The Banana Tree At The Gate

The "Hikayat Banjar," a seventeenth-century native court chronicle from Southeast Borneo, characterizes the irresistibility of natural resource wealth to outsiders as "the banana tree at the gate." Michael R. Dove employs this phrase as a root metaphor to frame the history of resource relations between the indigenous peoples of Borneo and the world system, standing on its head the prevailing view of resource-poor and economically marginal tropical forest dwellers. In analyzing production and trade in forest products, pepper, and especially natural rubber, Dove shows that the involvement of Borneo's native peoples in commodity production for global markets is ancient and highly successful. This success is based on the development of a "dual" household economy, with distinct subsistence- and market-oriented sectors, which has historically made these "smallholders" extremely competitive with the large-scale, heavily capitalized, state-supported plantation sector. Dove sheds new light on the nature of smallholders and in particular their relationship with the global economic system. He demonstrates that processes of globalization began millennia ago and that they have been more diverse and less teleological than often thought. His analysis replaces the image of the isolated tropical forest community that needs to be helped into the global system with the reality of communities that have been so successful and competitive that they have had to fight political elites to keep from being forced out. The ubiquitous but historically inaccurate emphasis on isolation and resource-poverty disguises that the overweening characteristic of these communities is their political marginality and that their greatest want is not to be uplifted economically but to be empowered politically.

The “Hikayat Banjar,” a native court chronicle from Borneo, characterizes the irresistibility of natural resource wealth to outsiders as “the banana tree at the gate.” Michael R. Dove employs this phrase as a root metaphor to frame the history of resource relations between the indigenous peoples of Borneo and the world system. In analyzing production and trade in forest products, pepper, and especially natural rubber, Dove shows that the involvement of Borneo’s native peoples in commodity production for global markets is ancient and highly successful and that processes of globalization began millennia ago. Dove’s analysis replaces the image of the isolated tropical forest community that needs to be helped into the global system with the reality of communities that have been so successful and competitive that they have had to fight political elites to keep from being forced out.

The “Hikayat Banjar”, a seventeenth-century native court chronicle from Southeast Borneo, characterizes the irresistibility of natural resource wealth to outsiders as “the banana tree at the gate”. Michael R. Dove employs this phrase as a root metaphor to frame the history of resource relations between the indigenous peoples of Borneo and the world system, standing on its head the prevailing view of resource-poor and economically marginal tropical forest dwellers. Based on analyses of production and trade in forest products, pepper and, especially, natural rubber, this study shows that the involvement of Borneo's native peoples in commodity production for global markets is ancient and highly successful. This success is based on the development of a 'dual' household economy, with distinct subsistence- and market-oriented sectors, which has historically made these smallholders extremely competitive with the large-scale, heavily capitalized, state supported plantation sector. This study sheds new light on the nature of 'smallholders' and in particular their relationship with the global economic system. It shows that processes of globalization began a millennia ago and that they have been more diverse, and less teleological, than often thought. This study replaces the image of the isolated tropical forest community that needs to be helped into the global system with the reality of communities that have been so successful and competitive that they have had to fight political elites to keep from being forced out. The ubiquitous but historically inaccurate emphasis on isolation and resource-poverty disguises the fact that the overweening characteristic of these communities is their political marginality and that their greatest want is not to be uplifted economically but to be empowered politically.

Explores the role of technology in the larger political and economic fabric of Southeast Asia. In Technology in Southeast Asian History, Suzanne Moon explores the profound entanglement of technology with Southeast Asian politics, social life, economics, and culture over its long history. Moon offers a unique framework for understanding the place of technology in this region and its pivotal role in the emergence of the modern technological world. Synthesizing scholarship from the fields of history, archaeology, and anthropology, Moon examines and links technological stories from prehistory to the mid-twentieth century. She uses analytics in the history of technology—such as circulation, coproduction, and assemblage—to highlight the processes and evolving patterns of technological dynamism that characterize the region. Drawing on research focused on specific technologies, including temple construction, rice agriculture, weaving, and shipbuilding, Moon investigates the interconnectedness of these technologies within the larger political and economic fabric of Southeast Asian history. In contrast with portrayals of Southeast Asia as technologically deficient, Moon demonstrates the richness of this region's technological cultures. She rejects polarizing binaries such as traditional and modern or indigenous and foreign, instead underscoring Southeast Asia's role as a dynamic cocreator of the modern technological world. Technology has contributed to the creation and disruption of social and political orders; shaped engagements across barriers of distance, culture, and language; and produced and reproduced diverse cultures in this region. This narrative of technological change offers students, scholars, and readers critical new perspectives on both technological history and Southeast Asian history.

Quiet your spirit and settle in each day for some intimate, healing, and reviving time with the Lord. Along with your Bible and prayer journal, bring Dr. Kim Pensinger’s latest offering, From Under the Banana Tree, a collection of 365 daily inspirations gleaned from personal experience and a passionate searching of God’s Word. From the hills of Vermont to the streets of Argentina, Dr. Kim shares on the faithfulness, love, and sovereignty of our great God. Not your average devotional, From Under the Banana Tree also contains moments of humour and succulent recipes that will delight family and friends. These readings will inspire you to step out in faith, try something new, and rest in God’s care and compassion for you. Each topic is developed in detail, with lessons and tips to help you apply the truth of scripture to your life on a daily basis. Although Dr. Kim speaks directly to church leaders at times, this devotional will be a blessing to pastors, missionaries, and laity alike. As your spirit is renewed, you will develop the strength and the vision to share God’s love, truth, and Good News with those around you.

The pontianak, a terrifying female vampire ghost, is a powerful figure in Malay cultures, as loved and feared in Southeast Asia as Dracula is in the West. In animist tradition, she is a woman who has died in childbirth, and her vengeful return upsets gender norms and social hierarchies. The pontianak first appeared on screen in late colonial Singapore in a series of popular films that combine indigenous animism and transnational production with the cultural and political force of the horror genre. In Alluring Monsters, Rosalind Galt explores how and why the pontianak found new life in postcolonial Southeast Asian film and society. She argues that the figure speaks to a series of intersecting anxieties: about femininity and modernity, globalization and indigeneity, racial and national identities, the relationship of Islam to animism, and heritage and environmental destruction. The pontianak offers abundant feminist potential, but her disruptive gender politics also unsettle queer and feminist film theories by putting them in dialogue with Malay epistemologies. Reading the pontianak as a precolonial figure of disturbance within postcolonial cultures, Galt reveals the importance of cinema to histories and theories of decolonization. From the horror films made by Cathay Keris and Shaw Studios in the 1950s and 1960s to contemporary film, television, art, and fiction in Malaysia and Singapore, the pontianak in all her media forms sheds light on how postcolonial identities are both developed and contested. In tracing the entanglements of Malay feminist animisms with postcolonial visual cultures, Alluring Monsters reveals how a “pontianak theory” can reshape understandings of anticolonial aesthetics and world cinema.

Never intended for anyone’s eyes except parents, these letters are now compiled by the author for her adult children to read and relive the life they loved growing up in Zaire, Africa (Democratic Republic of Congo). Stored by her mother-in-law in old film boxes for three decades, they serve as a record of daily life in a family learning to survive and thrive and do ministry in a developing country. Daily water and electricity and regular mail became luxuries to celebrate in prayer and praise. Often considered by others to be a unique life, in reading you may encounter the unique, but guaranteed are also some boring details that were not omitted in the copying process so the children would understand what life involved for their parents. Whether unique, boring or difficult, these were deemed a privilege by the author and her husband who regard themselves as simply obedient to a call to that life out of their deep love for Jesus, their Lord and Savior who loved them and gave his life for them.

A History of Architecture and Trade draws together essays from an international roster of distinguished and emerging scholars to critically examine the important role architecture and urbanism played in the past five hundred years of global trading, moving away from a conventional Western narrative. The book uses an alternative holistic lens through which to view the development of architecture and trade, covering diverse topics such as the coercive urbanism of the Dutch East India Company; how slavery and capitalism shaped architecture and urbanization; and the importance of Islamic trading in the history of global trade. Each chapter examines a key site in history, using architecture, landscape and urban scale as evidence to show how trade has shaped them. It will appeal to scholars and researchers interested in areas such as world history, economic and trade history and architectural history.