In Memoriam Masri Singarimbun (1931-1997)
By Frans Hüsken
Still full of plans for new research and busy preparing new publications, Masri Singarimbun, professor of anthropology at Gadjah Mada University Yogyakarta (Indonesia) passed away on 25 September 1997. For several months he had been undergoing treatment for a variety of leukaemia which many hoped he would survive but which finally proved to be fatal. His untimely death at the age of 66, leaves a void in both the Indonesian and the academic community in general as he was among the few Indonesian scholars with an international reputation.
Ever since he established the Population Studies Center at Gadjah Mada University in 1973, he is best known for his work in social demography, anthropology, and development studies. However, being the energetic and enthusiastic person he was, he was an interested observer and analyst of a wide range of social and academic issues. His early work focused on a classical socio-anthropological study of the Karo-Batak kinship system for which he earned his PhD at the Australian National University in 1966 (after having completed his BA in Education at Gadjah Mada in 1959). Subsequently he moved to demography at ANU's Research School for the Social Sciences, until he decided (in 1972) that after more than eleven years in Canberra he should return to his Alma Mater in Yogyakarta. There he became deeply involved in research on birth control and family planning in different regions of Indonesia. On that basis he acted as a critical adviser to the Indonesian government which at the time had engaged in a family planning programme in an all-out effort to solve the country's population problem. Masri's recommen-dations were not always received favourably as he insisted upon winning the co-operation and acceptance of the programme from local communities, while government agencies were obsessed by target figures and quick successes, and in doing so easily resorted to political pressure on the population.
His critical stance also brought him to draw attention to the problem of rural poverty and through a long-term research project, initiated together with David Penny in 1969 in the village of Sriharjo (in the southern part of Yogyakarta province), he was able to show that official figures on poverty eradication in Indonesia were generally overly optimistic. His material on Sriharjo, a village to which he returned many times, provides a Fundgrube for the social history of rural Java in the 20th century.
Masri's return to Indonesia in 1972 marked not only the beginning of an impressive academic career but also the start of a highly successful research centre in which several generations of Indonesian social scientists received their intellectual training. The small building from which he started has grown into one of the academic centres at Gadjah Mada University with by far the best-equipped social science library and an open atmosphere where students, staff and (the many) visiting scholars from Indonesia and abroad meet. This congenial world has produced a large number of dedicated researchers who combine social commitment with scientific rigour and open minds. An equally large number of foreign researchers has benefited tremendously from the support and the infrastructure of the Population Studies Center providing them with the intellectual challenges and sharp discussions as well as relaxation from the pressures of fieldwork.
When in 1996, Masri retired from his chair at the GMU's Department of Anthropology, he remained active in the research projects of the Population Studies Center and in supervising theses. He was offered a new chair in research methodology at Atma Jaya University Yogyakar-ta, and kept on publishing on his research both through academic journals and (very widely) through his columns in the Indonesian press, commenting upon topics as varied as ethnicity, rural poverty, socio-linguistics, sexuality, and AIDS.
Thirty years after he earned his PhD in Canberra, the ANU offered him an honorary doctorate in 1996. Masri felt, of course, honoured by this sign of international recognition of his work, but he was surprised at the same time, not in the least because he, trained as an educationalist and anthropologist, and employed in departments of demography and economics, found himself to be a LlD in the end.
Masri Singarimbun, who is survived by his wife, Irawati, and three daughters, will be missed by his many friends and colleagues around the world.
[A complete bibliography of the writings of Masri Singarimbun can be found in: Agus Dwiyanto et al. (eds), Penduduk dan Pembangunan, Population Studies Center, Yogyakarta 1996, pp. 413-424]