Agricultural Involution

Agricultural Involution: The Processes of Ecological Change in Indonesiais one of the most famous of the early works ofClifford Geertz. It principal thesis is that many centuries of intensifying wet-rice cultivation in Indonesia had produced greater social complexity without significant technological or political change, a process Geertz terms involution.Written for aUS-funded project on the local developmentsand following the modernization theory ofWalt Whitman Rostow, Geertz examines in this book the agricultural system inIndonesiaand its two dominant forms of agriculture,swidden and sawah. In addition to researching its agricultural systems, the book turns to an examination of their historical development. Of particular note is Geertzs discussion of what he famously describes as the process of agricultural involutionin Java, where both the external economic demands of the Dutch rulers and the internal pressures due to population growth led to intensification rather than change.