brill jan 2010 (155 risultati)

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - No detailed description available for 'Under Construction'.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - The Baltic philosopher Vasily Sesemann (1884-1963), rooted in the Classics and influenced but not dominated by Kant, Herder, Bergson, Husserl, and Lossky, was a first-rate scholar in the fields of aesthetics, epistemology, logic, and history of philosophy. But he is still relatively unknown internationally because he wrote mostly in Lithuanian and some of his many works are only now being translated into English. This successor volume to his Aesthetics collects eight noteworthy essays, ranging from the scholarly to the popular, on aesthetics, aesthetic education, national culture, and theory of knowledge. They reveal a sympathetic and responsive mind equally at home in Ancient Greek and modern French, German, and Russian philosophy; and capable both of untendentiously expounding their dominant ideas and fruitfully anticipating newer developments even as the latter began to take shape in early-to-mid-20th-century Western European philosophy. Hallmarks of Sesemann's thought are the Heraclitean preference for becoming (dynamism, change) over being (stasis, timelessness) and the idea that any culture, in order to survive and grow, must be intellectually deep and open to foreign influences. This insight has crucial relevance to the debates about multiculturalism today.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - What was it like to be a woman scientist battling the 'old boy's' network during the 1960s and 1970s Neena Schwartz, a prominent neuroendocrinologist at Northwestern University, tells all. She became a successful scientist and administrator at a time when few women entered science and fewer succeeded in establishing independent laboratories. She describes her personal career struggles, and those of others in academia, as well as the events which lead to the formation of the Association of Women in Science, and Women in Endocrinology, two national organizations, which have been successful in increasing the numbers of women scientists and their influence in their fields. The book intersperses this socio-political story with an account of Schwartz's personal life as a lesbian and a description of her research on the role of hormones in regulating reproductive cycles. In a chapter titled 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell,' she examines the 'evidence' from a scientist's point of view for the hormonal and genetic theories for homosexuality. Other chapters provide advice on mentoring young scientists and a discourse on why it matters to all of us to have more women doing and teaching science. She also describes the process of putting together an interdisciplinary Center on Reproductive Science at Northwestern, which brought together basic and clinical scientists in an internationally recognized program of research and practice.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - 'The authors argue that queer, black, brown, and foreign bodies, and the so-called threats they represent, such as immigration reform and same-sex marriage, have been effectively linked with terrorism. These awful conflations. are enduring and help to explain the contradictions of contemporary U.S. politics. We are far from a post post-9/11 world.' Ronald R. Sundstrom, Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy, The University of San Francisco, United States 'If you want to understand how a new biopolitics of citizenship is containing bodies of the nation by re-inscribing sex and race into it and how this new biopolitics is being resisted you must read this book.' Engin F. Isin, Professor, Department of Politics and International Studies, The Open University, United Kingdom.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - In 'old-style' Central Javanese wayang, still known to many shadow-puppet performers and musicians in Java today, the male dhalang and his primary accompanist, usually a female gender player, are gendered embodiments of a Javanese aesthetic that has its origins in early Java. Analysis of the musical tradition known as 'female style' grimingan--melodies played on the gender as the puppeteer sings, narrates or describes a scene--makes it possible to 'listen back' to and reconstruct aesthetics for Javanese performance that can be felt in literary sources as early as the 12th century and that has endured into the present through cultural and political upheaval and globalised change during the colonial and postcolonial periods. Ethnomusicologist Sarah Weiss, herself a gamelan musician who has directed ensembles in Australia and the United States over many years, examines for the first time the musical practices, concepts, stories, changing historical circumstances, and myths that have shaped 'female-style' gender playing into a uniquely significant mode of artistic practice.This study is the first large-scale treatment of gender issues in Indonesian music. Integrating the analysis of gender and music with that of aesthetics, this study of the musical synergy between the puppeteer and his female accompanist describes the ways in which shifting gender constructions have helped to shape and change Central Javanese music and theatre performance practice while throwing new light on the history of Javanese gender relations and culture, as well as on the aesthetics of Central Javanese shadow-puppet theatre.PLEASE NOTE that the accompanying CD-ROM is no longer available due to the incompatibility with current file formats.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - The title of the present study refers to the fact that Apollinaire consistently worked at the cutting edge of modern aesthetics. The volume seeks to rehabilitate four experimental genres in particular that have received relatively little attention. The first chapter examines a charming artist's book entitled The Bestiary, which features illustrations by Raoul Dufy. The second is concerned with a group of poems that celebrate ordinary, everyday life. The next chapter considers Apollinaire's little-known debt to children's rhymes. The final chapter discusses an avant-garde drama that was destined to play a key role in the evolution of modern French theater. This book will be of interest to anyone interested in avant-garde aesthetics. It will appeal not only to scholars of twentieth-century poetry but also to devotees of modern art and modern theater.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - Job Jindo applies recent studies in cognitive science and explores how we can view metaphor as the very essence of poetic prophecy-namely, metaphor as an indispensable mode to communicate prophetic insight.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - Exiles cross borders, become non-mainstream individuals and break through barriers of thought and experience. Forced or chosen detachment can lead to originality of vision, awareness of simultaneous dimensions - in short a writing that challenges boundaries of genre, monolingualism and national literatures.The writers of the Balkan (Slavic) diaspora offer narratives of critical reflection, strange fusions and unions, representative of the new cultural identities of contemporary Europe.This volume presents an interesting combination of original writer's essays (by Tzveta Sofronieva, Goran Stefanovski, Dubravka Ugresic) and academic discussions on the function of such narratives, seeking answers to a number of academic questions, related to the construction of the Self in processes of cultural translation/transmission.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - In 1905, the Tilburg Missionaries of the Sacred Heart established their first mission post among the Marind Anim on the southwest coast of New Guinea. These Dutch missionaries were to witness the swift and dramatic demise of an ancient cultural tradition. They recorded its intricate cosmology, complex initiation ceremonies, spectacular art and intensive headhunting in writing and photographs. 'They are veritable human beings, sensible beings, with a delightful language, unwritten literature, and an appreciation for all that is good and beautiful,' one missionary reported. 'How low, how unfathomably low these people here have stooped, [.] disgusting, [.] animals are more estimable,' another wrote. Dismay and fascination, suppression and research went hand in hand. The author was granted permission to publish the remarkable photographs of the Sacred Heart congregation's archive. With its amply documented photographs, Headhunters from the swamps is a fascinating resource for anyone with an interest in the history and culture of New Guinea.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - The Kakawin Ramayana, arguably the oldest Old Javanese epic text in Indic metres (circa 9th century AD), holds a unique position in the literary heritage of Indonesia. The poem has retained a remarkable vitality through the centuries in the Archipelago, inspiring many forms of artistic expression not only in the domain of literature but also in the visual and performing arts, from the reliefs of the majestic Central Javanese temples to modern puppet-show performances.Displaying a virtuoso array of metrical patterns, the Kakawin Ramayana is among the very few Old Javanese texts for which a specific Sanskrit prototype has been identified, namely the difficult poem Bhattikavya (circa 7th century AD), itself a version of the great Ramayana epic ascribed to Valmiki (circa 6th-1st century BC). The Old Javanese poem is an original and skillful work of re-elaboration that documents a fascinating interaction between cultural elements of the Sanskritic tradition with those indigenous to the Javanese setting.The studies included in this volume, written by experts in a wide range of disciplines, focus on disparate aspects of the Kakawin Ramayana and the constellation of cultural phenomena revolving around it, providing the reader with a key to the understanding of the rich Old Javanese textual heritage and the transcultural intellectual dynamics that contributed to shaping the cultural heritage of Indonesia up to the present.With contributions from Andrea Acri, Helen Creese, Arlo Griffiths, Thomas Hunter, Roy Jordaan, Lydia Kieven, Cecelia Levin, Wesley Michel, Stuart Robson and Adrian Vickers, this book is the result of a workshop held at the KITLV branch in Jakarta on May 26th-28th 2009 and supported by the Australia-Netherlands Research Collaboration, the École Française d'Extrême-Orient, and the Stichting J. Gonda Fonds.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - This book focuses on the aftermath of World War II in Asia as described in a sobering and insightful history of two types of redress: compensation for material war damage and restitution of looted property. Japanese Army units and citizens stole goods while shelling and bombardment by all sides destroyed factories, offices and residential neighbourhoods. How were these cases of material damage and loss to be rectified, and who was to rectify them What financial means and legal precedents were there to fall back on at a time of decolonization, independence struggle, and shifting alliances on the brink of the Cold War The politics of redress makes an important contribution to the study of law and society in Southeast Asia. It lays bare the complex web of interconnections between politics, law and economy from a comparative historical perspective.The translation of this book was funded by the Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO, Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research).

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - This study, based on a lifelong involvement with New Guinea, compares the culture of the Kamoro (18,000 people) with that of their eastern neighbours, the Asmat (40,000), both living on the south coast of West Papua, Indonesia. The comparison, showing substantial differences as well as striking similarities, contributes to a deeper understanding of both cultures.Part I looks at Kamoro society and culture through the window of its ritual cycle, framed by gender. Part II widens the view, offering in a comparative fashion a more detailed analysis of the socio-political and cosmo-mythological setting of the Kamoro and the Asmat rituals. These are closely linked with their social formations: matrilineally oriented for the Kamoro, patrilineally for the Asmat. Next is a systematic comparison of the rituals. Kamoro culture revolves around cosmological connections, ritual and play, whereas the Asmat central focus is on warfare and headhunting. Because of this difference in cultural orientation, similar, even identical, ritual acts and myths differ in meaning. The comparison includes a cross-cultural, structural analysis of relevant myths.This publication is of interest to scholars and students in Oceanic studies and those drawn to the comparative study of cultures.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - What are fear, horror, and terror This question, central to our endeavour, cannot be answered by one unified voice. It always cracks, falters, and fades before it can fully enunciate its proclamation. We, the authors, know this and have planned accordingly. This volume presents meditations on this issue springing from the four corners of intellectual inquiry. Each author provides a distinctive approach with which to address the issue at hand. Literary theory, psychoanalysis, media studies, political science, and many more disciplines occupy the same space between the covers of this book. We hope that through the cacophony of our diversity we will fill in the inevitable gaps when our voices fall short.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - An interdisciplinary and transcultural study of comedy in a pan-European perspective that include East, West, and Southern European examples. These range from humour in Polish poetry via jokes about Italian migrants in English-speaking TV commercials to Turkish comedy, literature and cartoons in Germany, Turkish, Surinamese, Iranian and Moroccan literary humour in the Netherlands, Beur humour in many media in France, and Asian humour in literature, film, and TV series in Great Britain. The volume is prefaced and informed by contemporary postcolonial theories that show humour not as an essential quality of each particular culture or as a common denominator of humanity, but as a complex structure of dialogue, conflict, and sometimes resolution. The volume is of interest for students and scholars of Comparative Literature, Cultural Studies, and Media Studies as well as for students and experts in the cultures and literatures that are covered in the collection of essays. It is relevant for courses on globalisation, migration, and integration.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - Explosive Narratives: Terrorism and Anarchy in the Works of Emile Zola explores the genealogy of modern day terrorism through a close study of the anarchist figure in three of Emile Zola's novels: Germinal, Paris, and Travail. The study links the crisis of representation registered at the end of the 19th century with the rise of terrorism embodied in the bomb-throwing anarchist. It thereby traces Zola's evolving thoughts on anarchy from the terrorist to the humanitarian reformer, from class warfare to a peaceful artisan commune, from a naturalist depiction of an elusive reality to a utopian writing fleeing the contingencies of the historical. The volume brings together aesthetic, political, urban, and scientific debates of Belle Epoque France and it will thus be of great interest not only to Zola scholars, but also to students of late 19th-century politics and art.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - Impotence and Making in Samuel Beckett's Trilogy is situated at the intersection of the aesthetic, socio-political and theoretical construction of being and not-being; it is about making the self, making others, and making words, set against being unable to make the self, others and words. Concentrating on Samuel Beckett's prose works, though also focusing on some of his dramatic works, the book aims to problematize the categories of 'impotence' and 'making' by showing Beckett's quasi-deconstructive treatment of them as seen through his narrators' images of being unable to make self, other creatures and words (impotence), along with his narrators' images of making self, other creatures and words (making). By demonstrating that his narrators, while being impotent, nevertheless gestate and produce new entities from their bodies in the same way as a mother does a child, the book aims to reveal how, for Beckett's narrators, creativity in its widest sense is envisaged.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - Indigenous Apostles tells the story of conversion to Catholicism and birth of new ecclesial community with the arrival of Vatican II mission in Santa Maria Magdalenas, a Tzotzil-speaking village in Mexico's Maya highlands. In the state of Chiapas, the nation's erratic advance into the global market beginning in the 1970s drove landless young Magdaleneros to search for alternatives to peasant peonage. A few became catechists in the Diocese of San Cristóbal de Las Casas. Cognitive entailments of newly-acquired biblical literacy warranted the subsequent critique of local Tzotzil tradition - costumbre - through which they reclaimed their ancestral land. This ethnographic account of their dialectical passage from the way of the ancestors to communion with the world Catholic Church demonstrates local constraints on liberation mission strategy and the power of indigenous agency in their own evangelization. It also points to the salience of place and everyday productive practice for native construction of local theology in the context of the new globalization.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - Positive Peace is a scholarly and creative compilation of articles on peace education, nonviolence and social change. Arun Gandhi (grandson of Mahatma Gandhi) sets the scene in his introduction with the challenge that positive peace is both a resisting of the physical violence of war and the passive violence of the psychological structures that lead to conflict. Peace education rises to meet that challenge. In twelve chapters, philosophers and educators look at a variety of topics from Gandhian nonviolence, to pragmatic conflict solving; hope and the ethics of belief, to the way we use violent language; mothering and peace activism, to multiculturalism and peace. Recurring themes are: pragmatic nonviolence, the ethics of care as an antidote to violence, and hope in a violent world. Chapters on the use of film in peace education, song and nonviolent activism, and teaching art history and peace, demonstrate pragmatic possibilities for would-be peace educators. Arun Gandhi in his introduction asks, 'For generations human beings have strived to attain peace, but with little or no success. . Why is peace so illusive Is it unattainable Are humans incapable of living in peace ' This book suggests that peace education has a large part to play. It is an important attempt to begin to meet the challenge.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - Amidst the cacophony of claims made about forgiveness, this book serves to aid in an effort to put 'forgiveness in perspective.' Marieke Smit and Christopher R. Allers have collected here ten essays written by twelve authors from around the world and across the disciplinary spectrum including philosophers, practitioners, psychologists, literary theorists, and prison chaplains. All the essays offer a perspective on forgiveness and put forgiveness in perspective whether by tracing what forgiveness 'is,' how this religious inheritance is worked out in our secularizing societies, how forgiveness works in our quotidian experience, or a particular manifestation in a particular context such as marriage, prison, or after an abortion, to name a few. The multi-disciplinary character of this book provides a multi-disciplinary appeal as well as a resource to enlarge one's own perspective on this perplexing, enigmatic, and wonderfully complex concept of forgiveness.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - This book provides an overview of different ethical views on animal experimentation. Special attention is given to the production and experimental use of genetically modified animals. It proposes a middle course between those positions that are very critical and those very positive. This middle course implies that animal experiments originating in vital human research interests are commonly justified, provided that animal welfare is taken seriously. Some animal experiments are not acceptable, since the expected human benefit is too low and the animal suffering too severe. This position is supported by an argument from species care according to which we have special obligations to our children and other humans due to special relations. The book tries to bridge the gap between animal ethics and animal welfare science by discussing various conceptions of animal welfare: function-centered, feeling-based, and those focusing on natural living. The theoretical starting-point is 'imaginative casuistry.' This approach stresses the role of moral imagination and metaphor in ethical deliberation, accepts a plurality of values, and recognizes the importance of case-by-case balancing. In the discussion of genetically modified animals, both intrinsic ethical concerns and animal welfare concerns are addressed.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - This book aims to present how emergent media penetrate all fields of human cultural activity. The content of this volume reflects theoretical and practical discussions on cultural issues influenced by increased adoption of information and communication technologies. New media and Web 2.0 raise increasing attention of academics from wide range of disciplines. Papers, included in this volume, cover a coherent choice of topics selected with respect to the actual state of inter-disciplinary debate on emerging media.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - In September 2006, when 45 scholars and activists from 19 countries around the world gathered amid the spires and gargoyles of Oxford for a conference entitled, 'Hope: Probing the Boundaries,' complex dialectics of hope and despair circulated through the meeting rooms by day, and the conversations in quadrangles and pubs late into the night. On the one hand, the remarkable social and political openings and possibilities of the previous decade, from Berlin to Johannesburg, Leningrad to the Lacandon jungle of Chiapas, seemed to be ever-more constrained by political and economic forces as brutal as those that preceded them, but, on the other hand, there were (and are) the Zapatistas and a thousand other movements persisting in the belief that, to echo the mantra of the World Social Forums, 'another world is possible,' and there we were from around the world, to do the work of theorizing, describing, and enacting the persistence of individual and collective hope despite grim realities. The essays developed from that conference and collected here reflect both the theoretical and philosophical underpinnings and the cultural and political praxes of 'hope against hope.'.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - Slender and yet panoramic in scope, historical and yet relevant to current-day concerns, Laura Esquivel's Like Water for Chocolate has provoked from the outset a divergent range of critical opinions. The essays in A Recipe for Discourse: Perspectives on Like Water for Chocolate represent the novel's problematic nature in their many diverse approaches, perspectives that are certain to awaken in the reader new ways of approaching the text while challenging old ones. This volume's 'dialogue' format, in which essays are grouped thematically, is particularly effective in presenting such a diverse range of viewpoints. The reader will find herein lively discussion on LWFC as it relates to such themes as gastronomy, superstition, mythology, folklore, the Mexican Revolution, magical realism, female identity, alteration, and matriarchy/ patriarchy. It is the editor's hope that a diverse readership, from undergraduate students to seasoned scholars, will find this volume engaging and enlightening.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - Note: This title was out of print. Re-issued in its original form in 2010.The first comprehensive history of Balinese politics from the middle of the 17th century till the end of Dutch colonial rule in 1942. Based on extensive research in colonial archives in the Netherlands and Indonesia, a variety of Balinese historical narratives, interviews with former colonial officials as well as many Balinese, and fieldwork data concerning temples, rituals, and oral histories.Schulte Nordholt traces Balinese history by means of a collective biography of the Mengwi dynasty, describing the rise to power, the formation and expansion of a negara, the subsequent crises, and its fall in 1891. Between 1906 and 1942 Bali became part of the Dutch colonial state and experienced bureaucratic rule and processes that resulted in a 'traditionalization' of Balinese kingship and culture. The story of the Mengwi dynasty under colonial rule ended in a conflict between two factions. This conflict had an unexpected but devastating outcome.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - The Stranger-Kings of Sikka is the first monographic study of an origin myth and history of an indigenous eastern Indonesian state and the first contemporary ethnography of the Ata Sikka of Flores. The book will be of interest to anthropologists, ethnologists of Austronesia, historians and political scientists whose interests include Southeast Asia.During the 1920s, in the regency of Sikka on the island of Flores, D.D. Pareira Kondi and A. Boer Pareira, two notable men among the first literate Sikkanese, began writing about the history and culture of their people. Among their many surviving manuscripts are two long works on the origin of the rajas who ruled Sikka until the end of the rajadom in the 1950s. The author of this book uncovered the manuscripts in 1994 and found among them versions of the myth of origin of the Sikkanese rajas, an epic tale of immigrant-kings that was lost to living memory and as oral tradition by the 1970s. Drawing on Boer's and Kondi's texts and his own field research in the regency of Sikka, Lewis presents an abridged English translation of the origin myth and constructs a history of the Sikkanese rajas and the organization of the society they ruled.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - This study centres on the fiction of the New Zealand writer Yvonne du Fresne, the descendant of Danish and Danish-Huguenot families who emigrated to New Zealand in the late-nineteenth century and settled in the Manawatu area. It explores how memories of the past haunt generations of immigrants, and how issues of language, politics, and social norms live on through generations, affecting the formation of new identities and homes. Is it only, as with Astrid in Motherland, that by returning to our roots we can finally feel that we are at home in more than one country As Lauris Edmond writes, du Fresne's work is a tapestry of the past and present, storying immigrant life. Flitting in and out of the past is shown to be one way of coming to terms with the present and of understanding the importance of home, as is evident in The Book of Ester and Frédérique, both centering on the manifold, complex European cultural traditions that were often overlooked in settler countries. Another is to be an inquisitive spy on the land like the child narrator, Astrid Westergaard, in du Fresne's magnificent stories, many of them originally radio broadcasts, which depict life in a small Danish community in the Manawatu in the 1930s, often in a humorous and ironic manner.Through her portrayal of fictional Scandinavian immigrants, du Fresne throws light on a relatively neglected area in New Zealand studies. Reading her writing against its reception shows how it raises issues of cultural colonization, stereotyping, and difference; the consequences of migration and exile taken up are, however, equally relevant in our global society of today, and expressive of transculturation in the globalized present.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - Tactical Silence in the Novels of Malika Mokeddem, an inquiry into how silence may be used to challenge a gender-differentiated power system, relies on Michel de Certeau's model of strategies and tactics applied to a postcolonial assessment of both Algerian literature in French as well as Algerian women's stereotyped silence. This book analyzes the relationship between tactical silence and freedom in the lives of Mokeddem's female protagonists in all her novels, published between 1990 and 2008. The notion of deliberate silence also lends itself to a discussion of the reader's efforts in comprehending Mokeddem's textual silences as well as her exclusion of certain topics from her writings.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - This volume sheds twenty-first-century light on the charged interactions between memory, mourning and landscape. A century after Freud, our understanding of how memory and mourning function continues to be challenged, revised and refined. Increasingly, scholarly attention is paid to the role of situation in memorialising, whether in commemorations of individuals or in marking the mass deaths of late modern warfare and disasters. Memory, Mourning, Landscape offers the nuanced insights provided by interdisciplinarity in nine essays by leading and up-and-coming academics from the fields of history, museum studies, literature, anthropology, architecture, law, geography, theology and archaeology. The vital visual element is reinforced with an illustrated coda by a practising artist. The result is a unique symbiotic dialogue which will speak to scholars from a range of disciplines.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - Architecture and Philosophy: New Perspectives on the Work of Arakawa and Madeline Gins is a collection of essays on the work of artist-architects Arakawa and Madeline Gins and in particular their book Architectural Body (2000). The essays approach their cutting edge and ambitious project to design 'an architecture against death' from various angles and disciplines including aesthetics, architecture, linguistics, philosophy. The papers retrace the place of Architectural Body in the aesthetic landscape of art at the turn of the 21st century and assess the utopian stance of their work.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - Deze nieuwe beschrijving van het wordingsproces van de Indonesische staat gaat ervan uit, dat die staat zijn ontstaan niet alleen dankt aan de nationale vrijheidsbeweging maar ook aan de Nederlandse heerschappij waar die beweging zich tegen keerde. Daarom gaat het boek uitdrukkelijk in op voornaamste ontwikkelingen van het door Nederland in de kolonie Nederlands-Indië gevoerde beleid. Hier sluiten hoofdstukken op aan over de Indonesische nationale beweging en over de Japanse bezetting van de kolonie in 1942-1945.Die bezetting maakte de weg vrij voor de proclamatie van de Indonesische onafhankelijkheid en de stichting van de Republiek Indonesië in augustus 1945. Het daarop ontbrande conflict tussen deze Republiek en Nederland kwam in 1949 tot een onvolledige oplossing, waarna het geschil over West-Irian nog tot een dertien jaar durende nasleep leidde. Meer dan de helft van het boek is gewijd aan een kroniek van dit conflict en zijn nasleep. Daarbij gaat ook ruime aandacht uit naar denkbeelden en sentimenten die het beleid hebben beïnvloed.