Leadership and Social Mobility in a Southeast Asian society: Minahasa, 1677-1983. By M.J.C. Schouten. VKI 179. Leiden: KITLV Press, 1998, 334 pp., bibliography, index. Reviewed by Sven Kosel, J.W.-Goethe University (Institute of Southeast Asian Studies), Frankfurt upon Main (Germany).

This book is based on Schouten's Ph.D. thesis submitted in 1993, which has been carefully revised and a host of details has been added. The book clearly benefits from the author's academic commitment to the Minahasa for already more than twenty years, as becomes obvious in her impressive knowledge of the historical sources. The massive work is packed with a wealth of information without the author ever being in danger of losing sight of her main line of argument.

The overriding themes of the study are leadership and the strategies used by Minahasans in order to achieve status in a society characterized by an egalitarian structure and ever-present competition. At the same time Schouten elegantly combines the diverse lines of inquiry of her previous publications, i.e. colonial administrative policy, headhunting, notions of spiritual potency, changes in subsistence and market economy, the roles of women, and ways of remembering the past through ancestors, to form a multi-faceted picture of the diverse aspects involved in questions of leadership.

The scope of the study covers the period of intensified European contacts since 1677 until completion of Schouten's fieldwork in 1983. The author manages to cope with such a vast material by organizing the book roughly chronologically while successively narrowing the focus from the whole of Minahasa to the Sonder area and specifically the village of Polandos. In general this methodologically sound and works very well, enabling the author to convey a lively picture of her fieldwork site. However some readers might regret that the part of the book dealing with the time since Indonesian independence and the ethnographic present, i.e. the 1980s, comprises only 60 pages of a total of 280 pages of plain text. The economic implications of clove-cultivation, which has been of foremost importance especially to the Sonder-region, have changed dramatically since Schouten's fieldwork ended in 1983; but the involvement of the Suharto family in the clove monopoly in the 1990s and the drastic drop of clove prices that followed go completely unmentioned.

This is a minor shortcoming though, because it is more than compensated by the meticulous comprehensiveness of the historical outline. Both parts cannot be separated, as it is the ingenious and consistent way in which Schouten combines these, that is the main quality of this book. Schouten convincingly demonstrates that in their pursuit of power and prestige Minahasans were always masters in coping with and benefiting from changes.

In the pre-contact period warfare and the accumulation of wealth for the sponsorship of potlatch-like feasts of merit were the primary roads to positions of leadership. Success in head-hunting raids and prosperity both testified that a person possessed and  emanated spiritual force (keter) and thereby could attract followers or even become a revered ancestor.

In the nineteenth century, Minahasan society was dramatically transformed.

Dutch colonial direct rule, coffee-cultivation, the rapid conversion of the Minahasans to protestant Christianity and their adoption of western modes of dress and life-style gave many observers the impression that traditional Minahasan culture had disappeared. But, as Schouten points out, Minahasans actively influenced these changes and where quick to make use of school education, official positions in the Dutch administration and success in the market economy as new roads to attain status. However the Dutch helped to make chieftainship quasi-hereditary, limited to a new elite.

In the course of the twentieth century and due to increasing integration into larger political and economic systems more and more Minahasans gained access to new opportunities. Besides the chiefs a new middle class of intellectuals, entrepreneurs, military personell and bureaucrats occupied new status categories. All these changes in leadership patterns still show the assiduous role of competition and social mobility as well as the persistence of traditional models.

Schouten clearly expresses that it is not her aim to formulate a general theory of leadership. Accordingly, when examining the rather central topic of spiritual force, she briefly mentions Kruyt's somewhat dated classic (Het animisme in den Indischen Archipel, ‘s-Gravenhage, 1906) as well as more recent works, but their virtues and flaws for the Minahasan case are not discussed. Instead, what makes this work interesting and important for readers other than those with a special interest in the Minahasa only, is the insightful way in which it combines historical and anthropological methods in order to examine the interplay of local and regional levels. Schouten shows how today's interpretations of the past influence the present.

This book is an outstanding contribution to the knowledge of an Indonesian outer-island region's culture and history. Due to its excellent comprehensiveness it is the single most important reference for the study of the Minahasa today and sets high standards for future studies of similar topics and scope in other Southeast Asian areas.