Dissertations on Borneo.

<http:/www2.library.unr.edu.dataworks/Borneo.edu>

For the past several years we have been developing an online bibliography of doctoral dissertations on Borneo. The project was initiated on behalf of the Borneo Research Council following discussions about how to make information contained in doctoral dissertations more widely available. While there was some initial interest in distributing digital versions of dissertations, this was abandoned in favor of developing an online bibliography. The intent was to collect and include basic bibliographic information, including author, title, year of acceptance, topic or field of study, and an abstract of contents and availability for as many dissertations involving Borneo as possible. The intent was also to provide information on an ongoing basis on dissertations in all fields of research and study accepted for doctoral degrees throughout the world that appeared to make substantial reference to Borneo as well as those that concerned the island exclusively. The bibliography currently contains more than 460 entries, most of which seem to be largely or wholly about Borneo in one way or another. The dissertation records can be listed in their entirety in alphabetical order by author or in order of their assigned numbers, or searched by using key words of an author's name, a dissertation title or an abstract. However, the databases from which most of our entries are drawn usually do not include an abstract for older dissertations--those completed before around 1980.

This article has two purposes. One is to publicize the website and database as a bibliographic resource for research and scholarship in all fields of knowledge concerning Borneo and to help to improve it by encouraging authors of dissertations (or anyone with knowledge about them) to submit bibliographic information concerning dissertations not yet listed, as well as corrections to existing records. The other purpose is to note patterns and trends in doctoral research in Borneo, including the numbers of completed dissertations submitted by decade through 2004, the universities at which dissertations have been completed, the topics or disciplines involved and the Western or Asian status of the authors of the dissertations. This information is presented in a series of tables and discussed in some detail. Since, as will be noted more fully below, the database of dissertations is hardly complete, the patterns and trends discussed are somewhat provisional. Nonetheless, they seem worth reporting at this point.

Dissertations on Borneo Over Time

It is clear from the overall number of dissertations that Borneo is a major geographical region for doctoral research and scholarship. However, this is a fairly recent development. While information about Borneo began to be reported in a substantial way toward the end of the first half of the 19th century, the early accounts were written by colonial scholars, travelers or early scientists who generally lacked graduate (or sometimes any) degrees. Many of these early scholars were either Dutch men with colonial or mission ties to the southern part of the island that formed part of the Netherlands Indies or British men with similar ties to Sarawak, Brunei or Sabah in the north. While the shift from the older forms of research to the newer may reflect the general increase in graduate (also referred to as postgraduate) research and education in Western countries (and then elsewhere) it also reflects the end of colonial rule in Borneo, though this did not bring an abrupt end to colonial research and scholarship, let alone to that linked to Christian mission activities.

The earliest dissertation record in the database dates to the first decade of the 20th century (although it cannot always be determined for certain that the early records are in fact of doctoral dissertations rather than master's theses), followed by a few entries each for the next several decades. Dissertations on Borneo do not begin to be common until the 1950s.

Since this time they have increased rapidly. The number of dissertation records in the bibliography for the 1960s is nearly three times the number for the 1950s, and this number more than doubles in the 1970s to a total of 59. In the 1980s the number increases at a more modest rate to 89 but the latter more than doubles in the 1990s to 194 records. The total of dissertation records currently available from 2000 to 2004 is 75, a number that will certainly increase as all dissertations for 2004 become available.

Dissertations on Borneo by Country

The dissertations now listed in the bibliography were submitted to schools, colleges and universities in seventeen countries. Here the record of information is probably very incomplete, not only in absolute terms but in proportional ones as well. The record of dissertations completed in the United States, the United Kingdom (and perhaps Canada) is probably complete, or nearly so, until 2004, but those for other countries are certainly not. While some dissertations records are listed for continental European countries, especially the Netherlands and Germany, many records are undoubtably missing. Outside of the US and the UK, the largest number of doctoral dissertations are listed for Australia, where research interest in Southeast Asia has been very strong (and more concentrated than elsewhere) for several or more decades, but even the relatively large number listed here is probably well below the actual number. We could speculate at greater length about the many countries for which there are no records of dissertations on Borneo but will refer only to Japan as a major omission. While some dissertations on Borneo do have Japanese authors all of these involve dissertations completed at universities in countries other than Japan. Time and resources allowing, we hope to develop strategies for adding dissertations from Japan and other countries not yet examined.

As shown in Table 2, the largest number of doctoral dissertations on Borneo in the bibliography have been completed at US institutions, followed by ones in the UK. While the large numbers of dissertations listed for these two countries are in part a reflection of the fuller bibliographic information noted above, it also reflects the overall number of doctoral programs in these two countries. In the case of the UK, the number of doctoral dissertations concerning Borneo may also to some extent reflect the former status of the northern Borneo countries of Sarawak, Sabah and Brunei as British colonies and their continuing educational ties that derive from this status. In the case of the US (which would probably continue to account for the largest number of doctoral dissertations involving Borneo even if fuller information on dissertations completed in other countries were included), there have been no such colonial or post-colonial ties with the island.

In some fields the number of dissertations on Borneo might reflect the economic value of various natural resources on or around the island, but such resources have probably not attracted greater research interest in the US than in other developed industrial countries. Although a tabulation of dissertation topics (presented and discussed below) by country has not been done (and would not be reliable beyond the US and UK at this point) it would probably not show a greater concentration of US dissertation research in topics of economic interest than in ones of little or no economic significance. Perhaps, as might be expected for research and scholarship in a very rich country, it might show the opposite.

Doctoral Dissertations at US and UK Universities, Colleges, and Schools

The information available concerning doctoral dissertations on Borneo completed in the US and UK is complete enough to warrant attention. This information is given in numerical terms in Tables 3 and 4 for each country respectively.

In the US, the 214 doctoral dissertations involving Borneo have been completed at 78 different degree-granting institutions including theological schools and seminaries as well as research universities. Five universities--led by Cornell which has given eighteen doctorates concerning Borneo--each account for eleven or more of the dissertations totaling sixty-five or thirty percent of all of the American dissertations. Most of these are schools that might have been expected to be leaders, either because they are universities that have long had doctoral programs in most fields or because they are universities that have had particular programs in Southeast Asia. Most Borneanist scholars, however, will be surprised to learn that twelve dissertations on Borneo have been completed at Southern Illinois University, although it probably won't surprise Borneanist researchers of education, for ten of these are in education. At the other extreme are the forty-four institutions at which only a single dissertation involving Borneo has been completed. These solo-dissertation places represent the broadest range of institutions, including five theology schools and seminaries.

The 147 UK dissertations involving Borneo were completed at thirty-three institutions, a proportionally smaller number (and range) than in the US. Most notably, there are not as many universities that have awarded only a single doctorate involving Borneo as in the US.

Eighty dissertations on Borneo were completed at 5 universities, with the various colleges and schools of the University of London accounting for the largest number, followed by Hull, Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Cambridge.

Dissertations on Borneo by Topic

Information on what has been studied in the dissertations on Borneo included in the bibliography is listed according to thirty topics or fields of study in Table 5. The general intent here has been to follow the topics or disciplines given in the various dissertation entries. However, it is not always easy to do this since some dissertation entries refer to specific topics while others to academic disciplines or general fields of study. Further, there is no standard organization of academic departments or topics or fields of study for all of the countries that have produced dissertations involving Borneo. This is true especially, for example, for the field of anthropology which accounts for the largest number of dissertations in the bibliography. In the US, the larger anthropology departments and graduate degree programs generally include cultural anthropology, archaeology, linguistics and physical anthropology but in other countries these fields are often separated in one way or another. Even if included in a single department and degree program, the lines of research followed by cultural anthropologists, linguists, archaeologists and physical or biological anthropology are generally quite different although they all involve, as it used to be put, "the study of man." For this reason anthropology as such, especially at the level of doctoral research, is not really a single topic or a set of closely related ones. We have therefore listed dissertations in terms of cultural anthropology (or ethnology), archaeology, linguistics, even though all may involve (at least in the US) a single degree in anthropology.

A similar procedure might have been followed in the case of biology but was not. However, in this case we have placed all of the dissertations involving research on trees, tree products, or forest ecology that might have been identified as studies in botany or biology in the various entries, along with those listed as forestry, in the category of forestry and forest studies. This tends to show how important the general topic of forests has been in terms of dissertation research in Borneo although it also tends to diminish the apparent importance of biology or botany. So identified, forests and forestry form the second most numerous topic in doctoral dissertation research on Borneo.

Although far less numerous than those involving forests, dissertations involving research on various non-human primates have also been lumped together as primate studies. Such dissertations are sometimes listed in relation to programs or departments in zoology (including several completed at Cambridge University), sometimes in physical anthropology (including several completed at US universities) and sometimes in relation to yet other or unidentified disciplines.

The motives or interests involved in the choices of the various topics studied by researchers who have been attracted to do doctoral research concerning Borneo are not indicated in the entries, except perhaps sometimes in the abstracts, although in some instances general lines of interest can be inferred. In the case of the five most commonly studied topics, the interest in education and geology seem most distinctly practical, that involved in anthropology the least so while the concerns reflected in forestry and forest studies and biology seem mixed.

The large number of dissertations in (cultural or social) anthropology (most of which concern the Dayaks and other interior peoples) must reflect to some extent at least the general reputation of Borneo as an ethnological paradise of interesting peoples and exotic customs--a land of headhunting, secondary burial, penis pins and great longhouses built along swiftly flowing rivers. The ethnological reputation of Borneo was established in the middle of the 19th century through the accounts of colonial adventurers, travelers, and missionaries and has continued--helped perhaps by the studies and reputation achieved by some of the scholars (Edmund Leach, Derek Freeman, Rodney Needham and others) who were involved in the early phase of professional anthropological studies of Borneo that began in the late 1940s and early 1950s in the British-controlled northern countries. And while some of the early professional anthropological work done in Borneo (the studies initiated by Leach [1950] on behalf of the Colonial Research Council and carried out by Freeman, William Geddes, Stephen Morris and T'ien Ju-K'ang) was intended to contribute to the practical development of the country, it seems safe to assume that most of the dissertation studies in cultural or social anthropology that were subsequently done have been based upon more purely scholarly or scientific concerns combined, perhaps, with the sort of exotic and romantic interests noted above.

The also-numerous studies of forestry and forest-related biology probably reflect practical or applied concerns to a greater extent than do those in anthropology. Following the Amazon basin and central Africa, Borneo contains one of largest expanses of equatorial rainforest in the world. In addition to its vast--if rapidly diminishing--timber resources, the tropical hardwood forests of Borneo are well-known for other commercially valuable botanical products, including rattan, nuts and various precious woods. The practical ecological or environmental problems stemming from logging and other exploitation of Bornean forests--deforestation, erosion and forest fires have also become well-known in recent decades.

Yet it would be wrong to underestimate the more purely scholarly or scientific, even romantic, appeal of Bornean forests that can also be traced to earlier writers and naturalists. While the interior of Borneo was sometimes presented by travelers as an endless, dark, monotonously green, trackless land of forests, swamps, mountains and rivers, it was described by naturalists including Alfred Wallace (The Malay Archipelago the Land of the Orang-Utan and the Bird of Paradise), Odorado Becarri (Wanderings in the Great Forests of Borneo: Travels and Researches of a Naturalist in Sarawak), F. W. Burbidge (The Gardens of the Sun: A Naturalist's Journal of Borneo and the Sulu Archipelago) and others as a naturalist's paradise, filled with huge trees and a vast array of exotic plants, insects, birds and primates. Wallace's The Malay Archipelago, which contains a long section on Sarawak where he spent more than a year exploring and collecting, has continued to be republished since its original appearance in 1871 and remains in print in several editions today.

Dissertations on Borneo by Western or Asian Authors

The last matter to be noted involves the extent to which doctoral research has remained a Western enterprise. We were inspired here by the issue of Orientalism that was raised and made famous by the publication of Orientalism by Edward Said. Aside from the issue of the extent to which the study of Middle Eastern and Asian history and culture has been defined by Western prejudices and stereotypes, the matter of Orientalism raises the question of who is carrying out dissertation research. In the case of Borneo there are several issues here, one is where dissertations on Borneo are completed and another is the proportion of dissertations written by Asians rather than Westerners. In regard to the first, as already noted, the overwhelming majority of dissertations now in the bibliography were completed at US, UK or other Western universities, including those written by Asians. To this extent it can be said that doctoral research on Borneo remains a largely Western scholarly or scientific enterprise. As for the second issue of whether authors of dissertations are themselves Western or Asian, the results are much more mixed.

Table 6 presents information on the presumed ethnic status of authors of dissertations on Borneo. Since records in the bibliography do not include the nationality or other explicit information on ethnic status, this can only be inferred from names. This procedure makes several assumptions, one of which is that it is possible to distinguish between Western and Asian names in the first place. This seemed easy to do. Of the 460-odd dissertation authors in the bibliography only a few names appeared difficult to identify as either Western or Asian. (Many Asians now have Western first names but seldom Western family names.) Of course, in addition to the small number of uncertain names some mistakes have probably been made but the number of these is assumed to be low. Next there is the assumption that Asian and Western names are a reasonably good proxy for Asian or Western origins and identity. This cannot be known for certain in that it can not be known how many authors with Asian names were actually born and raised in Asian countries as opposed to Western ones, but it seems reasonable to assume that most were. There is a further assumption that the authors with names many might take to be Muslim or Arabic indicate Asian rather than Middle Eastern origins or ethnic status. Again, it is seems reasonable to suppose that while a few of those authors with Arabic-Muslim names may be of Middle Eastern origin, the vast majority are Asian Muslims, specifically mainly Malaysian or Indonesian Muslims.

Whatever the names may exactly indicate, it is clear that many authors of dissertations on Borneo are Asians. While Bornean research and scholarship at the level of dissertations is still dominated by Westerners in terms of the number of dissertations written, the difference is not overwhelming. Specifically, about fifty-eight percent of the dissertations have authors with Western names while about forty-two percent have Asian ones. As noted above, this may not mean a great deal in some respects. The vast majority of Asian authors of dissertations on Borneo have studied and submitted their dissertations at American, Canadian, British, Australian or other Western universities using theories and methods that are of Western origin--but that are now global in scope and use. At the same time it would be difficult to deny that Bornean research has to some considerable extent been Asianized. This seems to be especially so in terms of the difference between the situation under colonial rule and that of the later decades of the twentieth century and of the opening years of the twenty-first. Over time, the portion of dissertations in the bibliography with apparent Asian authors has risen steadily from none before 1950 to about a quarter in the next several decades to nearly half from 1980 to the present. Although the number of authors who are not simply Asian but actually from Borneo cannot be known for certain except for a few individuals, the number is probably substantial and increasing. Most of the individuals who are from Borneo are probably Chinese or Muslim Malays from down-river and coastal areas but they also include Dayaks or other interior peoples as well. Everyone in Bornean studies should feel good about this.

Table 1
NUMBERS OF DISSERTATIONS ON
BORNEO BY DECADE
N=464

2000-2004    75
1190-1999   194
1980-1989    89
1970-1979    59
1960-1969    23
1950-1959     8
1940-1949     3
1930-1939     5
1920-1929     3
1910-1919     3
1900-1910     1
Unknown       1

Table 2
DISSERTATIONS ON BORNEO
CURRENTLY IN THE DATABASE BY COUNTRY OF COMPLETION
N=464

United States       214
United Kingdom      147
Australia            26
Netherlands          21
Germany              16
Canada               11
China (Hong Kong)     6
France                6
Sweden                5
Indonesia             4
Switzerland           2
Austria               1
Denmark               1
Finland               1
Malaysia              1
Thailand              1
Vatican               1

Table 3
DISSERTATIONS ON BORNEO COMPLETED
AT AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES
N=214

Cornell                               18
Columbia                              13
Southern Illinois                     12
Hawaii                                11
Yale                                  11
Harvard                                9
Michigan State                         7
Washington                             7
Pennsylvania                           6
California, Davis                      5
Duke                                   5
Louisiana State                        5
Rutgers                                5
South Carolina                         5
California, Los Angeles                4
Michigan                               4
Pittsburgh                             4
St. Johns                              4
Stanford                               4
Wisconsin                              4
Illinois, Chicago                      3
Kentucky                               3
New York U.                            3
Northern Illinois                      3
Arizona State                          2
California, Berkeley                   2
California, Santa Barbara              2
City University New York               2
Dartmouth                              2
Florida                                2
Ohio State                             2
Oregon                                 2
Princeton                              2
Tufts                                  2
Andrews                                1
Argosy                                 1
Arizona                                1
Biola                                  1
Boston                                 1
Brandeis                               1
California, Riverside                  1
Chicago                                1
Colorado                               1
Colorado State                         1
Columbia Pacific                       1
Concordia Theological Seminary         1
East Texas State                       1
Florida                                1
Fordham                                1
Fuller Theological Seminary            1
George Peabody College                 1
Georgetown                             1
Georgia State                          1
Houston                                1
Idaho                                  1
Iowa State                             1
Kansas State                           1
Minnesota                              1
Montana                                1
Nevada, Reno                           1
New School                             1
New York, Buffalo                      1
North Carolina                         1
North Carolina State                   1
Northern Colorado                      1
Northwestern                           1
Oklahoma                               1
Oklahoma State                         1
Pennsylvania State                     1
St. Louis                              1
Southern Methodist                     1
Temple                                 1
Texas, Austin                          1
Texas A & M                            1
Trinity Evangelical Divinity School    1
Utah                                   1
W. Conservative Baptist Seminary       1
Westminster Theological Seminary       1

Table 4
DISSERTATIONS ON BORNEO
AT UNITED KINGDOM UNIVERSITIES
N = 147

London                31
Hull                  15
Aberdeen              12
Edinburgh             12
Cambridge             10
Oxford                 8
Birmingham             6
Manchester             5
Durham                 4
Newcastle upon Tyne    4
Reading                4
Wales, Bangor          4
Kent                   3
Leeds                  3
Strathclyde            3
Bristol                2
CNAA Polytech          2
Exeter                 2
Lancaster              2
Wales, Aberystwyth     2
Anglia                 1
Bradford               1
Brunel                 1
Coventry               1
Herfordshire           1
London Wye College     1
Louborough             1
Nottingham             1
Sheffield              1
Southhampton           1
Wales, Swansea         1
Warwick                1
Woverhampton           1

Table 5
DISSERTATIONS ON BORNEO
BY TOPIC OR DISCIPLINE
N=464

Anthropology (1)                                      93
Forestry and Forest Studies (2)                       58
Biology (3)                                           53
Education                                             46
Geology (4)                                           37
Political Science, Government and Law                 29
Economics                                             22
Geography                                             21
Primate Studies                                       18
History of Missions and Christian Religious Studies   11
Linguistics and Language Studies                      12
History                                                9
Demography                                             7
Management                                             6
Agricultural Studies                                   5
Art and Material Culture                               5
Archaeology and Prehistory                             4
Public Health                                          4
Communications, Journalism and Information Systems     3
Sociology                                              3
Tourism                                                3
Library Science                                        2
Adat Law Studies                                       1
Architecture                                           1
Development                                            1
English Literature                                     1
Ethnomusicology                                        1
Genetics                                               1
Islamic Studies                                        1
Social Services                                        1
Uncertain or unknown                                   5

Table 6
NUMBERS OF DISSERTATIONS ON BORNEO BY
DECADE AND WESTERN OR ASIAN NAME OF AUTHOR

             Western      Asian     Uncertain   Total

2000-2004    39 (52)      34 (45)    2 (3)         75
1990-1999    98 (50.5)    93 (48)    3 (1.5)      194
1980-1989    46 (52)      43 (48)                  89
1970-1979    45 (76)      14 (24)                  59
1960-1969    18 (78)       5 (22)                  23
1950-1959     6 (75)       2 (25)                   8
1940-1949     3 (100)                               3
1930-1939     5 (100)                               5
1920-1929     3 (100)                               3
1910-1919     3 (100)                               3
1900-1910     1 (100)                               1
Unknown       1 (100)                               1

Total       274 (58)     196 (42)    5 (1)        464

All numbers in parenthesis are percentages.

(1) Assumes authors with Arabic names are of
Asian (mainly Southeast Asian) origin.

(1) Cultural and social anthropology, including ethnology and ethnography.

(2) Includes forestry, forest ecology, and botany of forest plants.

(3) Includes botany, ethnobotany and zoology and excludes forest studies and primate studies.

(4) Includes hydrology.

References

Leach, Edmund 1950 Social Science Research in Sarawak: A Report on the Possibilities of a Social Economic Survey of Sarawak presented to the Colonial Social Science Research Council. London: His Majesty's Stationary Office.

Robert L. Winzeler and Duncan Aldrich

University of Nevada, Reno