スマトラの村の20世紀--地域の歴史を描く (特集 地域研究の新地平)

Abstract

For the last sixteen years, I have been carrying out a longitudinal fieldwork at a Minangkabau community, which mainly relies on rice cultivation and rubber tapping for livelihood, in the Kuantan area of the province of Riau, Indonesia. Starting in late 1984, I have visited Koto Dalam (pseudonym) practically every year, sometimes for one and a half months at any given visit but oftentimes for a shorter stay. The research project, if it can be called that, has haphazardly and gradually taken its present form despite the facade of premeditation and good planning. Koto Dalam has a current population of about 3200 and consists of seven administrative villages. I have spent a total of over eleven months in the community from 1984 to the end of 2000. Tentatively, the fieldwork is expected to be continued until 2003 so that I will be able to observe and follow, as a more or less contemporary and in situ eye-witness, social changes in Koto Dalam over the twenty years during the turn of the century and at the same time conduct an oral-history-type research, above all, among village elders, in order to reconstruct a social history of the community which aims to cover the greater part of the twentieth century. In this attempt, it is my intention to always contextualize the community in the wider and multi-layered circles of "areas" such as Kuantan, Riau, Sumatra, Indonesia, and the world rubber market, and to understand Koto Dalam's social processes in its shifting interconnectedness with these areas. It is proposed that longitudinal fieldwork is an important method in area studies, given the rapid and often drastic social changes now experienced by developing countries as well as developed countries.