacity to produce high technology (as the N250 project and later
the N2130 jet airplane exemplify) is that the Indonesian developmental path, in
particular during the late period of the New Order rule, diverged from the common
trajectory that most Asian developmental states have followed, which was typically
characterized by active state intervention in the economy.
This book deals with the question of how Indonesia’s New Order embarked
upon a developmental path directed by great enthusiasm for high technology. It
 Introduction╇╇ 3
should be stressed from the outset that this book is not intended to describe the
role of the state in underwriting technology transfer per se. Neither does it
simply follow a “lighthouse” explanation, which is inclined to treat large techno-
logical construction as mere fulfillment for the state’s narcissistic impulses. The
task carried out in this book is rather broader and multi-�dimensional; structure
and culture form the core analytical framework used to identify every contribut-
ing factor that rendered Indonesia’s proclivity toward technology-Â�driven devel-
opment experienced during the New Order period. To that end, this book
revolves around the notion of “the technological state,” a distinct form of devel-
opmental regime primarily characterized by a great desire to realize a vision of
high technology. The following section will elaborate on what I mean by the
technological state.
State ambitions to carry out megaprojects are indeed not unique to Indonesian
experience. Such efforts to produce capital-�intensive technologies have been
present in other part of the developing world, notably China, India, Malaysia,
and Brazil, to name a few (see Dai 1998; Kerr 2002; Jomo et al. 1999; Becker
and Egler 1992). What distinguishes the Indonesian case, this book argues, lies
deeply in state–technology relations. As this book will demonstrate, high tech-
nology developments constituted the primary goal the New Order sought to
achieve particularly during its second 25-year development phase. Most intrigu-
ing from such a proximate relation is the way in which technology was institu-
tionally entrenched in the state structure. This book suggests that to uncover the
forces that shaped this penetrating structure, it is necessary to take a deep look at
the reciprocity between technological development and authoritarian politics that
resulted in the formation of the technological state. This book also posits that the
emergence of this technological state was intimately linked to the authoritarian
characters of the New Order regime, which extensively utilized organized vio-
lence from the moment it came to power throughout its 32-year rule. Thus, this
book explains the role of technology not in economic terms, but more broadly in
symbolic and ideological terms; these shaped the politics of the state and devel-
opment, marking an epoch in Indonesia’s modern history from the mid-Â�1970s
through to the end of the 1990s.
Despite neoliberalizing forces that have largely dictated political economic
structures of increasingly globalized societies, the state remains a prominent
political institution. To study the state, scholars have attempted to assess how the
state performs across societies. Comparative studies of states have resulted in
several binary notions useful in defining generalized characteristics of states, for
instance, weak versus strong states, developmental versus predatory states,
cohesive-�capitalist versus patrimonial states, and so forth (e.g., Migdal 1988;
Evans 1995; and Kohli 2004). This study, however, takes a different direction
from those studying states in comparative modes, although some conceptual ele-
ments from these studies are incorporated in the book’s overall framework.
Highlighting peculiar techno-�political circumstances of the New Order regime,
this study presents a one-�country observation, of Indonesia. A chief objective
of this book is to explore the interplay between power, technology, and
4╇╇ Introduction
authoritarian politics within a Southeast Asian context. It illuminates the politi-
cal intricacies of socio-�technological transformations that dominated develop-
ment discourses at the height of the New Order. Despite the specificity of the
empirical case concentrated on a techno-�political analysis of the Indonesian air-
craft industry, this book does not primarily aim to provide a historical account of
the aviation industry in Indonesia. It is rather an attempt to traverse the assem-
blage in a Latourian sense (Latour 1988, 2005), of technological artifacts, insti-
tutionalized power, and political/technical actors that constituted the
technological state. By the same token, this book seeks to identify fractures
within the New Order regime that eventually caused the abrupt decline of the
technological state when a global force engulfed its power. It thereby recounts
when the Asian financial crisis severely struck Indonesia, resulting in a devastat-
ing impact on the technological state. This side story illustrates the contestation
between the state and globalization.
The following sections present a set of arguments around which the empirical
materials in this book are organized. There are three propositions that explain a
triangular nexus of relations between three elements: technology, the state, and
the socio-�developmental experience in Indonesia.

Power, technology, and development

Development, as Arturo Escobar posits in Encountering Development, is a dis-
course aimed to produce “a space for the systematic creation of concepts, theo-
ries, and practices” that defines the possible path of social progress for the Third
World (Escobar 1995:€ 39). As a Western project that began to spread to post-�
colonial societies in more organized ways after the end of World War II, devel-
opment was propagated to Third World nations as the proper means to obtain the
advancement of Western societies purportedly leading to socio-�economic pros-
perity. Represented as a universal blueprint applicable to all societies, the devel-
opmental discourse revolved around a set of assumptions that emphasized, inter
alia, the necessity for Third World societies to adopt modern technology in their
efforts to alleviate long-�standing miseries caused by colonial exploitation.
Escobar notes that the discursive formation of development practices, which
deemed technology as one primary component, originated in a speech Harry
Truman delivered in his presidential inauguration ceremony in 1949:

I believe that we should make available to peace-�loving people the benefits

of our store of technical knowledge in order to help them realize their aspi-
ration for a better life.â•›.â•›.â•›. Greater production is the key to prosperity and
peace. And the key to greater production is a wider and more vigorous
application of modern scientific and technical knowledge.2 [emphasis
added]

As Escobar observes, Truman’s statement laid the foundation for the develop-
ment assistance Western states sent to developing countries, desperately eager to
 Introduction╇╇ 5
catch up with their former colonizers. It clearly signaled a message that modern
technology would serve as a panacea for dire conditions in the Third World. The
belief that technology was the key to economic productivity became reinforced
in academic writing by modernist thinkers such as American economist Walt
Whitman Rostow. Seeking to offer an alternative to Marxist propositions,
Rostow postulates “the five stages of growth theory,”3 which suggest that a tra-
ditionally economic society starts to grow once the insights of modern science
begin to be translated into new production functions. He suggests that the appli-
cation of technology is the pre-�conditioning factor indispensable in the early
stages of development.
Rostow’s five stages of growth conspicuously reflect modernist biases, resting
upon the assumption that Western capitalist experiences offer a more suitable
option for non-�Western societies seeking to alter production systems. This sort
of imposing paradigm has received strong criticism from numerous fronts, most
notably post-�modernist sociology and anthropology that found modernization
projects politically and culturally problematic (e.g., Ferguson 1994; Ong 1987;
Edelman and Haugerud 2005). Notwithstanding these criticisms, the role of tech-
nology remains significantly emphasized in development discourses and it con-
tinues to influence directions of socio-�economic transformation in the Third
World. As technology is increasingly seen as an indispensable instrument to
improve the conditions of post-�colonial nations, studies on the application of
technology for developmental purposes have arisen to understand the impact of
technological change on socio-�economic progress of the Third World. One
typical approach employed to examine technological development in the Third
World draws attention to technology transfer processes.4 Most development
economists often succumb to this perspective of technology and development,
and thereby influence conceptual and policy discussions pertaining to the prac-
tices to boost transfers of technology that would benefit developing countries as
the receptors. The technology transfer framework is materialistically oriented in
a sense that its observations primarily concentrate on economically defined
factors, namely capital mobilization and accumulation that facilitate movements
of technology from developed to developing economies. As such, technology
transfer theorists pay a great deal of attention to specific mechanisms through
which technical apparatuses, knowledge, and innovation are transferred through
trades and investments. Thus, acquisition of technology, foreign direct invest-
ments, and technology licensing, among others, are typically the main subjects
in technology transfer studies.
Analyses framed within the technology transfer approach normally assume
that capital constitutes the means as well as the end in technology diffusion. This
implies that capital accumulation remains the ultimate goal in accomplishing the
conveyance of cutting-�edge technologies from advanced to disadvantaged areas.
From a critical perspective, the notions of technology transfer follow the logic of
technological determinism; a view that, in political scientist Langdon Winner’s
phrase, stands on two hypotheses: “(1) that the technical base of a society is the
fundamental condition affecting all patterns of social existence, and (2) that
6╇╇ Introduction
changes in technology are the single most important source of change in society”
(Winner 1977:€ 76). Bearing a technologically deterministic view, technology
transfer researchers are occupied by a positive image of technology bearing the
capacity to produce wealth for the Third World poor.
The profound impact of technology on economic production is a conception
no scholar would rebuke. However, the spectrum of technology as a complex
system of technical knowledge and artifact creation transcends material interests,
particularly in the post-�colonial context (Anderson 2002). The main point this
book attempts to put forward rests on a proposition that while technology plays a
crucial role in development, the relationship between technology and develop-
ment is multidimensional and that there is more to technology than just issues of
transfer. Therefore, understanding the multi-�faceted role of technology in devel-
opment discourses requires more than what technology transfer explanations
offer, for this approach is strictly limited to examining capital-�related aspects;
the movement of technologies across national boundaries is often driven by a
broad range of interests by multiple actors that cannot be comprehensively ana-
lyzed under economic nomenclatures.
The pervasiveness of technology in the development discourse calls for an
inquiry that incorporates what scholars of STS have provided to uncover a
mélange of social, cultural, and political forces by which technology transforms,
and is transformed by, society. The merits of the STS multidisciplinary lens in
looking at the way technology interacts with society first comes from a series of
studies that demonstrate in a myriad of examples how technology is culturally
and politically embedded in social institutions.5 These studies convincingly
argue that technology does not emanate out of, and work in, a vacuum, but that
it is essentially a product of society that travels from one social context to
another shaped by a variety of prevailing societal forces (Anderson and Adams
2007). From the evolution of the bicycle, the construction of electrical systems,
the development of nuclear power, to the invention of accuracy in weapon mis-
siles, STS scholars have empirically confirmed that technology is born, and
invariably attached to, specific social settings that forcefully define the efficacy
of technical configurations, measurement techniques, quality standards and so
forth, embodied in socio-�technical systems. In other words, while rapid develop-
ments of technology massively alter the ways we interact, communicate, behave,
and perceive our worlds, these developments inherently resonate with, and
reflect, how we organize our society.6 Such reciprocity is encapsulated in the
notion of co-�production between technology and society that marks considerable
works in STS (Jasanoff 2004).7 The co-�production thesis (Jasanoff 2004) pro-
pounds that while technology appears to be a driving force in socio-�cultural
transformations, we should not treat technology as an entity that bears some
internal logic free of social influences. Institutional conditions, group interests,
ideology, political systems, cultural values, and systems of belief all contribute
to the production of technological systems that characterize contemporary, glo-
balized societies. And there is no reason to doubt that technological ramifica-
tions in the Third World development are observable from this perspective.
 Introduction╇╇ 7
Furthermore, technology anywhere at anytime was never, and will never be,
monolithic and neutral. Power relations often facilitate, and are mediated by, the
construction of technical artifacts, be they simple or sophisticated. The media-
tion of power relations by technology, STS scholars suggest, should be probed
by looking not only at material but also symbolic, ideological, and political
realms.
It is in this line of arguments that this book intends to frame technology and
development in New Order Indonesia. Acknowledging the complexity of tech-
nological development in the Third World signifies the crucial task this book
aims to accomplish. In so doing, the notion of technology translation (see Callon
1986 and Fujimura 1992), instead of technology transfer, frames the approach
this book relies on to uncover both material and symbolic registers embodied in
the intercourse of technology and development as exemplified in Indonesia’s
experience. Technology is translated when the whole material and symbolic
components are transformed from one context to another, a process mediated by
particular institutional structures and grounded in an ideologically constructed
environment. Such a process involves two interrelated dimensions this book
aims to analyze: the cultural and the political. On one hand, the former presumes
a translation of technology to be a cultural process in which symbolism con-
structs a set of ontological meanings embedded in the presence of technology.
Technology translation, on the other hand, is political, for it is drawn by political
forces that remarkably shape how development is perceived, conceived, and
materialized. This entails a form of technological politics in which the pursuit of
political ends is facilitated by technological means. The junction of the cultural
and the political constitutes power, and power provides technology with the form
and the soul it needs to build relations with individuals. This perspective allows
one to interrogate the politics of technology at the core where power is produced
and exercised within socio-�technical realms. This book attempts to elucidate
questions of how power shapes technological formation, and concomitantly how
technology becomes the embodiment of power. As this is the main inquiry, the
focus of analysis is placed upon a network of elite actors both technological and
political, and situated in the sphere of the state.

The technological state

A fundamental point in studies on technology and development in the Third
World context is the inevitability of realizing the pivotal role of the state in cre-
ating instrumental environments that allow both elements to intertwine. Follow-
ing this direction, the whole process of technological politics this book aims to
unravel revolves around the state as a prominent institution that governs social
transformations in the developing world.
For the past 30 years or so, the state has been one of the most important sub-
jects of inquiry in sociology, political science, and, to an increasing degree,
anthropology. Growing attention to the state in social sciences is prompted by
the fact that during the past century the history of human civilizations was
8╇╇ Introduction
profoundly affected by the expanding power of modern states that brought about
far-�reaching implications for contemporary societies. It comes with no surprise
that the state has become the gravity of scholarly investigation for many social
researchers as modern states are seen responsible for advances in human devel-
opment but also for production of human miseries. Using different empirical
tools, social scientists have offered their explanations on power, authority, and
structure of the state across societies. They have sought to understand how states
have evolved into powerful institutions and what socio-�political conditions allow
states to dominate citizens.8
Scholars who study the behavior of states face a conundrum that states are
complex and convoluted, a feature mostly attributed to the long history of
modern state formation. Acknowledging the complexity of the state, it presents a
large puzzle that takes continuous inquiries to solve. This as such results in mul-
tiple interpretations of how the state works and how it establishes relations with
other social actors and institutions. In contemporary studies of the state, interpre-
tations of features and structures of the state fall into two schools of thought that
have, for the past few decades, influenced knowledge about the state across cul-
tures. The division between these two camps lies in the debate on whether the
state is always controlled by the interests of non-�state actors or whether it is
likely to hold institutional autonomy. The former is firmly upheld by Neo-�
Marxist scholars who believe that the state has invariably been part of the politi-
cal economy shaped by capitalist interests (e.g., Tilly 1992 and Barrow 1993).
This group of scholars asserts that state autonomy is consequently irrelevant
because the capitalist class is most of the time able to use the state as a venue to
extract surpluses. Thus, this camp seeks to bring to light macro structures in a
given society in which the state is deeply penetrated by capital forces. The other
school of thought follows insights from Max Weber who emphasized the possi-
bility for the state to run on its own rationality and to fulfill its own interests.
Defining the state as an entity that claims for the monopoly of legitimate vio-
lence, Weber is well known for his study on modern bureaucracy that served as
the fundamental instrument of the state’s legitimacy.9 The publication of Bring-
ing the State Back In (Evans, Rueschemeyer and Skocpol 1985) marked the
return of the Weberian thesis and henceforth inspired investigations that fol-
lowed Weberian arguments. The edited volume constitutes one of the most influ-
ential works in state studies that calls for re-Â�assessment of the state’s capacities
to act as an independent actor in structuring political economy in society.
Weberian arguments found empirical grounds from studies on economic
progress that accelerated in late industrializing countries of East Asia during the
1950s until the 1970s. The supremacy of state institutions was brought to the
fore as the major factor in explaining why economic development and industrial
growth was exceptionally successful in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, but
failed to take off in other economies. No works on East Asian development are
more influential than Chalmers Johnson’s MITI and the Japanese Miracle (1982)
in which Johnson first coined the term developmental state. Drawing on a dis-
tinction Weber made between a “market economy” and “plan rationality,”
 Introduction╇╇ 9
Johnson emphasizes the developmental state as distinctive from either the plan
ideological Soviet type of state or the market-�regulating type, such as the United
States. This state form, Johnson maintains, is primarily characterized by the pro-
clivities to take on development functions and the setting of substantive social
and economic goals. The developmental state, as Johnson puts it, is “the plan-Â�
rational state” in which “the government will give greatest precedence to indus-
trial policy, that is, to a concern with the structure of domestic industry and with
promoting the structure that enhances the nation’s international competitiveness”
(Johnson 1982:€17). The publication of his book afforded Johnson a strong repu-
tation among scholars studying the state and his analytical framework began to
influence works on the state and development. Despite a few criticisms regar-
dign Johnson’s seemingly overemphasis on the functioning of bureaucracy,10 the
developmental state arose as an organizing concept adopted by numerous social
scientists to reveal the key to successful rapid industrialization in East Asia.
Others used the concept in comparative observations across nations to expose
the structural failures in other states that limited their ability to effectively indus-
trialize.11 In its evolution, the concept was enriched through modifications put
forward by a number of works that shed light on multiple dimensions of state
institutions. These studies sought to assess the extent to which the state is able to
retain autonomy and to develop capacity in order to pursue developmental goals.
Peter Evans (1995), for instance, added the notion of embedded autonomy,
which defines the way in which state autonomy is established through informal
relationships between state actors and non-�state organizations. In a similar vein,
Atul Kohli (2004) establishes another term, the cohesive-�capitalist state, which
is used to explain the patterns of state construction and intervention that led
South Korea to join the “industrialized nation club” in a relatively short period.
In sum, works on developmental states illustrate the working of state institutions
in structuring a political economy in which state autonomy and capacity are two
key factors in the massive success of developmental enterprises in East Asia and
beyond.
Departing from the notion of developmental state, the present study takes on
a similar yet slightly different framework to account for a state formation in
Indonesia during the New Order rule. Placing more emphasis on the state’s
approach to institutionalizing high technology within state structure, this book
illustrates a peculiar type of state that I shall call the technological state. This
concept extends the framework of the developmental state. In essence, the tech-
nological state shares a few main features with the developmental state. These
include, inter alia, the impetus to achieve high economic growth, state interven-
tions in industrial policies, the strong presence of bureaucracy in policymaking,
and the hegemony of technocratic rationality. However, while the developmental
state, as Johnson and others define it, is structured around a set of interests in
formulating and pursuing high growth in industrial production, the core of the
technological state resides in the interplay between technology and state politics.
The technological state is defined as a state with a political economy that is
largely structured by a macro vision of socio-�economic transformations which
10╇╇ Introduction
places a strong emphasis on state-�led rapid technological development. To define
the technological state, I discuss three essential features that distinguish it from
the developmental state. First, the primary interest of the technological state
transcends economic growth, to which the developmental state gives priority in
the planned acceleration of industrial outputs. Higher degree of technological
supremacy appears to be more desirable to the technological state and thus
becomes the measure of success. The pursuit of technological supremacy, it
should be noted, does not necessarily mean that efforts to make economic
progress do not deserve attention. In the technological state, it is assumed that
technological supremacy and economic wealth come once the nation’s competi-
tiveness in the global markets is improved through technical advances. The
bottom line is that technology not only serves as a means of prosperity but, more
importantly, it constitutes the ultimate end the state seeks to pursue through
state-�concerted undertakings. Such a vision in technological superiority is analo-
gous to what James Scott has labeled high modernism, “a particularly sweeping
vision of how the benefits of technical and scientific progress might be applied—
usually through the state—in every field of human activity” (Scott 1999:€ 90).
The corollary of such a view, which places technological means as the main
instrument of socio-�economic engineering leading to the creation of a new
society, appears in large-Â�scale investments to boost the state’s technological
capacities.
Second, to follow a Neo-�Weberian thesis, institutional autonomy boosts the for-
mation of the technological state. This aspect has been specifically noted with
regards to the developmental state above. The technological state, however,
diverges from the developmental state in the extent of autonomy the state has in
structuring the political economy. We learn from Peter Evans that autonomy of the
bureaucracy in developmental states is somehow entangled in the web of state–
society relations. This implies that the developmental state does not attain complete
autonomy but rather autonomy is embedded in the interface between state and non-�
state actors such as business groups, professional clubs, and social organizations.12
In the case of the technological state established in Indonesia’s New Order authori-
tarian regime, the state institutions directly related to technological production were
nearly autonomous and relatively isolated from market forces. Penetration of non-�
state actors into the state programs remained incredibly sparse as the state bureau-
crats were structurally protected from external influences.
Lastly, while the developmental state secures legitimacy from its institutional
ability to provide its population with well-�being improvements, accomplish-
ments in high technology acquisition and independent development constitute
the basis of legitimacy for the technological state. Thus, the functioning of state
institutions is mostly concentrated on the organized efforts to construct sophisti-
cated technological artifacts lavishly presented to the public. In this light, it is
conceptually productive to subscribe to the cultural approach in state theory that
offers multi-�faceted explication to make sense of the ways in which state struc-
tures are constructed and arranged around a set of cultural assumptions.13 One
pivotal aspect in cultural analysis of the state is symbolism, which appears
 Introduction╇╇ 11
profoundly significant as it is embedded in the presentation of state-�produced
technologies in order to cultivate popular support for the state. Explanation for
this draws on David Nye’s (1994) observation on how technological objects
spawn subliminal effects that are likely to elevate the image of the creator. The
presence of impressive technological objects in any society, Nye argues, is
invariably integrated into social fabrics, and when encountered by large groups
it arouses a religious feeling that eliminates social divisions in society. In the
moment of sublimity, people are astonished by impressive technological artifacts
constructed in such a way by state engineers, and easily succumb to the power of
the state as the main producer of awe-�inspiring technical objects. As a result, the
capacity to produce high technology objects, those that could unite all members
of society in one collective identity, affords the state the legitimacy it desires.
Clifford Geertz’s work on the state theatre is highly relevant in this characteriza-
tion. In his anthropological account on the Balinese state, Geertz asserted that
the entire source of power that underpinned the legitimacy of the state resided in
court rituals and ceremonialism that served as the material embodiment of politi-
cal order. “Power served pomp, not pomp power,” he declared (1980:€ 13).
Drawing on a Geertzian model, I argue that the whole arrangement of the
techno-�political system that includes material and symbolic construction consti-
tute the embodiment of the state’s power. This approach finds a parallel in
Patrick Carroll’s (2006) observation on material construction of the modern
state. In a similar vein, this book seeks to display that state authority is mani-
fested in the realms of technology and it is the perceived superiority and ele-
gance of technical artifacts that set the stage on which the state exhibits power.
Despite the three aforementioned features, there remains one commonality
between the technological state and the developmental state: both contain ele-
ments of nationalism that shape the logic and rationality of the state in formulat-
ing policies and in pursuing its ultimate goal. As scholars of the developmental
state have described, nationalism largely pushed the acceleration of develop-
ments in East Asian nations. Johnson, for instance, notes how the ideology of
nationalism prompted Japanese policymakers to launch economic policies that
gave priority to their industries’ interests such that they enabled national indus-
tries to compete with those from Western industrialized nations.14 In Indonesia’s
technological state, the nationalistic aspirations appeared equally profound,
though more nuanced than merely concerned with national competitiveness.
Elsewhere I have illustrated the nature of nationalism that forged policies of high
technological development in Indonesia during the New Order era (Amir 2007).
When embedded in technological construction, the ideology of nationalism was
manifested in three goals the state was adamant to achieve. First and foremost,
the New Order state used technology as a repertoire to construct a national iden-
tity supposedly to unify Indonesia’s diverse cultures. Second, it developed high-Â�
tech based industries as a means to assert national sovereignty, which was
defined by self-�sufficiency in technology supply. Third, the New Order state
mobilized resources for cutting-�edge technologies that empowered the state to
integrate the whole nation, culturally and geographically.
12╇╇ Introduction
Indonesia’s New Order: from developmental to technological
state
The sheer size of its population, about 80 percent of which are Muslims, renders
Indonesia the most populous nation in Southeast Asia, and the fourth in the
world after China, India, and the United States of America. As such, Indonesia
plays a major role in the stability of the region, economically and politically. A
little shake in the behemoth would cause anxiety to spread to neighboring coun-
tries. The diversity of cultures and religious beliefs are integrated within one
nation bearing the national slogan of “Bhinneka Tunggal Ika,” which symbolizes
multiculturalism. The Indonesian state inherited its large territory from the
Dutch, who occupied the archipelago from the nineteenth century. As a post-�
colonial state, Indonesia is a product of nationalist movements rooted in anti-�
colonial sentiments propounded by the founding fathers. What constitutes
Indonesian nationalism today was much defined by the republic’s first president,
Sukarno, who blended European idealism with indigenous values influenced by
ancient Javanese culture.
Ideas of Western-�modeled development were introduced to Indonesia only
after Suharto came to power in the aftermath of a silent coup that ousted Presi-
dent Sukarno from office in 1967. Mostly caused by the inability of Sukarno’s
ideologically focused government to make economic progress, an economic
chaos conspicuously marked the beginning of Suharto’s rule. Tired of Sukarno’s
leftist proclivities, Suharto saw the development concept brought in by a group
of American-�educated economists15 as the most plausible path towards economic
recovery. At this point, Suharto had become the leader of the New Order regime,
holding unassailable power to rule the country for the next three decades. In the
late 1960s, political uprisings were coercively dismissed and the New Order
immediately started to implement capital-�oriented economic development with
directions and assistance from Western powers. For over 30 years, the New
Order’s developmental programs transformed the basic structure of the economy,
emphasizing rapid industrialization and modernization. Following the experi-
ences of East Asian industrializing nations during this period, Indonesia was
among a few countries in the region whose leaders believed that economic
development was a call of history they ought to respond to in order to prevent
their nations from plunging into further turmoil. Thus Indonesia, along with
Malaysia, Thailand, and Singapore, arose as a group of the late industrializing
countries that sought to develop their economies based on Western methods,
resulting in robust industrialization that have impressed many world economists,
earning them the sobriquet “New Asian Tigers” (see for example Lall 1997).
Given its large, diverse population, Indonesia plausibly became the center of
attention among development observers for its ability to undertake massive eco-
nomic transformations with relatively smooth processes.
Similar to a few cases of Asian developmental states, the success of the New
Order in releasing all of the society’s economic potentials to fuel a machine of
growth required the state’s capacity to discipline society. This was achieved
 Introduction╇╇ 13
through an authoritarian political system cunningly designed by Suharto and his
elite circle in such a way to quell dissenting voices deemed disruptive to the con-
tinuity of development. The logic that guided the New Order authoritarianism
operated along the lines of capital interests in which development functioned to
stimulate capital accumulation, which was regarded important to improve the
livelihood of the people. As a result, the New Order’s rapid industrialization
gave rise to the capital class, which Richard Robison (1987) observed during the
height of the New Order. Using a Neo-�Marxist framework, Robison highlights
the role of the New Order state in structuring the political economy to bridge
domestic capitalists and global capital powers. The ability of the New Order
state to accumulate capital and to discipline labor came from a peculiar structure
of power shored up by three pillars, namely the military, the bureaucracy, and
the ruling party, Golongan Karya (hereafter Golkar).16 The three elements con-
stituted the foundation of Suharto’s extended power all the way down to villages,
emulating a pyramid with Suharto at the apex. Given this form of structure,
many scholars of Indonesian politics seem to be convinced that the New Order
was essentially a personal regime with Suharto standing at the center (Liddle
1985). Such a conclusion is normally informed by interpretation of the concept
of power in Javanese culture that Benedict Anderson (1990) eloquently elabo-
rates in his widely cited essay on how power is construed in Javanese quasi-�
mysticism. Resorting to a Weberian view, Harold Crouch (1979) defined New
Order politics as a form of “neopatrimonialism,” a power relation that revolved
around Suharto’s persona with the military as the bedrock. Then came Adam
Schwarz’s (1994) detailed investigations on power struggles between the New
Order elites, which depict maneuverings among Suharto’s men, implying that
New Order politics was more complicated than generally assumed. Various
actors from different groups sought to influence Suharto’s political decision-Â�
making to fulfill their personal agendas.
In sum, studies on Indonesian politics have attempted to delineate the reci-
procity between authoritarian power and economic progress; that is, how author-
itarian politics paved the path toward economic development, while at the same
time steady economic growth increased the leverage of the Order leader.17 Cer-
tainly, we should note that Suharto’s concentrated power came with a high price
as it resulted in many forms of power abuse, from absent public accountability to
human rights violations, all of which signified troubled relations between the
state and civil society. As has been detailed in many works, Suharto’s New
Order had a notorious reputation for suppressing workers, student activists,
communist-�alleged groups, and other pro-�democracy organizations. Inevitably,
the New Order’s development was marked by years of state-Â�organized vio-
lence,18 or what Ariel Heryanto (2007) categorized as “state terrorism,” to which
the New Order resorted in order to maintain the political stability deemed essen-
tial for continued development. All these sociological accounts contribute to
understanding the idiosyncratic formation of the developmental state in Indone-
sia, and reveal the interplay between authoritarian power and the ideology of
developmentalism that shaped the political economy of Suharto’s New Order.
14╇╇ Introduction
What is largely absent in the big picture of the New Order’s developmental
history, this book argues, is the shifting of the New Order political economy
from a developmental state to a technological state. This subtle transformation is
overlooked by many observers most plausibly due to trivialized roles of technol-
ogy in the developmental process. As I have already explained, this widely
shared oblivion is caused by assumptions that technology is merely a production
instrument devoid of political forces.
This book posits that the shift from the developmental state to the technologi-
cal state that gradually took place from the mid-�1980s until the end of the New
Order period is significant because it entailed two fundamental changes that dic-
tated, to follow Michel Foucault, the governmentality of the New Order state.
One is epistemological, the other structural. In the epistemological switch, the
transformation from a developmental state to a technological one appeared
through the utilization of an engineering logic that came to replace the market-�
minded economic rationality. The distinction between both will be discussed at
length in Chapter 3, but it is instructive to briefly mention some basic elements
here. While the latter is concerned more about how the state ensures appropri-
ately functioning market systems that generate wealth, the former is partly
inspired by a neo-�Schumpeterian view in which technological innovations are
believed to be the primary source of growth that one nation should cultivate in
order to enhance the capacity of domestic economy amidst international compe-
tition. Furthermore, the engineering-�informed logic places state interventions as
the primary instrument indispensable in creating an atmosphere where techno-
logical progresses are accomplished within state-�directed institutions. Thus, the
engineering logic stands vis-Â�à-vis the liberal economic rationality in terms of
what roles the state must play in industrial production. The corollary of this shift
is that it affected the ultimate goal the New Order initially sought to accomplish.
The second interrelated feature in the shift relates to the bureaucratic structure of
the central government. This refers less to alteration of the entire bureaucratic
landscape than to the transposition of the center of gravity in the central bureauc-
racy in which technological-�related governmental agencies seized greater author-
ity in mobilizing resources of the state.
The implications of this shift were enormous because it took place along
reconfiguration of power relations that underpinned the stability of the New
Order authoritarianism. The shift was intensified especially when entering the
1990s, a decade that witnessed the rise of new, previously less powerful
actors, who came to influence the domains of policymaking and practical poli-
tics. In the policymaking arena, one could get a sense of the growing influence
of a group of engineering bureaucrats who expanded its power from a very
specific policy domain to a much broader spectrum in development manage-
ment. Revolving around the persona of the engineers’ leading figure, Habibie,
the Muslim modernist groups arose in practical politics, a territory tradition-
ally dominated by the military elite. The alliance between the engineering
technocrats and the Muslim modernist politicians became a new source of
power that Suharto and his most trusted lieutenant mobilized throughout the
 Introduction╇╇ 15
New Order rule. More importantly, these reconfigured power relations pro-
vided political and institutional advantages to the formation of the technologi-
cal state as will be illustrated in Chapter 2.
My argument on the formation of the technological state lends supporting
evidence to three visible indicators that characterized the way in which the New
Order’s political economy in the 1990s was structured, discursively and institu-
tionally. First, there arose a new vision that departed from new teleology project-
ing the sort of society the New Order pledged to bring into existence in the near
future. This new vision was ideologically grounded upon the imagining of a
prosperous Indonesia, the wealth of which was primarily generated from its
capacities to produce advanced technology. Such a far-�sighted vision ubiqui-
tously appeared in Suharto’s official messages and a variety of state policy texts.
Second, the authority to determine priorities on developmental projects moved
from the hands of the market-�inclined economists to those of the nationalist-�
oriented engineers. This is evident in the way technology-�related agencies influ-
enced decision-�making in a broad range of public sectors previously controlled
by the economists. Lastly, the formation of the technological state entailed mobi-
lization of state resources, including political, financial, intellectual, and institu-
tional resources, into specific agencies and projects designed to enhance the
state’s capacities to perform basic scientific research and technological innova-
tion and to transform research outputs into industrialized high-�tech products.
We now arrive at the question of why the New Order drifted towards a direc-
tion that prioritized, despite other options being available, the pursuit of techno-
logical prowess accomplished through state-�concerted efforts. What was the
chief impetus that forced the formation of the technological state in Indonesia’s
New Order? A common response would refer to vigorous global economic com-
petition in which technological advantages became increasingly important to win
international markets. For a more satisfactory answer, however, it is necessary to
examine the authoritarian nature of the New Order. In this light, the technologi-
cal state was a response to a new need fermenting in the New Order authoritari-
anism to seek for a stronger basis of legitimacy. At the height of the New Order
power in the early 1990s, the success in maintaining steady economic growth for
years became seemingly insufficient to retain political support from Indonesian
society, of which many members had enjoyed social progress and become
increasingly critical to Suharto’s authoritarianism. The rise of a new middle class
in developed urban places, a group that benefited the most from the wealth accu-
mulated by the New Order’s industrial development, posed a challenge to the
New Order leader. General improvement in secondary education consequently
raised political consciousness among the urban middle class, which demanded
greater freedom for political expression unfettered from state oppression.
Suharto was acutely aware of this trend. Coping with such fragility, the New
Order leader believed that a new vision that forged an image of modern Indone-
sia was necessary to sustain popular allegiance.
How and to what extent did the formation of the technological state serve the
interest of the New Order in reinforcing its legitimacy to prolong its rule?
16╇╇ Introduction
The New Order arose from a history of violence and it always sought to blur its
dark side by establishing a fundamentally strong association to the rationality of
modern science and technology. Its leaders wished to vindicate the history of
suppression through the presence of magnificent technologies created by its
hands. Embarking from the violent nature of the Suharto authoritarianism, this
book argues that the technological complex built by the New Order state was
technically and symbolically constructed to transform the state’s violent ideol-
ogy into a socio-�technical progress that projected an image of a technologically
advanced state. Mass enthusiasm for high technology, coupled with the rhetori-
cal ability of magnificent technical objects to mesmerize the public, helped the
technological state to reach this end. An array of large-�scale technological
projects carried out through the institutionalized scientific and technical develop-
ments projected an image of the New Order as a rational state. The success of
the N250’s maiden flight, which inspired awe among the Indonesian public,
exemplified this. Nevertheless, the technological state failed to sustain the New
Order’s power due to a number of factors that will be discussed in detail later in
this book. In the aftermath of the New Order’s sudden collapse, almost all the
technological agencies and projects that the New Order had nurtured for two
decades were instantly dismantled. Despite its tragic termination, the New
Order’s technological state constitutes a historical force that significantly shaped
the political economy of Indonesia towards the end of Suharto’s regime and
marks one important episode that exhibits Indonesia’s keen ambition to catch up
with advanced industrialized nations.

Outline of the book

Understanding the formation of the technological state in the New Order Indone-
sia requires the uncovering of facts and artifacts that overlap one another. In so
doing, this book traverses into the phenomenon by taking an approach of peeling
an onion layer by layer from macro, to meso, to micro parts, on which this book
builds a line of narratives to convey how the technological state was imagined
and materialized. At the outer layer lie the power relations and the ideology that
builds such a structure. The first two chapters serve to peel off this layer. Specifi-
cally, Chapter 1 delineates the whole backdrop against which the junction
between authoritarian politics and technological development occurred. It first
traces back the genealogy and ideological foundation of the New Order author�
itarianism and reveals a set of technologies of violence that were extensively
used by the New Order state to suppress dissenting voices critical to the regime.
The chapter continues to examine the structure of the New Order’s power that
consequently enabled Suharto to have a strong grip on politics for over three
decades. Arriving at a more micro level of power relations, Chapter 2 describes
close connections between two central figures in the New Order politics: Suharto
and Habibie. This chapter posits a theory of symbiotic mutualism between the
two and explains how that form of power relation spawned centrifugal effects on
the political economy of the New Order development, in particular during the
 Introduction╇╇ 17
1990s. In addition, this chapter discusses the mutual link between Habibie’s
high-�tech vision and the rise of political Islam; a political collaboration from
which the New Order’s technological state cultivated endless support.
The second layer of the onion contains the institutional formation of the New
Order technological state. This is what Chapter 3 and Chapter 4 together aim to
recount in more detail. Chapter 3 takes on the bureaucratization of engineering
sciences, which was incorporated by the New Order administration from the
outset, and later expanded massively as the chief component of the technological
state. The chapter specifically focuses on the role of Badan Pengkajian dan Pen-
erapan Teknologi (BPPT, the Agency for Assessment and Application of Tech-
nology). In addition, the politics of technocracy and its implications for
bureaucratic organization of the New Order state are other important issues high-
lighted in this chapter. The chapter discusses the practices of strong technocracy,
which constituted the central logic of the New Order’s authoritarian governance,
marked by the powerful operation of technology-�oriented developmental institu-
tions. A host of state-�funded research agencies and strategic industries were
formed and centrally coordinated to catalyze socio-�technological progress. The
end of the chapter examines the struggle over influence between the engineers
and the economist technocrats due to conflicting views about the role of the state
and the market in development; this caused fractures in technocracy, leading to a
dramatic failure of the technological state at the end of the New Order era.
Chapter 4 highlights aspects that were critical for the institutionalization of high-�
tech-based industrialization. This chapter first takes a critical look at Habibie’s
concept of “leapfrogging” and its pervasive influences on the New Order’s
developmental logic which, as this book explicates, led to the formation of the
technological state. The gist of the chapter is an account of the establishment and
the role of Badan Pengelola Industri Strategis (BPIS, the Managing Agency for
Strategic Industries). This is the core of the technological state that was meant to
transform research and innovation outputs produced by BPPT into industrial
products.
Finally, the last layer of the observation of the technological state comprises
the material and symbolic dimensions of technology. This is where a successful
formation of the technological state is indicated by technical ideas, concepts, and
products brought about through tenacious efforts taken by state engineers in car-
rying out scientific research and technical developments. Chapter 5 shows how
the logic of the technological state was manifested primarily in the establishment
of the Indonesian Aerospace Industry (IPTN), which Habibie and his engineers
group proposed as a strategic model for Indonesia’s accelerated transformation.
Hence, this chapter provides a detailed account of the evolution of IPTN from a
small airline depot into a world-�class aircraft manufacturer. Organizational
aspects of the industry are described to reveal how the New Order’s desire to
develop state technological capacities was channeled through a colossal enter-
prise within the industry. Chapter 6 features a showcase of a historic project of
high technology development, which represents an important stage in accumula-
tion of knowledge and technical capabilities of the state. The focus is placed
18╇╇ Introduction
upon the N250 airplane to illustrate materialization of the technological state’s
ideology upon a technical product constructed within a sui generis configuration
that blended the state’s nationalistic aspirations with engineering calculations.
The project is profoundly significant, for the New Order treated it as a national
hallmark that started the phase toward a take-�off society. The chapter also docu-
ments IPTN’s more ambitious program, the N2130 jet commuter. The New
Order envisaged the jet airplane program as elevating Indonesia to greater
heights in the high technology arena. As this chapter notes, this technological
advance signifies the growing power of the engineering technocrats in steering
the state to channel massive resources into technologically strategic sectors.
Chapter 7 recounts a course of events that ended with the breakdown of the
New Order power after the Asian crisis painfully struck the Indonesian economy
in 1998. The chapter briefly discusses the origins of the crisis and the damage it
caused to the whole economy. It then extends this examination to see how global
forces came to dismantle the edifice of the technological state built by the New
Order. Furthermore, the chapter describes dire situations within the technologi-
cal agencies, particularly the aircraft industry, following the downfall of Suhar-
to’s regime. This chapter ends by analyzing the meaning of what had unfolded to
the New Order political figures, engineering elites, and Muslim leaders who all
share deep concern about the fiasco in Habibie-�led high technology programs.
In conclusion, I shall summarize the entire historical interplay of events con-
veyed throughout the book and elaborate generalizable features, and also partic-
ular traits, of the technological state in Indonesia. Subsequently, a discussion is
presented on the consequences emanating from the junction between
authoritari�an politics and technological development, and on tensions between
the technological state and globalization. The concluding pages provide theoret-
ical implications of the technological state concept in political studies of techno-
logy, the state, and development, particularly in the Asian context.
1 Authoritarianism and
technocracy

The New Order is a total correction to all wrongdoings by the Old Order.
Suharto1

The source of authority in authoritarian government is always a force external

and superior to its own power;â•›.â•›.â•›. from which the authorities derive their
“authority,” that is their legitimacy, and against which their power can be
checked.
Hannad Arendt

History was rebooted in Indonesia when Southeast Asia became the ground zero of
the Cold War. As the region’s social political landscape succumbed to a global
competition between two superpowers, Indonesia entered a new era marked by a
set of fundamental transformations brought about by a new elite group that sought
to modernize the country in accordance with development virtues. The conjunction
of global forces and domestic dynamics during this period gave rise to the forma-
tion of the New Order state that ruled Indonesia for over three decades, and the
legacies of which linger long after the departure of its strongman.
What was the “New Order”? What was the primary objective it aimed to
accomplish? How was the power of this authoritarian regime structurally sup-
ported, and by what forces? Studies on the New Order authoritarianism are
plenty. Several observers have sought to explain the characteristics of the New
Order politics by shedding light on how it maintained power through extensive
mobilization of the military. The striking presence of military persons at the
helm of the political structures of the regime prompted many analysts to describe
the New Order as a typical “Third World military regime” though with notable
distinctions (e.g., Crouch 1972, 1979; Jenkins 2010; and Said 2006).
A different mode of analysis focused attention on Suharto’s pivotal role with
all of his idiosyncratic proclivities in controlling Indonesian politics for nearly
half of his lifetime. As shown in various works by foreign observers, the longev-
ity of the New Order was largely attributed to the ways in which Suharto
cleverly built political relations and institutions in such a way that enabled the
20╇╇ Authoritarianism and technocracy
New Order to wield massive power. These works usually revolved around
Suharto’s personal biography, depicting the New Order as a personal regime by
emphasizing the political economic decisions Suharto made during his reign,
which were commonly seen to protect and enrich himself and his cronies.2
From the structuralist view, a number of Marxist-�inclined scholars took a
political economy perspective to squeeze out the essence of the New Order
authoritarianism situated in the context of the expansion of world capitalism. For
instance, Richard Robison (1987) and Jeffrey Winters (1996) pointed to struc-
tural mechanisms institutionalized by the New Order state to foster capital accu-
mulation. Critical in their examinations, these scholars highlighted the
consequences of the New Order political economy for workers, farmers, and
other lower-�class groups who suffered the most from state policies while the
interests of foreign and local capitalists were unrelentingly accommodated (see
for example Hadiz 1997; and La Botz 2001).
The variety of conceptual explanations of what constituted the New Order
and the way it operated demonstrates the multi-�faceted nature of this authoritar-
ian regime, which have shaped Indonesian polity in general and the Indonesian
state in particular. I do not disagree with how Indonesianists have defined the
longest ruling power in modern Indonesia. However, I would like to conjure a
different view, though incorporating existing definitions, one that examines the
New Order from its epistemological underpinnings that made the remarkable
traits of the New Order state. That the New Order had extensively relied on the
military to secure its power, had placed Suharto at the apex of political hierar-
chy, and was set to accumulate capital for the sake of its elites are facts that need
no objection. However, the aforementioned analytical approaches leave out, or
at best undermine, a key element that came to define the New Order regime as a
modernizing project; an element that fashioned the core of the state and had far-�
reaching implications for Indonesia as a whole. I would like to emphasize that it
was technocratic power that provided the New Order with the capacity to design
and arrange the socio-�economic order from which it gained legitimacy for a long
period of time. Utilizing the premise of how technocracy took root in the New
Order state and informed many of political economic decisions its leader made
to pursue its objectives, this chapter aims to elaborate by discussing four aspects
that characterize the technocratic foundation of the New Order state.

Violence as the beginning

As with any authoritarian regime, the New Order had its own version of history
that provided the grounds for its existence. In the official narrative of the New
Order, its birth was portrayed as emanating from extraordinary circumstances
triggered by a bloody episode on 30 September 1965. During the early hours of
that day, six army generals and one lieutenant were kidnapped at their residences
in Jakarta by a small army, appearing as the Presidential Cakrawibawa Guards,
commanded by Lieutenant-�Colonel Untung Syamsuri. The high-�ranked military
officials were taken by force and killed at a location near the Halim Perdana
 Authoritarianism and technocracy╇╇ 21
Kusumah Airport on the outskirts of Jakarta, later to be widely known as
“Lubang Buaya” (Crocodile Well). Concurrently with the kidnapping, Untung’s
armed battalion seized national communication outlets, including the Republic
of Indonesia Radio (RRI) station to broadcast his political messages. Calling his
action “the September 30 Movement” (G30S), Untung rationalized the kidnap-
ping of the generals in his speech as a necessary pre-�emptive strike against a
plan by what he referred to as the “Council of Generals” to take over the govern-
ment. To be in charge of the government, Untung declared the formation of “the
Indonesian Revolution Committee.” Untung’s movement, however, was short-Â�
lived. The following day, Suharto, then head of Army strategic reserve command
Kostrad, carried out military action on the attempted coup and succeeded in sup-
pressing the G30S movement. The success of Suharto’s prompt responses to
curb Untung’s unprecedented coup led to a situation that compelled President
Sukarno to confer authority upon Suharto to handle the crisis. Suharto instantly
seized this opportunity to take over the leadership from Sukarno, marking the
decline of Sukarno and the beginning of Suharto’s reign in Indonesian politics,
which lasted until the late twentieth century.
What had really transpired, how and why the G30S took place, and which
actors were mostly responsible are questions that have been hotly debated among
most observers. Numerous scholars seeking to investigate into this important
part in the history of the New Order came up with different explanations. Dis-
cussions of varied interpretations on this particular event are beyond the purpose
of this chapter. Worth noting is what appears to be the most frequently cited
work produced by two researchers at Cornell University (the Cornell Paper). In
the paper, which attempted to remove the shroud cloaking the G30S coup, Bene-
dict Anderson and Ruth MacVey posited that the G30S movement was a byprod-
uct of internal Army affairs caused by a sharp division between those who
envisioned military transformations towards a more centralized force and those
aspiring for a decentralized model. The actual masterminds behind the G30S
coup, Anderson and MacVey suggested, were to be found among middle-�level
Army officers in Semarang. More important in the Cornell Paper is the conclu-
sion that neither the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) nor President Sukarno
were implicated in the Untung coup.3
Contrary to the Cornell Paper, the New Order spread its own version of the
truth with regards to the failed G30S coup. From the outset, Suharto had sus-
pected that the G30S movement was plotted by the PKI.4 He strongly believed
that Untung was only a pawn of the PKI, then the largest political party and the
closest ally of Sukarno, being used to materialize the party’s agenda of establish-
ing a communist government in Indonesia. This immediately became the popular
narrative propagated by the Army in the aftermath of the G30S.5 The narrative
overstressed the evil intention of the communists to seize power through any
means necessary. It was publicly circulated in newspapers and later justified in
official publications produced by New Order historians (McGregor 2007). The
narrative included detailed descriptions of how the communists mercilessly
killed six generals and one lieutenant.
22╇╇ Authoritarianism and technocracy
The allegation that the PKI was mostly responsible for the killings precipi-
tated a horrifying consequence that signified the ascendancy of Suharto into
power. Fully backed by the Army, he began a systematic pogrom against all PKI
members, which lasted continuously from 1965 to 1966. The image of the PKI
as a dangerous organization threatening the safety of the nation constituted the
pretext for the military-�organized murders of Indonesian communists, for which
the United States provided significant support.6 During 1965 and 1966, thou-
sands of artists, intellectuals, and civil servants, directly and indirectly connected
to the PKI, were put in jail without trial. Within one year, the second largest
communist party in the world had been completely wiped out. A modest esti-
mate would be that approximately 500,000 PKI members were slaughtered. In-�
depth investigations indicated that the number of victims could possibly reach
1€million people, elevating this massacre towards one of the largest recorded in
the twentieth century.7 A more poignant fact was the participation of religious
organizations and youth groups in the hunting, torturing, and killing of the indi-
viduals allegedly affiliated with PKI. This left a deep wound in the memories of
many Indonesians. Today the trauma is still largely felt in Java and Bali and the
effort for reconciliation was never materialized.
The 1965–66 mass killings played an important role in the establishment of
the New Order as it taught its lead proponents a lesson that violence was the
most effective way to bring its greatest political enemy down once and for all.
As Ariel Heryanto (2006) aptly argues, the PKI massacre laid the foundation of
the New Order as an authoritarianism that relied heavily upon the machine
of€violence institutionalized within the state. After the nation-�wide annihilation
of the PKI, violence continued to function as the primary instrument utilized by
the new regime to subdue politically-�oriented groups deemed to bear the poten-
tial to invoke instability in the state. Right from the moment it took power, the
New Order built peculiar mechanisms that were meant to keep the entire popula-
tion under its control. These were implemented extensively through military
forces that stretched from Jakarta to villages all around the country. In addition
to military forces, government-�supported mass organizations coordinated by
state actors were mobilized like gangster-Â�like groups to protect the state’s
power.8 The New Order never hesitated to resort to violence when dealing with
the dissenting voices of pro-�democracy movements. As a result, Indonesia wit-
nessed intensive brutality by state apparatuses against civil society for 32 years
under the New Order regime. Those taking a stance against the New Order’s
interests were considered subversive and often subjected to direct military han-
dling. Lead figures of opposition groups were jailed and many anti-�Suharto
activists were coercively made to “disappear.” The success of the PKI purge had
laid the grounds for a variety of state violence that was massively practiced by
the New Order state to ensure a complete subjugation of the entire society.
The magnitude of the 1965–66 killings defines the general character of the
New Order as a violence-�prone regime. However, its implications touch upon
one significant factor that firmly influenced how the New Order structured its
political economy. It correlates to another striking feature of the regime relating
 Authoritarianism and technocracy╇╇ 23
to state policymaking, namely technocracy. Just as the perpetrators of the PKI
massacre were never revealed, it is also unclear to what extent this dark history
implicates a group of economic technocrats who set up the foundation of Indo-
nesia’s modern economy and developmental visions quickly after Suharto came
into power. These economists were lecturers at the University of Indonesia’s
Faculty of Economics. They were all protégés of Sumitro Djojohadikusumo, an
academic-�cum-politician, who fled Indonesia in the late 1950s after getting
involved in a separatist movement. During the 1950s, Sumitro broke a deal with
the Ford Foundation to grant scholarships that allowed his students to study
abroad. A few of them went to the University of California, Berkeley, where
they finished doctoral degrees in economics. The prominent figure of this group
of technocrats was Widjojo Nitisastro, who became the dean of Faculty of Eco-
nomics at the University of Indonesia (UI) after he returned from the United
States in the early 1960s. Other well-�known figures include Emil Salim, Ali
Wardhana, Muhammad Sadli, and Subroto. These young economists constituted
the first generation of technocrats in post-�independence Indonesia that molded
the face of Indonesian economy. They were the architects of the New Order
development and their involvement in the New Order’s economic reforms
created a watershed in the history of policymaking.
The rise of these technocrats is overshadowed by a controversy that has hith-
erto remained unresolved. Few observers charged these economists, popularly
dubbed “the Berkeley Mafia,” as discreetly implicated in the PKI massacre. Such
an allegation resonates with an historical context marked by the expansion of the
United States’ interest in Southeast Asia.9 During the 1950s, the United States
was wary that Indonesia was leaning towards the communist bloc despite Sukar-
no’s commitment to the Non-Â�aligned Movement. Through the role of private
foundations such as the Ford Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation, the United
States funded UI economists through graduate degree programs in American
universities.10 Educated with capitalist-�oriented economics, these economists
were seen as a special group prepared by the United States to grab the opportu-
nity of influencing the preliminary stages of Indonesian economic development
to serve American interests.11 Later it became a reality as the economists were
directly engaged in the planning of the Indonesian economy after the New Order
era came to power, thanks to support from the United States and its allies.
Several researchers are inclined to believe that the wipeout of the communists
and the phenomenal appearance of the economists were not mutually exclusive.
Indonesia’s sudden shift toward capitalism and the massive flows of investments
to Indonesia from abroad, mostly American corporations, after Suharto imple-
mented a package of economic reforms conceived and implemented by Widjo-
jo’s group are referred to as hard evidence that confirms the plausible complicity
of these economists in the American-�planned agenda to steer Indonesia away
from communism, resulting in the PKI massacre.
Whether or not Widjojo and his colleagues should be held responsible for the
1965–66 mass slaughters is not the main interest of this chapter. More relevant
is the meaning behind the sheer brutality that gave rise to the New Order and
24╇╇ Authoritarianism and technocracy
how it was legitimized through technocratic means. While the New Order’s
political stability was made possible by the ability of the state to terrorize the
entire population by resorting to both physical and symbolic violence, or to use
Heryanto’s term “state terrorism,” its legitimacy grew out of the ability to
employ technocratic knowledge in the pursuit of socio-�economic orders leading
to development. Although the New Order never openly discussed the history of
the 1965–66 killings with the public, the historical texts propagated by the
regime’s intellectual minds ubiquitously indicate that the purge of the Indone-
sian communists was profoundly necessary and justifiable. In the eyes of New
Order proponents, it was not carried out solely to get rid of its imminent foes,
but also to reach a brighter future of the country. The horrific events were seen
as the sine qua non of a new era underpinned by rational policymaking and
problem-�solving programs. It is this particular strategic purpose, I would like to
emphasize, which connects the violent beginning of the New Order to technoc-
racy in Indonesia’s political economy. Thus, rather than investigating how the
so-�called Berkeley Mafia played a role in the conspiracy that brought about
awful tragedies in the mid-�1960s, it is more significant for the purpose of this
chapter to interpret ideological interconnections between technocracy and the
history of violence, which appear to characterize the New Order; both are two
sides of a coin that reinforce one another. There are two points I would like to
stress in this light. First, the entry of the group of technocrats in the New Order
administration marks the beginning of the formation of a new type of state never
seen before in post-�independence Indonesia. The New Order state is the first to
adopt scientific knowledge in policymaking. Technocratic rationality thus con-
stituted the logic that by and large guided how the New Order state made eco-
nomic decisions. Second, by serving the state in pursuing its interests, one of
technocracy’s main goals was to transform the image and capacity of the state,
incredibly plagued by a history of bloody violence, into the foundation of moder-
nity materialized through techno-�economic progress. I will elaborate these argu-
ments later in this chapter. The bottom line is that the striking presence of
technocracy since the early period of the New Order authoritarianism was meant
to the create socio-�economic order necessary for the accumulation of legitimacy
for the newborn regime: that is, technocracy came to vindicate the New Order’s
past and future violence and simultaneously relied on this very violence to
accomplish its agendas.

Disciplinary power
The New Order authoritarianism may seem like a classic example of a personal
rule ubiquitous in many Third World countries. The shape of its power structure
resembles a pyramid with President Suharto at the pinnacle (Liddle 1996). A
little ripple at the top would produce big political effects at the bottom. Yet,
power effects need a structural medium to resonate down to the lowest level of
society. It is this very structure that underpinned the resilience of the New Order
for over three decades. This structure of power can be broken down into three
 Authoritarianism and technocracy╇╇ 25
inextricably intertwined instruments, each bearing a specific purpose respec-
tively, namely coercion, electoral legitimacy, and ideological reinforcement.
The first instrument that remarkably characterized the New Order authoritari-
anism, for which many analysts describe Suharto’s Indonesia as a heavily mili-
tary regime, was the Indonesian Armed Forces (ABRI, now TNI). The
distinctiveness of ABRI in comparison to those of the countries ruled by military
power lies in two underlying doctrines. In the view of the military leaders, ABRI
was more than a defense apparatus of the state.12 Born out of the struggle for
independence, the first generation of ABRI leaders shared a conviction that
ABRI and the people were two-Â�in-one—encapsulated in the phrase “kemanung-
galan ABRI dan rakyat”—and that it was destined to carry out a mission of
saving the nation from potential dangers, most notably the attack from the com-
munists. This historical interpretation led ABRI to encroach unwaveringly on
civilian affairs legalized by the concept dwifungsi (dual function), which asserts
the double role of ABRI both in defense and in socio-�political domains. Origi-
nating from a response to the PKI’s growing power during the Sukarno era,
dwifungsi was legally adopted by the New Order in 1982.13 It resulted in the
seizing by ABRI officers of non-Â�military-related positions in Suharto’s adminis-
trations. ABRI also attained unrivaled privileges in the legislative body by secur-
ing free seats in the parliament without participating in elections. Complementing
ABRI’s social and political roles was the policing function. Under the doctrine
“Territorial Warfare,” ABRI practically militarized the entire Indonesian geogra-
phy. The doctrine is embodied in a network of territorial units that spans from
the provincial level (Kodam) down to the sub-�district level (Koramil), parallel-
ing the civilian administration.14 With the provision of an extensive role and a
structural imposition upon the society, the ultimate goal of ABRI was to ensure
a complete control of the entire population. Ultimately, ABRI served as a coer-
cive instrument that aimed to eliminate any possible emergence of civil disobe-
dience against Suharto’s leadership.
The second instrument that propped up the longevity of the New Order’s
power was Golkar, or Golongan Karya (Functionary Group). Historically,
Golkar was Sukarno’s brainchild and was later institutionalized through Sekber
Golkar (the Joint Secretariat of Functionary Groups), formed by a group of mili-
tary officers in 1964 to counter the growing influence of the PKI on the Sukarno
government (see Reeve 1985). After the New Order began development pro-
grams, its leaders were aware that electoral legitimacy was inevitably necessary
to sustain and perpetuate its power. Golkar was then turned into the state ruling
party with membership predominantly filled by military officials and bureau-
crats. From its first elections in 1971 until Suharto’s departure in 1998, it always
achieved electoral victory. Two cunning policies allowed the continuous triumph
of Golkar in electoral competitions, nationally and locally. The New Order uni-
laterally fused nine political parties into two, the Islamic-�oriented United Devel-
opment Party (PPP) and the secularist and nationalist-�oriented Indonesian
Democratic Party (PDI).15 This came with the introduction of the floating mass
concept, which refrained people at the grassroots level from joining political
26╇╇ Authoritarianism and technocracy
parties. While the floating mass policy curbed the two political parties’ ability
from reaching out to constituents, it had no effects on Golkar, which was not
considered by the New Order exponents as a political party, but rather an organ�
ization comprising representatives from various social groups. Not surprisingly,
with this extended access to the grassroots level Golkar was able to outdo PPP
and PDI in every election from the 1970s to the 1990s. Tapping onto the struc-
ture of government bureaucracy, Golkar maintained its presence virtually in
every village across the country. Golkar’s dominion was further reinforced by
kuningisasi (yellowization), a term referring to the spread of Golkar’s influence
within the entire bureaucratic structure in which most of public officials were
recruited as Golkar cadres. Golkar’s victories in six consecutive elections
enabled the New Order to gain political legitimacy through pseudo-�democracy
for such a long period of time.
Coercion and electoral politics would not have been effective without a set of
institutionalized ideas to justify the presence of an authoritarian rule. It is in this
light that it is imperative to examine how the New Order laid the ideological
foundation upon which the whole system of power and domination that the
regime had built was rationalized. As Suharto once defined it, the New Order
was a system of governing, which sought to establish an orderly society founded
upon the Pancasila. Given the magnitude of its political effects, it is necessary to
discuss how Pancasila was discursively constructed and embedded in the New
Order’s imagined modernity resulting in authoritarianism.
A sort of communitarian ideology, Pancasila affirms five pillars: the belief in
one God, humanity, nationalism, democracy, and social justice. Sukarno first
proposed the concept of Pancasila in his speech at a meeting of the Investigating
Committee for Preparatory Work for Indonesian Independence (BPUPKI) on 1
June 1945. It was brought up as a way to reconcile ideological rivalries between
the Muslim modernists who demanded an Islamic state and the nationalists who
insisted upon a secular state. After the obliteration of communism in 1966, the
New Order fully adopted Pancasila as the sole ideology of the state and obliged
all mass organizations and political parties to follow suit. In the hands of
Suharto, Pancasila was further reified to an extent that it appeared to bear a mys-
tical power encapsulated in the term “Kesaktian Pancasila.” The New Order
commemorated Hari Kesaktian Pancasila (The Pancasila Might Day) on 1
October every year. It is the day when Suharto successfully put down the G30S
movement, which was depicted in school history books as the heroic action
Suharto swiftly took to protect Indonesia from the communist threat. Kesaktian
Pancasila renders the event of 1 October 1965 as historically predetermined
rather than historically contingent, demonstrating the power embodied in Pan-
casila as the national ideology. Suharto regarded Pancasila as the only source of
truth and “whoever and whichever group attempting to replace it will end up in
their own destruction.”16 Strongly stressed as the most “valid” knowledge, the
New Order claimed to maintain the purity of Pancasila from getting contami-
nated by conflicting ideologies, in particular communism, which were rendered
as “illicit” knowledge. This necessitated the regime to screen out any
 Authoritarianism and technocracy╇╇ 27
“anti-Â�Pancasila” viruses possibly infecting the society. Here lies the source of
authoritarianism of the New Order as it granted the state apparatuses the full
authority to arbitrarily draw the lines between Pancasila and “anti-Â�Pancasila”; a
typical exercise of individual control that Michel Foucault terms as “the binary
division and branding.” Being the sole authority in defining and interpreting Pan-
casila, the New Order sanctified Pancasila to the extent that it became an adjec-
tive broadly attached to any social and material forms, from Pancasila
Economics, Pancasila Industrial Relationships, Pancasila Mosque, to Pancasila
Democracy. The latter is a “mutated” democratic system that eliminates the
practice of opposition, for it was, Suharto adamantly believed, not suitable for
Indonesian views.
A more crucial role Pancasila played in solidifying the grounds for legitimacy
of the New Order was its teleological function, which provided a framework to
imagine Indonesia as a modern society imbued by strong local values. In this
post-Â�colonial imagination, Pancasila arose as a “regime of truth” for which the
New Order employed meticulous instruments to generate collective obedience
indispensable to pave the path towards the ideal society. This displays the core
of the New Order’s authoritarianism that lies in the practice of discipline. As
Michel Foucault explains, discipline is a “form of domination,” which “makes
possible the meticulous control of the operations of the body, which assures the
constant subjection of its forces and imposes upon them a relation of docility-�
utility” (Foucault 1995:€137). Foucault further elaborates discipline as “type of
power, a modality for its exercise, comprising a whole set of instruments, tech-
niques, procedures, levels of application, target; it is a ‘physics’ or an ‘anatomy’
of power, a technology.” Foucault’s analytical concept of discipline is useful to
unpack the power structure the New Order constructed in the discourse of Pan-
casila. Seeing the New Order from this vantage point allows one to define it as a
disciplinary regime established to produce “docile” bodies with Pancasila
injected to their soul and mind. This is clearly hinted in Suharto’s words:
“Because Pancasila is our worldview, it has become the guidance of the goal of
the Indonesian nation; it becomes a source of social order and all aspects of our
life, both as individuals and groups.”
There were three interwoven techniques of discipline extensively developed
and utilized by the New Order to accomplish its ideological goals. Panopticism
constitutes the first method, which according to Foucault, refers to “a machine
for dissociating the see/being seen dyad,” producing “homogenous effect of
power.” This distinguishes the New Order state as the one who sees without
being seen from the whole Indonesian population as those who are totally seen,
without ever seeing. The New Order’s panoptic machine consisted of several
institutions arranged in certain ways whose ultimate goal was, to paraphrase
Foucault, “to increase the docility and the utility of all the elements of the [New
Order authoritarian] system.” ABRI was made the chief instrument of the New
Order’s panopticism that carried out two interwoven functions: coercion and sur-
veillance. Coercive methods relied on the use of killing and torturing machines
that constantly operated to eliminate any uprising, disorder, and recalcitrant
28╇╇ Authoritarianism and technocracy
behaviors against Jakarta. As discussed earlier, the very beginning of the New
Order saw systematic coercive actions in the PKI massacre during 1965–66 that
brutally purged the communists from the Indonesian land. These coercive
actions continued in later years coordinated by ABRI officers. The surveillance
technologies were even more pervasive as they were embedded in ABRI’s
nation-�wide territorial units. Acting as the central surveillance organizations
were the Operational Command for the Restoration of Security and Order
(KOPKAMTIB)—later known as the Coordinating Agency for National Stabil-
ity (BAKORSTANAS)—and the National Intelligence Agency (BIN). Via these
panoptic agencies, the New Order continuously performed systematic surveil-
lance and organized violence against student activists, labor unions, and other
pro-�democracy groups that indicated seemingly subversive demeanors.
Side by side with panopticism was the dissemination of uniformed knowledge
that was implanted in the mind of individuals through what was officially
denominated as the P4; the abbreviation of Pedoman Penghayatan dan Penga-
malan Pancasila (Guidelines of the Learning and Implementation of Pancasila).
Filled by the New Order’s rigid interpretation of the Pancasila values, the P4
offered a concrete guide of how to manifest Pancasila in people’s daily lives. In
1978, the People’s Consultative Assembly (MPR) officially stipulated the P4 as
the only “objective” reading of Pancasila. Later, the P4 was transformed into a
pedagogical instrument that was materialized and taught through penataran
(course), or in Foucault’s term, the “correct training.” This short course was
made obligatory by the New Order government for first-�year students of middle
schools, high schools, and colleges. It was strictly mandatory to all civil servants
working for government agencies. Utilizing such a mechanism, the New Order
sought to ascertain that every educated citizen attended the P4 courses. While
the panoptic technique was a means to cope with those who were deemed
“insane,” the goal of the P4 course was to inject the “sanity” into the mind of
individuals, transforming them into Pancasila citizens. Thus, penataran func-
tioned as special training through which every Indonesian purifies his or her
mind from “forbidden” knowledge. Through the P4, the New Order produced
Pancasila individuals who were loyal to the sacred ideology and submissive to
the dominant regime’s rules.
Finally, the New Order discipline was also shaped through the production of
fear. This was the New Order’s most imaginative technique, a dissemination of
fear revolving around the discourse of bahaya laten (latent danger) that gener-
ated a vivid image in public consciousness of communism as a lurking force tra-
versing in society. Such manufactured fear suggested that only the state was able
to locate the communists, and the people had no choice other than trust the state
to undertake pre-�emptive measures to protect them even though it came at the
expense of public freedom. This logic compelled the people to blindly submit
their consent to the state, which consequently empowered the state to exercise
domination over civil society. The discourse of latent danger appeared not only
in verbal forms. The “reality” of latent danger was constructed astonishingly
through the visual images of “Pengkhianatan G30S/PKI” (Treachery of
 Authoritarianism and technocracy╇╇ 29
September 30 Movement/Indonesian Communist Party), a three-�hour long movie
produced by the State Center for Film Production (PPFN).17 Based on the “true
story” version of Suharto, the movie illustrated in minute detail the subsequent
events in the September 30 Movement, the individuals involved, and how
Suharto played a patriotic role in responding to the ensuing crisis. What renders
Pengkhianatan a sort of disciplinary mechanism lies in how it was made obliga-
tory for every Indonesian to see. Unlike typical propaganda movies, Pengkhi-
anatan made a huge success in evoking acute communist phobia to most
Indonesians due to extraordinary visual effects that lucidly demonstrate in a
gruesome style the perceived cunning, violence, and cruelty of the PKI.18 The
clear message from Pengkhianatan was that the latent danger of PKI was utterly
real. Ironically, the narrative that derived from this movie was that the specter of
communism seemed more alive than Pancasila itself.
One may find an irony in the New Order disciplinary project. While it suc-
ceeded in disciplining nearly all of society, it failed to discipline and transform
the Indonesian state into a modern institution. For years, the state from top to
bottom was plagued by problems of corruption, lack of accountability, and poor
public services, which indicated undisciplined behaviors. Despite these prob-
lems, scrutinizing the three disciplinary techniques explicated above yields a
new interpretation as to how the New Order’s power was discursively and insti-
tutionally assembled in intricate ways. It suggests that what Indonesian people
went through during the New Order period was a new cultural episode in modern
Indonesia. It is cultural because the disciplinary techniques were a new type of
power, producing far-�reaching implications that directly affected the daily lives
of Indonesians under an authoritarian politics. However, any analytical conclu-
sion seems unsatisfactory if it defines the ultimate goal of the New Order’s disci-
plinary institutions as accumulation of power. I would like to argue that power in
this particular context is not an end but a means to accomplish a set of goals.
And this set of goals lies in the political economy of capitalist production that
was systematically structured by a technocratic force. Once again, what Foucault
has explained about the functions of discipline in modern society remains rele-
vant to illuminate the New Order’s disciplinary power and teleology of moder-
nity. Foucault wrote, “The growth of a capitalist economy gave rise to the
specific modality of disciplinary power, whose general formulas, technique of
submitting forces and bodies, in short, ‘political economy,’ could be operated in
the most diverse political regimes, apparatuses or institutions” (1995:€221). The
rise of capitalist economy in Indonesia appeared to be the main factor to which
disciplinary power was dedicated. This argument may not seem completely new,
as several scholars of political economy have pointed to the apparent connec-
tions between capital formation and the state’s proclivities of violence in the
New Order era. My take on this matter, however, is slightly different. The
expansion of global capitalism in Indonesia in the wake of the New Order
authoritarianism may have prompted the state to take necessary measures to
create welcoming environments for capital to breed. Yet, we need to delve
deeper. At the core of capitalist production lies a certain form of knowledge,
30╇╇ Authoritarianism and technocracy
namely technocratic knowledge, which defines the ways in which social and
political energy are systematically arranged so as to result in efficient and pro-
ductive outputs. Thus, while discipline facilitates the whole process “for assur-
ing the ordering of human multiplicities,” technocracy dictates this disciplinary
power for the benefits of the whole regime. It is this form of scientific know�
ledge that constituted the main logic driving the New Order state.

Technocratic force
A wide range of observations on the New Order politics seem to share one
noticeable trait: the overt presence of military power has been firmly regarded
as the characteristic of the Suharto authoritarianism. The fact that Suharto
originated from the military institution and that the bulk of state resources
allocations were drawn by the military’s interests adds to the conviction that
the New Order was inherently a military regime. Overemphasis on the role of
the military, however, may gloss over another element significantly defining
the New Order as a byproduct of Cold War politics. As I argue in the preced-
ing section, it is conceptually possible to construe the New Order as a discipli-
nary regime that aimed to produce subjects suitable for modernization. The
materialization of such discipline was indeed facilitated by the military infra-
structure. Yet, the determination of how discipline ought to be directed came
from technocracy. In this light I argue that the New Order is more properly
defined as a technocratic regime propped up by military power. As a matter of
fact, what diagnostically distinguishes the New Order from its predecessor is
not found in the role played by the military but in the unprecedented engage-
ment of the technocrats who ascended as a new type of elite group taking
control over national policymaking. This phenomenon had not been seen
before as the domain of policymaking during the Sukarno era was left mostly
in the hands of politically affiliated bureaucrats, not those who were specifi-
cally trained to fashion public decisions in a technocratic manner. Thus the
formation of the New Order state at the early stage took place along the inte-
gration process of technocracy, a process that formed Indonesian political
economy from 1966 and afterwards.
It should be noted that technocracy in the New Order was by no means mono-
lithic. By this I mean the logic and rationality upon which strategic national poli-
cies were conceived had tended to be divergent rather than convergent. This was
caused primarily by uneasy co-�existence and apparent rivalry of two groups of
technocrats that equally sought to influence the direction and strategies of the
New Order’s economic development and industrialization. Widjojo Nitisastro
and his entourage at the UI constitute the first group, which, as briefly noted
above, arose in influence immediately after Suharto officially took power from
Sukarno. The other one is the engineers group led by Baharuddin Jusuf Habibie,
the central figure in the formation of the technological state, which is the central
theme of this book. The political and epistemological clashes between the two
technocratic teams will be elaborated in detail in Chapter 3. For now I shall
 Authoritarianism and technocracy╇╇ 31
focus on the economist group, which had arrived earlier than the engineers to
shape the settings of the New Order political economy. Two conjunction factors,
one personal, the other historical, have appeared to give the Widjojo group the
opportunity to inject its epistemological ingredients into many of Suharto’s
crucial decisions when embarking on Western-�prescribed developmental pro-
grams. One may speculate that had Widjojo never taught at the Army Staff and
Command School (SESKOAD), a nerve center of the Indonesian Army in
Bandung, the inception of the New Order economy would have been different.
This is where Widjojo and Suharto became acquainted.19 A few years before the
G30S movement, Suharto, who then attended a leadership course at SESKOAD,
was fascinated by the lectures Widjojo and his colleagues gave on economic
development. This series of lectures was by no means coincidental. The head of
SESKOAD, Colonel Suwarto, had invited the young economists from the UI to
educate ABRI high officers on non-�communist economic principles. Being the
main opponent of the PKI during the height of communism in Indonesia moti-
vated ABRI to search for alternative economic paradigms that could balance the
dominant influences of the communist ideology in the state economic planning.
The dawn of the New Order in Indonesian politics, not surprisingly, gave rise to
the Widjojo group, which became an intimate partner of the military elite in car-
rying out fundamental transformations towards economic development. On a
broader scale, a historical force unleashed by the proliferation of the Cold War
to Southeast Asia helped to form the coalition between ABRI and the economic
technocrats as the latter’s paradigm appeared to be the best option for the
newborn regime to undertake. As a result, what Widjojo offered to remedy the
whole economy remained uncontested. The personal and historical reasons inev-
itably set a firm alliance between the technocrats and the military. While ABRI
was tasked to create favorable environments for developmental transformations
by way of social and political stability forged through disciplinary approaches,
the economists was given authority to control the core economic instruments of
the state and to design a new institutional structure by resorting to the scientific
rationality of modern economics.
After Sukarno was forced to leave in 1966, the Suharto government took no
time to realize it had inherited an economy almost in complete collapse. Eco-
nomic growth was practically zero, while inflation reached an extremely high
point, exceeding 500 percent. As Indonesia never made substantial economic
progress since independence, 65 percent of the population lived in absolute
poverty.20 Faced with these grim circumstances, following his inauguration as
Acting President, Suharto soon appointed Widjojo and his group to fill the
Expert Team for Economic and Financial Affairs, bearing the mission to restore
the paralyzed economy. This marks the starting point of decades-�long loyal
service by these leading economists to the New Order leader. Having been mar-
ginalized by Sukarno and now gaining strong political support from Suharto, the
economists plausibly felt determined to have a chance to apply their market-�
driven economics in the real world. It was a precious opportunity every trained
economist longs for, an incredible moment through which the economists
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
adopted, and many readers of this book will have learned the same
exercises as the Swedish boys and girls.
One of the most interesting features of school-life is the study of
nature. No doubt this is because one of the greatest botanists that
ever lived was a Swede—Linnæus. He devised the system of botany,
which is in use throughout the whole world. From a very early age the
children go out into the woods and collect plants, flowers, and leaves
of trees. They are taught not only the names of the different plants,
but also the science of botany. The result is that from childhood they
are taught to take an intelligent interest in nature, and learn to love
what is beautiful in gardens, field, and forest.

A SKI-RUNNER
GUNNAR HALLSTRÖM.
MARS 1904 Björnö

The Swedes are also taught to be cleanly. Everywhere can be seen a

great many lakes, and in the bright summer days the children bathe
and learn to swim in them. In the winter this is impossible, as the cold
is very great and the lakes are frozen over. In some schools a large
room is set apart as a bathroom. There is no large bath or swimming
pond, but a very simple arrangement of a number of tubs in a circle. A
child goes into each. They wash and scrub one another. It is a method
for securing cleanliness easily carried out, and does not cost much.
The result is health. The children never look shabby. A Swedish
mother may be poor, but she takes a pride in seeing her children neat
and tidy.
Nor does she forget to teach them politeness. Every boy is taught to
be very respectful to his elders. On the street he lifts his cap to
anyone he knows, whether he be rich or poor.
When the boy is fifteen, he may choose to go to a trade, or to a
higher school with a view to entering a learned profession.
At this age, if he intends to become a Government servant, lawyer,
doctor, or minister, he must be confirmed. This is a very important
step in his life. On the day of confirmation he is examined in the
church, and has publicly to answer questions. It is a great day for him.
He is now a man, and is very proud of being looked upon as such.
After he has been at the higher school for some years, and wishes
to enter the University, he must pass a very hard examination, and
when he learns that he has been successful, he is very happy and
bright. He comes out of the school wearing the white cap which all
students have, and decked with wreaths and flowers bestowed on him
by doting parents and admiring friends.
There are large Universities in Sweden both at Upsala and Lund.
The former is the larger and older of the two, but they are both well
known. The student has the same long and hard course as at school.
Very few students finish their course till they are between twenty-five
and thirty years of age, and up to this time, if they wish to be
successful, must be faithful to their study. There are no very young
doctors in Sweden. They generally do not begin to practise till they are
about twenty-eight years of age. Still, they find some time for social
life at the University towns. They enter into the gaiety of the place,
and are great favourites with the townspeople. The students from
each district or nation have a club-room for social gatherings. They are
very proud of their own district, and in processions march together
with a banner in front. They are very fond of singing. The students of
Upsala have a world-wide reputation, as at the Paris Exhibition of 1897
they took the first prize when choirs from every part of the world were
competing.
The Swedes as a class are intelligent and polite, and are taking a
prominent part in the world’s affairs. We should expect this when we
know how well they are educated.
 CHAPTER X
DALECARLIA

No one touring in Sweden should omit a visit to the province of

Dalecarlia. It is a most lovely district, inhabited by a people who stick
to their old customs and national dress. They are very proud and
manly, and have done a great deal for the freedom of their country.
The chief town is Falun, which is well known because of its copper
mine, said to be the oldest in Europe, as it has been worked more
than 600 years. It is named the Treasury of Sweden. More than
£5,000,000 worth of copper has been extracted. It was here Gustavus
Vasa worked when he was in hiding from the Danes, and got his men
and money to fight against them. The fumes from the works have
spoiled the vegetation in the neighbourhood; but travel in the train a
short distance, and you soon get a sight of what the Dalecarlians are
very proud of—Lake Siljan, the Eye of Dalecarlia. Down the slopes of
the mountain the train proceeds until it reaches Rättvik on the edge of
the lake. You seem in a new world, for you see young and old, men,
women, and children, going about in costumes similar to what their
grandfathers and grandmothers wore. In some parts of Sweden you
see people wearing these costumes on Sundays and gala-days, but in
Dalecarlia they wear them at church and at market. The men have a
long coat which extends below the knee, knee-breeches, white
woollen stockings, and shoes. On the head they wear a low-crowned
felt hat. From the neck there hangs a long leather apron. The women
wear a skirt of a blue colour with a green border. The bodice is of a
dark colour, and is only as high as a broad belt, laced together in front
with bright red ribbons, the eyelets being of silver. They have also a
white blouse. Round the neck is a red kerchief with a bright pattern,
fastened at the throat with an old-fashioned silver brooch. The apron
is dark, with transverse stripes of blue, red, yellow, and white. The cap
is a black, peaked one, with red trimming round it, and red tassels
hanging down. It is something in shape like a helmet. In winter they
wear a short jacket made of sheepskin. Their clothes-store is a
treasure-house.
In days gone by the sound of the shuttle used to be heard in every
Dalecarlian home, as the women used to spin and weave all the cloth
required for the clothes of the family. They now buy from the
merchant. The Dalecarlians are of a mechanical turn of mind. They
make watches and baskets, and the women do hair-work. The natives
travel over the country to sell their wares. The Rättvikians excel chiefly
as painters, and they cover the walls of their houses with paintings
instead of putting up hangings.
The traveller usually proceeds by steamer from Rättvik to Leksand,
where on a Sunday a most interesting sight is seen.
Looking across the lake, you see many large boats, driven through
the water by means of eight or ten pairs of oars. Each of them may
contain forty, sixty, or eighty men, women, and children. They present
a very picturesque appearance with their national costumes. They are
very similar to the Rättvikians, except that the women wear a tight-
fitting cap—that of the married women white, of the unmarried red.
The little boys are dressed in yellow-coloured clothes, and the little
girls in the same as their older sisters. They soon land and wend their
way to church through a beautiful avenue of trees. Here they are
joined by others, who have walked or driven in carts for perhaps ten
miles. They are regular church-goers. The church is not only a
religious, but also a social centre. Sunday is newspaper day. The
gossip of the whole district is then retailed. The men meet in crowds
in the avenue, and the women and children wander in the churchyard
until the service begins. It is like fairyland to see the bright costumes
moving among the luxuriant foliage on a Swedish summer day.
The church at Leksand is an imposing structure, in the shape of a
Greek cross, with a Russian ball-spire. It was built by some Swedes
who had been prisoners in Russia, and it holds about 5,000 people.
The sight is most impressive when it is crowded, men and women
sitting apart. The sermons must at one time have been longer or the
people not so devout, as in some country churches can be seen a relic
of bygone days in a long stick, with which an official, “the church
awakener,” used to poke anyone who fell asleep. When the service is
over, the horses are yoked, the boats pushed into the water, and the
vast crowd is soon scattered.
There is, however, one place of interest that must not be passed
over—Mora, a quiet little spot on the northern shore of Lake Siljan. It
was here that the standard of revolt against the Danes was raised by
the men of Mora under Gustavus Vasa. Near the church is the mound
where he made his famous speech that roused them to action. Dear to
the heart of the Swede is the national memorial at Mora. It is situated
about a mile from the village, and is a little square building lit from the
roof. In the middle of the stone floor is the cellar in which Gustavus
Vasa hid when the Danes were pursuing him. The walls are covered
with paintings of scenes in the life of the patriot, and one of them
represents what took place here. You see the open trap-door,
Gustavus Vasa descending into the cellar with an axe in his hand, the
woman lifting a tub to cover the trap, and through the window you
can see the Danes in the distance on horseback.
No one need be at a loss as to the meaning of any of the pictures.
The custodian has a description written in English, French, and
German. He usually succeeds in finding out the nationality of the
visitor, and gives him the proper copy.
It is with reluctance one leaves Dalecarlia, with its proud and
independent people, and its bright and smiling valleys.
 “BRASKULLA”
(A PEASANT GIRL FROM MORA).
Anders Zorn.
 CHAPTER XI
CUSTOMS

The Swedes are a most hospitable and kindly people, and enjoy
entertaining. They do not mask their feelings, for as soon as a visitor
arrives, he is made to feel at home with the words, “Välkommen till
oss” (Welcome to us).
If it should be about the hour for dinner, he will be invited to
partake with the family. If he be a foreigner, a surprise awaits him, for,
on entering the dining-room, instead of sitting down at once to dinner,
he is led up to a side-table. On this he sees bread, butter, and cheese,
and numerous small dishes with anchovies, smoked salmon, caviare,
and different kinds of meats, hot and cold, too numerous to mention.
This is called smörgosbord. He is expected to take a piece of bread
and butter and whatever of the other dishes he may feel inclined for.
This is considered an appetizer for the proper meal, which no stranger
must forget.
Then the company assembles round the dinnertable behind the
chairs, and a very nice custom is observed. One of the children,
perhaps one who can only lisp a prayer, asks God’s blessing on the
food, at which the gentlemen bow, and the ladies curtsey. After dinner
there is another beautiful custom, when the children go up to the
parents, kiss their hands, and say: “Tack för maten” (Thanks for food).
If the guest is present, he shakes hands with the host and hostess, at
the same time expressing his thanks for the meal.
Weddings in every country are always looked upon with interest, but
a Swedish country wedding is one especially interesting and
picturesque. It is an event which demands the attention of the district
for several days. A large number of people are invited. This means
considerable expense, but the heads of the several families invited
make a contribution of provisions.
 If the wedding be in the church, the bride, with a silver crown on
her head and pearls round her neck, goes there on horseback. She is
escorted during the festivities by a number of musicians and young
men also mounted. The hats of the men are decorated with ribbons of
bright colours and with flowers. Some of them carry guns, which they
frequently fire, and this is supposed to be a reminiscence of those
days when a bride had to be protected from the attack of a hostile
clan. The rest of the company follow in carriages or on foot. At the
church there is a triumphal arch through which all pass. After the
ceremony is over, the procession returns to the bride’s home for the
rejoicings. Here again is a triumphal arch of green boughs. The young
men ride three times furiously round a maypole, while whips are
cracked and guns are fired.
Then comes a banquet, which usually lasts for three or four hours,
after which there come games and dancing, not for a few hours, but
often for three days and three nights, during which the festivities
continue without a break. Among the more wealthy they may last five
or six days. If the provisions are exhausted, the hostess introduces a
highly spiced rice-pudding. This information is understood, and soon,
after great cheering, the company separates. The feasting is not yet
over, as the young couple are expected to entertain all who have been
present.
A pretty custom observed in some districts is “dancing the crown off
the head of the bride.” The bride is blindfolded. The maidens present
form a ring and dance round her, until she takes the crown off her
head and places it haphazard on the head of one of the girls. She on
whom this honour has been conferred will be the next to wear a
crown at her own wedding. The girl places it on the head of another,
and so on, till it has rested on the head of everyone.
If you enter a Swedish peasant’s home, you will see one or more
long poles attached to the roof. On these are strung a number of very
thin round discs. This is the rye bread, which is the only kind eaten by
the peasant, and is also found at the King’s table. The peasantry do
not eat much new bread. They only bake four times a year, and each
baking lasts for three months.
 A very common dish in a Swedish peasant’s house is solid sour milk.
It is placed on the table in a wooden dish. After the housewife has
added some sugar, all sit round the table with wooden spoons, and
each marks out for himself what he considers his rightful share. After
this they all set to work, and do not move until the whole is eaten.
The Swedes are very fond of open-air life. They practically spend
the summer out of doors. Where you find a band, there is usually a
large crowd of men, women, and children, sitting at little tables
drinking their punch, beer, and coffee. The Swedes are very fond of
family life. The father, mother, and children usually go out together. On
Sunday afternoons and feast-days every town is a scene of gaiety. All
the inhabitants give themselves up to pleasure. There is no rowdyism,
but a great deal of enjoyment. The innate refinement of the Swede
checks any inclination there might be for anything rough or uncouth.
He shows this when he goes into a shop. Very many of those behind
the counters are young women. The Swede takes off his hat to them,
and wishes them “Good-morning” as pleasantly as he would to his
greatest lady-friends.
One thing a Swede is never without, and that is his coffee. You may
not always get good tea, but you will always get good coffee. The
peasants will drink it as often as five times a day. They are also fond
of sugar. They have a strange custom of putting a piece of sugar
between the teeth, and sweetening the coffee as it passes through the
sugar into their mouths. They call this dricka på bit. They seem to
think they get more enjoyment from the sugar in this way than if it
were dissolved in the coffee.
There is one other custom that people in England would like to
know about. It is the festival of Santa Lucia. There are several stories
as to its origin. Some say that it refers to the shortest day, though it
falls on December 13. Lucia night, according to the peasants, is so
long that the ox from hunger bites the crib. “Lucia night is mortal
long,” said the cow. “It’s as good as two,” replied the ram. “That’s
true,” put in the goat; “it’s a pity it exists.” Some speak of a beautiful
virgin named Lucia, who was about to be married. She had given all
her dowry to the Christians because of their courage. When her lover
heard of this, he informed against her. She was condemned in the end
to death by burning. When the fire was placed around her, she
remained unhurt, and did not die until a sword was thrust into her
throat.
The day is observed in a very quaint fashion. At a very early hour in
the morning, perhaps as early as three or four, the sleeper is
awakened, to find a maiden dressed in white standing by the bedside.
Her hair is streaming down her back. On her head, which is encircled
with a wreath of green leaves, are a number of lighted tapers. In her
hands are a salver with coffee and cakes, which must be partaken of
in bed. After this, in some houses, all get out of bed and sit down to a
big feast. Afterwards they shoot a fish by the aid of a torch composed
of slips of dry and resinous wood.
 CHAPTER XII
THE ISLAND OF GOTHLAND AND TOWN OF
VISBY

“In the days of old,” says the saga, “a fair and beautiful island, low
and dim, floated on the sea by night, and the people beheld it as they
sailed to and fro; but each morning at sunrise it disappeared beneath
the waves, until the waning twilight had come again, when it would
rise and float over the surface of the Östersjön (Baltic) as before.”
No one dared to land upon it, though the belief was general that it
would become fixed if a fire was lighted there.
Thjelvar, with his men, finally landed in a little bay of the floating
island, and lighted a fire, and the island became stationary. The name
of this daring man, Thjelvar, means “the Industrious.”
Those with him seemed to be possessed with the same spirit, for in
a short time they were building ships and trading with every part of
Europe. They soon became wealthy, not only by fair means but also by
foul, as they did not hesitate to plunder whenever they had an
opportunity. Their forays led to reprisals. Their wealth excited envy.
They did not feel strong enough of themselves, and, as Sweden was
the nearest country, they proposed to put themselves under her
protection, and sent an ambassador to negotiate. When he arrived at
Upsala, then the capital of Sweden, the King and Queen were sitting
at meat. He was not received at once, nor even asked to sit down.
After he had been standing some time at the entrance, the King said:
“What news from Gothland?” “Nothing,” replied the ambassador,
“except that a mare on the island has foaled three colts at a birth.”
“Ah,” said the King, “what does the third colt do when the other two
are sucking?” “He does as I do,” replied the ambassador, “He stands
and looks on.” Thereupon the King laughed loudly, and invited the
ambassador to share the meal. In the end a treaty was arranged, and
Gothland became a part of Sweden.
This was in 890. In 1030 Olaf compelled the inhabitants of the
island to become Christian, and be baptized, but by this time a city
had sprung up where the heathens of old used to offer up sacrifices.
This city was named Visby, “the city of the place of sacrifice.” It is
situated on the west side of the island, and gradually rose in
importance, until it became the chief trading centre of Europe. There
was a great trade with Russia, and by means of the rivers of that
country the treasures of the East were brought to Visby. The fame and
the stories of her wealth and commerce spread far and wide. Soon
merchants came from all parts of Europe to share her wealth. Very
many of them removed their business entirely to Visby.

IN DAYS OF OLD.
Ankarcrona.

The wealth of the city was fabulous. The common saying was that
the merchants used to weigh their gold with 20 pound weights, and
play with choicest jewels. The women spun with silver distaffs. The
pigs ate out of silver troughs.
Their houses, of which many are remaining to this day, were narrow
and lofty, with their gable-ends to the streets. Their rooms were large
with high ceilings, and most beautifully decorated. In one house can
be seen a room with walls and roof completely covered with scenes
from the Bible. The doors in many cases were made of copper, and
the window-frames gilded.
The merchants lived most luxuriously, and were most exclusive in
their social life. No artisans, except bakers and goldsmiths, were
allowed to live within the city walls.
Their wealth and commerce gave them great authority, so that their
sea-laws were adopted by European countries generally. They form
the basis of the laws of the sea of the present day.
These were rough times, when might was right, and the inhabitants
of Visby had always to be prepared for an attack upon the city, for the
surrounding nations looked upon her wealth with an envious eye. One
of the sorest experiences she had to undergo was at the hand of King
Waldemar of Denmark. He defeated them in battle, tore down a part
of the walls, entered with his army in battle array, and, placing three
very large ale-vats in the square, commanded that these be filled with
gold and silver within three hours. This was done with remarkable
rapidity, and King Waldemar sailed with his gold and silver, as well as
much spoil from the churches. The booty, however, never reached
Denmark, as the vessels carrying it foundered in a storm. From this
hour Visby began to decline in importance, and is now known chiefly
as a summer resort and haunt of tourists who wish to learn something
of this medieval town.
Notwithstanding all their love of wealth, the inhabitants of Visby did
not seem to be stingy in giving to the Church, as no less than sixteen
churches were built. All still exist, but are in ruins except one, the
Cathedral or St. Mary’s Church which is quite complete. They are all
large buildings. In the great square can be seen the Church of St.
Catherine, which belonged to the abbey of a Franciscan Order. In the
nave are twelve pillars, not in a straight line. They make a lasting
impression on the visitor, they are so delicate in their tracery and
overgrown with the ivy and the vine. The roof of the chancel has
fallen, and now only the arches which unite the pillars to each other
and to the outer walls remain.
Not very far from here are seen two churches. They are called
syskonkyrkorna, or sister-churches, built side by side. They each
possess immense towers, which are supposed to have been fitted up
at one time for defence. If the story is true, the sisters did not love
one another; indeed, it is said that they hated one another so much
that they could not worship God in the same church, and each had to
have a separate place of worship built for herself.
The largest of all the churches is St. Nicholas. On the western gable
of it can be seen two twelve-leaved rosette-like bricks. They look like
windows. In the centre of each, tradition says, were set most precious
carbuncle stones, that shone in the dark like fire. These served as
guides to the sailors on the Baltic. Soldiers guarded them night and
day, and no one was allowed to approach them after sunset on pain of
death. King Waldemar, when he sacked Visby, removed the sacred
carbuncles. Over the spot where the ship that conveyed them went
down, a remarkable gleam is said to be seen. The Gothland fishermen
say that it is the radiance of the carbuncles now lying in the depths of
the sea.
Another remarkable feature of Visby is the city wall. It completely
encircles the city, and is the only example in Scandinavia that has
lasted to our time. It dates from early in the thirteenth century. It was
gradually made stronger by adding to its height and its thickness, and
also by building thirty-six towers, two to guard each gate. Many of
these have a name. The powder-tower was named Silfverhättan
(Silver-cap). Its shining roof is now replaced by dull tiles. One is used
as a prison, and is named “Cæsar.” Another is called Jungfru Tornet
(the Maiden’s Tower). It is said that a young girl betrayed this city to
King Waldemar. As a punishment she was built into the wall of the
tower. Near a gate on the south side of the city can be seen a cross
put up to the memory of the 1,800 men of Visby who were killed
when that King took the city. On it is an inscription in Latin, still legible
—“In the year 1361, the Tuesday after St. James’s day, the
Gothlanders fell before the gates of Visby by the hands of the Danes.
They lie buried here. Pray for them.”
 CHAPTER XIII
FAIRY-TALES

I wonder how children would do without fairy-tales. Every country and

every age has these, and devours them eagerly, old as they are.
Perhaps it would be interesting to inquire how they arose. It is said
that a Queen saw her children looking very sad, although they had
everything that she could think of for their happiness. The truth was
they did not know what they wanted. She said, “If only I were a child
again, I would know what is the secret of a child’s happiness.” While
she was thinking a bird flew into her lap, but only for a moment. As
soon as it had gone, she saw a golden egg. “Perhaps,” she thought,
“this egg will contain what will give my children contentment, and
remove their sadness.” She broke the egg, and out came the
wonderful bird, Imagination, the Popular Tale. Now the children were
happy and bright. For the tale took them far away, but brought them
home again as soon as they desired. So it came about that not only
children, but those who are older in years, found a peculiar joy and
happiness in reading the story, provided they come in the spirit of the
child. Here is one well known to Swedish children:
The Crafty Boy and the Stupid Giant
Once upon a time there was a boy who watched goats in the forest.
He was alone, and one day had to pass a large dwelling. He had been
enjoying himself, shouting and singing, as boys will do when in the
woods, when suddenly he saw coming from the house a giant, of
great size and fierce to look upon. The giant was very angry because
he had been disturbed in his sleep, and the boy became so frightened
that he at once took to his heels, and never stopped running till he got
home. In the evening his mother had been making cheese, and he
took a piece that was newly made, and put it in his wallet. Next
morning he had again to pass the giant’s house. The giant, when he
saw him, took up a piece of stone, crushed it into atoms, let it fall
upon the ground, and said: “If you again disturb me with your noise, I
will crush you as I have crushed this stone.” The boy, who was by this
time quite bold, took up the cheese he had brought in his wallet, and
squeezing the whey out of it, said to the giant: “I will squeeze thee as
I squeeze the water out of this stone.” When the giant found out that
the boy was so strong, he went away in great fear and trembling to
his abode.
However, they soon met again, and then the boy suggested a trial
of strength. The test was who could throw an axe so high in the air
that it would never fall down again. The giant tried many times, but
the axe always fell down again. The boy began to mock him, saying:
“I thought you were a very strong man, but you are not. See how I
can throw the axe.” With that he took the axe and swinging it as if
with great force, very cleverly let it slide into the wallet on his back.
The giant did not see the trick, and, looking in vain for the axe falling
down again, thought the boy must be wonderfully strong.
The giant was so much impressed with the boy’s strength, that he
asked him to enter his service. The boy’s first duty was to assist with
the felling of a tree. “I will hold while you fell,” said the boy. But as the
boy was not tall enough to reach to the top of the trunk, the giant
bent it down to the level of the boy. As soon as the boy seized it, the
tree at once rebounded and carried the boy out of sight. In a short
time he came back lame, but saying nothing. “Why did you not hold?”
said the giant. “Would you be brave enough to make a jump like
that?” said the boy. “No,” replied the giant. “Well, then, if you are so
afraid you can hold and cut for yourself.”
Soon the giant had cut down the tree. How was it to be carried
home? It was arranged that the giant should carry the thin end, and
the boy the thick one. The giant went in front, and raised his end on
his shoulder. The boy behind called him to move it farther forward.
Soon the giant had it so balanced on his shoulder, that he had the
whole weight of it. After walking for some time, he shouted: “Are you
not tired yet?” The boy, who had seated himself on his end of the tree,
answered: “Certainly not.” When they arrived at the house, the giant
was quite worn out. “Are you not tired even yet?” said the giant. The
boy answered: “You must not think so little tires me. I could quite
easily have carried it myself.”
The giant was amazed, and wondered what he would try next. He
suggested they should thresh grain. “Let us do it very early in the
morning, before we get our breakfast,” said the boy. The giant agreed.
When they began the boy received a flail he could not lift, so he took
up a stick and beat the ground while the giant threshed. As they had
been working in the dark, the boy’s device had not been seen, and to
escape detection, when daylight was approaching, he suggested that
they should cease work for breakfast. “Yes,” said the giant, “it has
been very hard work.”

A GIRL WITH “KICKER.”

Carl Larsson.

Some time after the giant sent the boy to plough, and told him that
when the dog came, he was to loose the oxen, bring them home, and
put them in their stable. He brought them home, but as there was no
entrance, he did not know how to get them in. As he could not lift the
house like the giant, he made up his mind to kill the oxen, cut up their
carcases, and put them in in this way. On his return the giant asked if
he had put the oxen in the stall. “Yes,” said the boy, “I got them in,
although I divided them.”
The giant now began to think the boy was too dangerous to have in
the house, and, on the advice of his wife, resolved to put him to death
while he slept. The boy was suspicious that something was going to
happen, and when night came, put the churn in the bed, while he
himself hid behind the door. In came the giant; down came the club,
so that the cream from the churn bespattered all his face. “Ha, ha, ha!
I have struck him so that his brains have bespattered the wall,” said
the giant afterwards to his wife. The two now lay down to rest in
peace, believing they had rid themselves for ever of this terrible boy.
What a surprise they got next morning, when the boy appeared as if
nothing had happened. “What,” said the giant, “art thou not dead? I
thought I had killed thee with my club.” The boy answered: “Now that
explains it. I had imagined that I felt a flea biting me in the night-
time.”
At the close of the day a large basin of porridge was placed
between them. “What do you say to our trying to see who will eat
most?” said the boy. The giant was quite willing. The boy was too
cunning. He had tied a large bag before his chest, and let large
quantities of the porridge fall into it. When the giant came to a
standstill, he saw the boy still continuing with as good an appetite as
when he began. “How can a little fellow like you eat so much?” said
the giant. “Father, I will soon show you. When I have eaten as much
as I can, I do so, and begin again.” He then ripped up the bag, and
the porridge ran out. The giant took up a knife in imitation of the boy,
but was soon dead.
Then the boy gathered all the money he could get, and left by
night. So ends the story of the crafty boy and the stupid giant.
 CHAPTER XIV
JUL, OR CHRISTMAS

Jul is the great festival in Sweden. The festivities begin on Christmas

Eve—Julafton—and continue for thirteen days. Since early autumn
everyone has been sewing and embroidering beautiful presents.
Amongst young girls there is a custom that for one night before Jul
they should sit up the whole night and sew. This is looked forward to
as a special pleasure, and two or three friends are invited to join the
party.
A few days before Christmas the streets begin to be crowded, and
young and old throng the shops.
In the market-place you find stalls containing all sorts of things—
toys, clothing, and confectionery. Amongst the latter are special
ginger-cakes, shaped like different animals, especially pigs, to
commemorate the old boar that was sacrificed in heathen times.
These stalls are greatly patronized by the country people.
Rich and poor, during Jul, are anxious to be kind and liberal to their
family and friends, remembering each member with some token of
their thought and love. Even the animal world is not forgotten. Horses
and cows get a special feed in their stalls, and on every house in the
country, as well as many in the towns, you will see a pole erected, to
which is fixed a sheaf of unthreshed grain as a treat for small birds
that, in this hard season, have great difficulty in getting food. There is
a saying in Sweden that on the anniversary of the coming of our Lord
into the world all creatures should have cause to rejoice.
Within doors great preparations are being made. Servants are busy
cleaning and scrubbing everything that can be scrubbed. In the
kitchen a great amount of cooking is taking place, and six or seven
different kinds of bread have to be baked, as, in the country, each
servant and tenant are presented with a pile of special Jul-bread.
 Jul at the present day, as in olden times, is a great festival with the
Swedish peasantry. They have a special reverence for this season. No
work that can be avoided will be done on this day.
“There is a belief which has existed for ages that, during Christmas,
there is a second of time when not only the sun itself, but everything
movable in creation, becomes stationary, and in consequence, at that
particular moment, which no one can foretell, if a person should be
occupied in any way, that which he is then about is sure to go wrong.”
On Christmas Eve, to show good feeling in a practical way, it is
customary for the whole family to assemble in the kitchen, where a
large pot is boiling, containing ham and sausages highly spiced.
Mingling with the servants, you walk along plate in hand, and taking a
slice of Christmas-bread, you dip it in the boiling fat in the pot, and
eat together. This is called doppa i grytan (to dip in the pot).
In the afternoon the older members of the family are engaged in
decorating the Christmas-tree, which is done in great secrecy from the
children. Bright golden and silver stars, coloured glass globes, and
confectionery are hung on the tree, as well as baskets made of
coloured paper, containing raisins and almonds. Then, to every branch
and twig, a taper is fastened. The national flag waves from the top,
and the other nations are represented by smaller flags fixed here and
there over the tree. When all is ready, and the many tapers on the
tree are lit, as well as the chandeliers and lamps in the room, the
great moment arrives for the children. When the door is opened, they
are almost dazzled by the sea of light, and in rapture they rush to
gaze at the beautiful tree, which rises from floor to ceiling, a mass of
light and beauty. Their attention is somewhat divided, as their eyes
are constantly turning to the door, as if they expected someone to
arrive. Before long the door opens, and a small, old man and woman
enter. These are the Christmas gnomes. The man has a long white
beard and a red cowl, and carries in his hand a bell, which he rings,
and the old woman carries a large basket containing parcels neatly
tied up and sealed, addressed to different persons, but with no name
of the givers. Often there are poetry and amusing rhymes written on
the parcels. The old woman hands the parcels to those to whom they
are addressed, much to the amusement of the whole company. There
is much guessing as to who the donor may be, and the excitement is
tremendous as the old pair vanish from the room to return with fresh
supplies. At last the children are sent off to the servants’ quarters,
each carrying a load of parcels for them. When the Jul-klappan
(Christmas presents) have been duly admired, refreshments are
brought in, such as fruits and confects, and after this music and
games are indulged in, and later on all join hands and dance in a ring
round the tree, singing lustily. Between nine and ten the company sit
down to a Christmas supper. The first course is lut-fish, which is ling or
cod-fish, specially prepared weeks before in lime. When cooked and
ready, it is white and transparent, almost like a jelly. Seasoned with
pepper and salt, and eaten with potatoes and melted butter, it is
delicious. The next course is always pig in some form or other, either
head or ham. Then is produced a large fat goose. Last of all comes
the all-important rice-porridge, in which is hidden an almond, and
whoever gets it will be lucky for the next year. From the King’s palace
to the peasant’s hut you will find the very same kind of supper.
However poor people may be, they always find means for a small
Christmas-tree.
On Christmas morning, before daybreak, crowds flock to church for
early service. In the country it is the custom for people to join
together and form a procession, each carrying a torch. This makes a
pretty sight, especially in hilly districts, when you are able to see at
the same time several processions wending their way to church. On
arriving there, all the torches are flung in a heap, which lights up the
churchyard. The church is brilliantly illuminated by hundreds of
candles, even the pews having their own candles. After the service is
over the people make a rush for home. You ask why? It is an old
superstition that he who arrives home first will reap his grain first.
The rest of the day is spent quietly in the home circle.
 CHAPTER XV
MIDSUMMER

The festival of Midsummer, like that of Jul, has come down from old
heathen times, and next to Christmas is the greatest festival of the
year in Scandinavia.
On this day the sun is at the height of its grandeur, conquering
darkness. The night is the shortest in the year, just a glorious twilight,
which, in a few hours, is merged into dawn.
Summer and winter have each their special enjoyments for those
who know where to look for them. In Sweden, Midsummer Day is
looked forward to especially by the young people.
Great preparations are made in town and country. In the country
the houses have to undergo a special cleaning, and the rooms are
decorated with branches of trees and flowers. In Stockholm there is
what is called a “Leaf-market,” where not only boughs and flowers are
exposed, but also May-poles. In the harbour can be seen a large
number of boats laden with branches.
It is a wonderful sight you see on this day. The houses, both inside
and out, are decorated with green branches. Every train, steamer, and
vehicle is dressed in the same fashion, and even every horse has its
head ornamented with branches of leaves. Little children all have
bunches of flowers in their hands, and very often a small May-pole,
while older ones go out early in the morning to picnic, and return for
the dancing in the evening.
 DANCE ON MIDSUMMER’S EVE.
Anders Zorn.

The centre of attraction is the May-pole, similar to what is found in

many English villages in the month of May, to celebrate the return of
spring; but the Swedish word Maj does not in this instance refer to the
month May, it means green leaf.
What a bustle there has been to get this pole ready! It has to be
decorated. Early in the morning the young girls awaken with the birds,
and hurry into the woods to gather flowers and boughs of the silver
birch, to bind wreaths and garlands for the May-pole. The birch is the
queen of the forest in the summer, just as the dark, sombre fir is the
queen of the winter.
 The raising of the pole is an important event in the day’s
proceedings, and amidst shouting and music it is put into position. The
people form themselves in a large ring round it, and to the sound of
the violin or accordion, they dance the whole night long. How happy
they look! They forget everything—all their troubles, and even the old
grandmother may be seen dancing in the ring with her little grandchild
of three years. By-and-by they sit down to supper, and one might
think the festivities were drawing to an end; but no! the meal is no
sooner over than the dancing is resumed and continued with more or
less energy through the night. No one ever seems to think of going to
bed.
There are a number of superstitions and customs in connection with
this festival.
On the hills in the neighbourhood of towns in North Sweden people
light fires at this season. These are but a reminiscence of the “pyre,”
built on consecrated hills by the old heathen priests, and fired on
Midsummer Eve in honour of the sun-god, the mild and beautiful
Balder. Nowadays these fires are not in honour of Balder, but to
prepare coffee. Many families do this. Each family has its own fire.
They put the coffee on the fire when the sun is setting, but, as in
these northern regions at this season of the year the sun takes little
rest, he has risen again before the coffee has boiled.
Sometimes people gather different kinds of flowers to make up into
a bouquet called a Midsummer qvost. Whoever does it, usually a
young girl, must go alone. If she should encounter anyone, she must
only answer by signs, and must not open her mouth under any
circumstances until she gets home again. She places the bouquet
under her pillow, and never fails to see in her dream her future lover.
This qvost has many wonderful qualities. It is hung up in the cattle-
house, and if allowed to remain there protects the animals for a whole
year against the troll (witches).
In some places a medicine is made from it, which will cure all
diseases.
 CHAPTER XVI
SOME WELL-KNOWN SWEDES

Carl Linnæus was the son of a poor clergyman, and was born at
Råshult, in the province of Småland, in 1707. His father wished him to
become a clergyman, but from infancy he showed a great love for
flowers, and made up his mind to study medicine. He was a student at
Upsala, where he underwent great privations, as his father allowed
him only eight pounds per year. He so persevered that he attracted
the attention of the professors, and was commissioned to study the
plant-life of Swedish Lapland.
Poverty drove him to Holland for his degree as doctor of medicine.
He found a friend there in a Dutch banker, Clifford, who enabled him
to publish many works, in one of which he made known his
classification of plants. At this time he visited London, and when
walking on a common near the City saw furze for the first time. He
was so attracted by the golden bloom of the flower that he fell down
on his knees and admired it. He tried in vain to cultivate it in Sweden.
On his return to Stockholm, he gained a reputation as a physician, but
gave up his profession to be professor of botany in the University
where he had studied. He attracted students from all parts, and
gained a world-wide reputation, his class increasing from five to
hundreds. He was made a noble, and when he died, aged seventy-one
years, the King spoke from the throne of his death as being a national
calamity.
Another man of whom Sweden is justly proud is Baron Johan Jakob
Berzelius, one of the greatest of modern chemists. He is said to rank
next to Linnæus in science in Sweden. He introduced a set of symbols
on which those in use at the present day are based. The science of
chemistry owes a great deal to the accuracy and extent of his
researches. It is the wonder of many how he could accomplish so
much as he did. He had, like Linnæus, the gift of perseverance.
 Another well-known Swede is Alfred Nobel, who was born in
Stockholm in 1833, and died in 1896. When young, he went with his
father to Russia to help him in the manufacture of submarine mines
and torpedoes. He took out patents for a gasometer and for an
apparatus for measuring liquid. He will, however, always be
remembered as the inventor of dynamite. Many precious lives were
lost in the process. It was finally produced as dynamite gum in 1876.
When one thinks of dynamite, immediately there are brought to the
mind war, with all its horrors, and anarchism, with its bombs and
nefarious practices; but it has been one of the greatest aids to man in
his engineering triumphs. By its aid mountains have been tunnelled
and rocks under the water more easily removed.
To show how extensively it is being used, in 1870 the total world’s
output did not exceed eleven tons. At the present day it annual
tonnage is to be reckoned by the hundred thousand. Works for its
manufacture are all over the world.
Alfred Nobel left a large fortune, and so arranged that a large sum
should be set aside for five annual prizes of £8,000 each for men who
had distinguished themselves in science, literature, and the promotion
of peace. Men from all parts of the world can compete, and the
awards are made by a committee of Scandinavians.
Mention must be made of Baron Adolf Nordenskiold (1832-1907),
who reached the highest latitude in the Arctic region till then attained
by any ship, and in the Vega spent two years accomplishing the North-
East Passage. Otto Nordenskiold, a nephew of Baron Adolf, also sailed
in the northern seas, and after two years’ exploration discovered King
Oscar Land; and Sven Hedin, who traversed the countries of Central
Asia, and brought to light the secrets of past ages.
Sweden stands high in music and song. She has produced many
gifted musicians, but none greater than Jenny Lind, the Swedish
Nightingale. She was born in Stockholm of very humble parentage.
One day she, as a child, was heard singing to her cat. The listener was
so entranced that she was the means of Jenny Lind being brought to
the director of the Royal Opera House, who saw the quality of her
voice, and arranged that she should be educated at Government
expense. At the age of eighteen she made her first appearance.
Welcome to our website – the perfect destination for book lovers and
knowledge seekers. We believe that every book holds a new world,
offering opportunities for learning, discovery, and personal growth.
That’s why we are dedicated to bringing you a diverse collection of
books, ranging from classic literature and specialized publications to
self-development guides and children's books.

More than just a book-buying platform, we strive to be a bridge

connecting you with timeless cultural and intellectual values. With an
elegant, user-friendly interface and a smart search system, you can
quickly find the books that best suit your interests. Additionally,
our special promotions and home delivery services help you save time
and fully enjoy the joy of reading.

Join us on a journey of knowledge exploration, passion nurturing, and

personal growth every day!

ebookbell.com