Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Lists of maps, figures and tables
- Preface
- Map
- 1 Introduction
- 2 The internal and the external in a Minangkabau village: an introduction to the world of the concrete
- 3 Adat, kinship and marriage: the constitution of the subsistence community
- 4 Agriculture and subsistence: the reproduction of the subsistence community
- 5 Commodity production in the village economy: the case of blacksmithing
- 6 Occupation, class and the peasant economy
- 7 The structure of petty commodity production
- 8 Mercantilism and the evolution of ‘traditional’ society
- 9 The emergence of petty commodity production
- 10 Conclusions: The concept of a neo-colonial social formation
- Bibliography
- Glossary of Minangkabau terms
- Index
- CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY
8 - Mercantilism and the evolution of ‘traditional’ society
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Lists of maps, figures and tables
- Preface
- Map
- 1 Introduction
- 2 The internal and the external in a Minangkabau village: an introduction to the world of the concrete
- 3 Adat, kinship and marriage: the constitution of the subsistence community
- 4 Agriculture and subsistence: the reproduction of the subsistence community
- 5 Commodity production in the village economy: the case of blacksmithing
- 6 Occupation, class and the peasant economy
- 7 The structure of petty commodity production
- 8 Mercantilism and the evolution of ‘traditional’ society
- 9 The emergence of petty commodity production
- 10 Conclusions: The concept of a neo-colonial social formation
- Bibliography
- Glossary of Minangkabau terms
- Index
- CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY
Summary
The literature on Minangkabau is, with respect to the question of the development of a commercial peasant economy, very similar to the writings of many modernisation theorists. The contemporary situation is usually envisaged as the result of the disintegration of a traditional society subject to the influence in this century of a Western market economy. Gough, in a survey of the impact of Western contact on ‘traditional’ matrilineal societies including Minangkabau, argues that ‘economic changes brought about by contact with Western industrial nations’ result in the disintegration of matrilineal groups: ‘In their place, the elementary family emerges as the key kinship group…’ (in Schneider and Gough, 1962, p. 631). Schrieke (1955), Josselin de Jong (1957) and Maretin (1961) all take up a similar position, i.e. that the commercial pressures of Western contact have served to dissolve traditional matrilineal bonds, led to the emergence of the nuclear family and promoted the development of an indigenous market economy. These commercial pressures were, it is maintained, experienced in Minangkabau at the beginning of this century, ‘the time of radical changes in the traditional way of life’ (Maretin, 1961, p. 173).
Implied in this approach is not only an inaccurate conception of pre-twentieth-century Minangkabau history, but also a misleading continuist view of social change and the development of capitalism. Western contact, primarily through the impact of the market, leads to a dissolution of tribal society producing a commercialised peasantry, a development which is in itself only a transitional step in the development of capitalism.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Minangkabau Social FormationsIndonesian Peasants and the World-Economy, pp. 151 - 171Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1980