Perfect order : recognizing complexity in Bali / J. Stephen Lansing.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Lansing, John Stephen.

Series:

Princeton Studies in Complexity

Princeton studies in complexity

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Balinese (Indonesian people)--Rites and ceremonies.

Balinese (Indonesian people).

Caste--Indonesia--Bali (Province).

Caste.

Rice--Irrigation--Indonesia--Bali (Province).

Rice.

Social systems.

Bali (Indonesia : Province)--Civilization.

Bali (Indonesia : Province).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (240 p.)

Edition:

Course Book

Place of Publication:

Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, c2006.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Along rivers in Bali, small groups of farmers meet regularly in water temples to manage their irrigation systems. They have done so for a thousand years. Over the centuries, water temple networks have expanded to manage the ecology of rice terraces at the scale of whole watersheds. Although each group focuses on its own problems, a global solution nonetheless emerges that optimizes irrigation flows for everyone. Did someone have to design Bali's water temple networks, or could they have emerged from a self-organizing process? Perfect Order--a groundbreaking work at the nexus of conservation, complexity theory, and anthropology--describes a series of fieldwork projects triggered by this question, ranging from the archaeology of the water temples to their ecological functions and their place in Balinese cosmology. Stephen Lansing shows that the temple networks are fragile, vulnerable to the cross-currents produced by competition among male descent groups. But the feminine rites of water temples mirror the farmers' awareness that when they act in unison, small miracles of order occur regularly, as the jewel-like perfection of the rice terraces produces general prosperity. Much of this is barely visible from within the horizons of Western social theory. The fruit of a decade of multidisciplinary research, this absorbing book shows that even as researchers probe the foundations of cooperation in the water temple networks, the very existence of the traditional farming techniques they represent is threatened by large-scale development projects.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1. Introduction

Chapter 2. Origins of Subaks and Water Temples

Chapter 3. The Emergence of Cooperation on Water Mountains

Chapter 4. Tyrants, Sorcerers, and Democrats

Chapter 5. Hieroglyphs of Reason

Chapter 6 Demigods at the Summit

Chapter 7 Achieving Perfect Order

Additional Publications from the Subak Research Projects

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 08. Jul 2019)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9786613923479

9781283611022

1283611023

9781400845866

1400845866

OCLC:

845246416