Alice Dewey

Professor Emeritus

Background
Research Interests
Publications
Courses Taught

Background:

B.A. (1950), M.A. (1955) and Ph.D. (1959) from Racliffe College, Harvard University.

I did my doctoral research in Java, Indonesia, in 1952-1954 and have been studying Javanese society ever since, with additional field work among the Maori of New Zealand (1959-60) and among the Javanese community in New Caldonia (1963-64).

I joined the anthropology faculty at the University of Hawai'i in 1963 and have been here ever since.

Research Interests:

Economic Anthropology, especially markets; social structure; peasant societies; social change; kinship; Javanese culture.

Selected Writings:

In preparation Traditional Powers for a Modern King: The Investiture of Sultan Hamengku Buwono X. In Guided by the Wahyu: The Yogyakarta Court in Modern Indonesia, edited by Mark Woodward and Nancy I. Cooper.

1993 Past Experiences and Problems in Implementing Programs in Poverty Alleviation. In A Review of Poverty Alleviation Efforts in Indonesia, with Michael Dove, N. Dwi retnandari, and Loekman Soetrisno, for BAPPENAS, Indonesia, pp. 103-135.

1988 Competition, Reciprocity and the Olympic Games. In The Olympics and East/West and South/North Exchange, edited by Kang Shin-pyo, John MacAloon and Roberto DaMatto. The Institute for Ethnological Studies, Hanyang University, pp. 529-537.

1985 Boundary and Batik: A Study of Ambiguous Categories. In Cultural Values and Human Ecology in Southeast Asia, edited by Karl L. Hutterer, A. Terry Rambo and George Lovelace. Michigan Papers on South and Southeast Asia, No. 27, University of Michigan Press.

1970 Ritual as a Mechanism for Urban Adaptation. Man 5:438-448.

1962 Trade and Social Control. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 92:177-190.

1962 Peasant Marketing in Java. N.Y.: Free Press.

Courses Taught:

Anth 150 Human Adaptation

The course starts with an examination of the principles of biological evolution and their application to changing human adaptations tracing the physical development especially the crucial increase in the brain and the resulting shift to a dependence on intelligence, tool use, and social cooperation as the essential factors in human survival. Archaeology traces the development of various adaptive styles of dealing with the environment and social and cultural anthropology provides ways of understanding living human cultures. A close study of selected cultures will attempt to clarify the logic of their economic, kinship, political, religious, etc. systems and their interaction and the way they guide people's lives and give meaning to their relationship with each other and with their environment. There are two mid-terms consisting of objective questions and brief essays, one covering physical anthropology and one archaeology, and a similar two hour final covering social and cultural anthropology.

Anth 416 Economic Anthropology

The course outlines the major issues in economic anthropology and attempts first to take theoretical concepts drawn from Formalist economics (land, labor, capital, maximizing, utility, risk, etc.) and rephrase them so that they are more suited to use in analyzing non-Western socio-economic systems. The Substantivist approach, associated with Karl Polanyi, will be analyzed and compared to the Formalist approach. The relationship between the economic systems and the society within which it is embedded will be dealt with. Examples will be drawn from a wide variety of societies from hunting and gathering, through modern times. The problems resulting from economic development will be discussed as they affect both Western and non-Westem societies.

Anth 446 Southeast Asian Cultures

The course will cover a representative sample of societies from both mainland and island Southeast Asia ranging from small-scale hunting and gathering societies through the level of chiefdoms, up to large scale complex kingdoms with peasants and elaborate court cultures and the relationships between these societies and the modern nations within which they have now been absorbed. The community structure, political and economic structure, the kinship system, and the religion, or often religions, of each society will be discussed. The prehistorical and historical background of the region will be dealt with briefly and the impact of more recent political and economic events on each society and its environment will be discussed.

Anth 620B Theory in Social/Cultural Anthropology: Kinship

The course will start with basic kinship units and show how they have been defined, and how they appear to operate in actual practice. The difference between unilineal and cognatic structures will be discussed, and the argument between the alliance theorists and descent theorists will be covered. The practical implication of a particular type of kinship system, or combination of systems, for the people in particular societies will be the focus. Also, the distortions introduced by models based on Western assumptions will be analyzed.

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