Pada bagian sambutan, Gubernur Provinsi Nusa Tenggara Timur menyambut gembira publikasi tersebut karena akan menyajikan data secara lengkap dan komprehensif mengenai hasil-hasil pembangunan yang sudah dicapai, termasuk segala potensi sumber daya, baik sumber daya alam maupun sumber daya manusia yang dimiliki Provinsi Nusa Tenggara Timur.

Buku elektronik setebal 471 tersebut menyajikan data-data dan informasi perkembangan NTT pada tahun 2009 dari berbagai sektor yang meliputi; keadaan geografis, keadaan iklim, pemerintahan, keadaan penduduk dan ketenagakerjaan, sosial, sektor pertanian, sektor industri, energi dan air minum, sektor perdagangan, sektor transportasi dan komunikasi, sektor hotel dan pariwisata, keuangan dan harta, pengeluaran dan konsumsi serta pendapatan regional.

Untuk memperoleh dan mengakses secara lengkap buku tersebut bisa mengunduh pada link di bawah ini.

Download Nusa Tenggara Timur Dalam Angka Tahun 2009

Judul Buku

Iklim dan Keamanan Pangan Rumah Tangga di Polen, Timor Tengah Selatan – Iklim, Stok Pangan dan Gizi Keluarga

Tim Editor

1. Dr. Ferry F Karwur
2. Drs. B. Manongga, M.Si.
3. Dharmaputra Palekahelu, S.Pd, M.Pd.
4. Ir. Royke R Siahainenia, M.Si.

Penerbit

Pusat Studi Kawasan Timur Indonesia UKSW. Buku ini merupakan proyek kerjasama Bappeda Kabupaten TTS – Provinsi NTT dan PSKTI UKSW.

Tahun terbit

2006.

ISBN

979-3823-34-8.

Untuk informasi lebih lanjut mengenai buku ini harap menghubungi PSKTI UKSW.

Judul Buku

Biosecurity and Indigenous Knowledge – Prosiding Workshop (electronic book)

Tim Editor

1. Daniel George Louhenapessy
2. Theofransus Litaay
3. Junet Franzisca da Costa
4. Yoga Aji Handoko

Penerbit

Kerjasama Pusat Studi Kawasan Timur Indonesia UKSW, CDU, CRC-NPB, Djarum dan BaKTI.

Tahun Terbit

2007.

ISBN

979-978-1098-88-5

Download the Book Biosecurity and Indigenous Knowledge Here

Rencana Induk Bidang Pendidikan dan Kesehatan Kabupaten Timor Tengah Selatan Tahun 2006-2010.

Tim Penyusun

1. Willi Toisuta, Ph.D
2. Ir. Ferry F Karwur, M.Sc, Ph.D
3. Ir. Danny Manongga, M.Sc, Ph.D
4. Marthen Ndoen, MA, Ph.D
5. Ir. Stefanus Manongga, M.S.
6. Dharmaputera Palekahelu, S.Pd., M.Pd.
7. Simon O. Radjapono, SH, M.Si (Bappeda TTS)

Penerbit

Kerjasama Bappeda Kabupaten Timor Tengah Selatan dan Pusat Studi Kawasan Timur Indonesia UKSW.

Tahun Terbit

2006.

ISBN

979-3823-32-1

Untuk informasi lebih lanjut mengenai buku ini harap menghubungi PSKTI UKSW

Judul Buku

Dinamika Iklim dan Ketahanan Pangan di Kecamatan Kualin – Kabupaten Timor Tengah Selatan, Propinsi Nusa Tenggara Timur.

Tim Penyusun

1. Ir. Ferry F Karwur, M.Sc., Ph.D
2. Ir. Stefanus Manongga, M.S.
3. Dharmaputera Palekahelu, S.Pd., M.Pd.
4. Simon O. Radjapono, SH, M.Si (Bappeda TTS)

Penerbit

Kerjasama Bappeda Kabupaten Timor Tengah Selatan dan Pusat Studi Kawasan Timur Indonesia UKSW.

Tahun terbit

2006.

ISBN

979-3823-33-X

Untuk informasi lebih lanjut mengenai buku ini harap menghubungi PSKTI UKSW.

Buku ini telah diterjemahkan pula kedalam bahasa Indonesia dengan judul “Masa Depan Kebebasan”. Buku yang merupakan international bestseller ini, mengkaji bagaimana demokrasi telah merubah kehidupan politik, ekonomi dan relasi sosial kita. Zakaria menantang kita untuk menempatkan kebebasan manusia di lebih tinggi daripada altar demokrasi baik di Amerika maupun di negara lain. Selain itu Zakaria juga membahas tentang prospek demokrasi di Irak dan bagaimana kekeliruan pendekatan yang digunakan pemerintahan Bush terhadap masalah ini.

Daya tarik buku ini bagi kita di Indonesia adalah adanya komentar Fareed Zakaria terhadap perkembangan demokrasi di Indonesia. Menurut Zakaria, Indonesia lebih toleran kepada perbedaan pada waktu dipimpin oleh Suharto ketimbang pada saat sudah berada pada masa demokrasi sekarang. Ini tentunya merupakan satu situasi paradoksal. Berbeda dengan Singapura yang meskipun secara politik tidak demokratis tetapi ada kebebasan yang dirasakan masyarakatnya.

Menurut Zakaria, paling tidak ada tiga alasan mengapa Indonesia bukan calon demokrasi yang ideal untuk saat ini, yaitu:

1. Terlalu tergantung pada sumber daya alam
2. Lemahnya kelembagaan politik
3. Tingkat ekonomi yang masih rendah

Akibatnya perkembangan demokrasi di Indonesia melahirkan kontraksi ekonomi dan kebangkitan fundamentalisme agama. Dalam pandangan Zakaria, peningkatan fundamentalisme agama bisa menghancurkan budaya lokal, meruntuhkan sekularisme dan meningkatkan separatisme. Tentunya ini merupakan pandangan orang yang berada di luar Indonesia, yang paling penting adalah apakah orang di Indonesia juga bertindak demikian atau justru memanfaatkan demokrasi bagi perkembangan kebebasan manusia yang lebih maju di Indonesia.

Deskripsi Buku

Judul Buku

The Future Of Freedom – Illiberal Democracy At Home And Abroad

Pengarang

Fareed Zakaria

Penerbit

W.W.Norton & Company, New York & London

Tahun Terbit

2004

Oleh: Theofransus Litaay

Buku ini berkisah tentang perjalanan para penjelajah Eropa di abad ke-15 mencari pulau rempah-rempah yang sekarang dikenal sebagai kepulauan Banda di Maluku. Kisah sejarah ini dibangun berdasarkan catatan-catatan ekspedisi dari Inggris dengan kapal Swan yang dipimpin oleh Kapten Nathaniel Courthope yang diperintahkan oleh raja James I untuk mencari rempah-rempah ke Pulau Run (salah satu pulau di Kepulauan Banda).

Perjalanan ini di masa itu merupakan suatu petualangan yang sangat berbahaya, bukan saja karena para penjelajah itu sendiri tidak mengetahui letak pulau yang dituju, tetapi juga karena teknologi pelayaran yang masih kuno dan belum ada peta dunia yang dapat diandalkan sehingga setiap pengelana akan kemudian menggambar petanya sendiri. Pada waktu itu rempah-rempah yang dikenal dengan ‘emas hijau’ memiliki nilai yang sangat tinggi di Eropa. Satu kantong rempah-rempah saja dapat membuat seseorang menjadi kaya seumur hidupnya.

Orang Portugis yang pada abad ke-14 telah mendarat di Banda namun tidak berhasil membangun perdagangannya sendiri, inilah yang mendorong negara lain untuk mencari jalur ke Banda. Kisah perjalanan Nathaniel Courthope mengandung banyak pelajaran sejarah untuk memahami masa lalu dan menapaki masa depan.

Deskripsi Buku

Judul Buku

Nathaniel’s Nutmeg – How One Man’s Courage Changed the Course of History

Pengarang

Giles Milton

Penerbit

Sceptre – Hodder And Stoughton, London

Tahun Terbit

2005

Weber wrote that capitalism evolved when the Protestant (particularly Calvinist) ethic influenced large numbers of people to engage in work in the secular world, developing their own enterprises and engaging in trade and the accumulation of wealth for investment. In other words, the Protestant ethic was a force behind an unplanned and uncoordinated mass action that influenced the development of capitalism. This idea is also known as “the Weber thesis”.

The book is not a detailed study of Protestantism but rather an introduction into Weber’s later studies of interaction between various religious ideas and economics.

In the book, Weber argues that Puritan ethics and ideas influenced the development of capitalism. Religious devotion, however, usually accompanied a rejection of worldly affairs, including the pursuit of wealth and possessions. Why was that not the case with Protestantism? Weber addresses this apparent paradox in the book.

To illustrate and provide an example, Weber quotes the ethical writings of Benjamin Franklin:

Remember, that time is money. He that can earn ten shillings a day by his labor, and goes abroad, or sits idle, one half of that day, though he spends but sixpence during his diversion or idleness, ought not to reckon that the only expense; he has really spent, or rather thrown away, five shillings besides. … Remember, that money is the prolific, generating nature. Money can beget money, and its offspring can beget more, and so on. Five shillings turned is six, turned again is seven and threepence, and so on, till it becomes a hundred pounds. The more there is of it, the more it produces every turning, so that the profits rise quicker and quicker. He that kills a breeding sow, destroys all her offspring to the thousandth generation. He that murders a crown, destroys all that it might have produced, even scores of pounds.

Weber notes that this is not a philosophy of mere greed, but a statement laden with moral language. Indeed, Franklin claims that God revealed to him the usefulness of virtue.

To emphasize the work ethic in Protestantism relative to Catholics, he notes a common problem that industrialists face when employing precapitalist laborers: Agricultural entrepreneurs will try to encourage time spent harvesting by offering a higher wage, with the expectation that laborers will see time spent working as more valuable and so engage it longer. However, in precapitalist societies this often results in laborers spending less time harvesting. Laborers judge that they can earn the same, while spending less time working and having more leisure. He also notes that societies having more Protestants are those that have a more developed capitalist economy.

It is particularly advantageous in technical occupations for workers to be extremely devoted to their craft. To view the craft as an end in itself, or as a “calling” would serve this need well. This attitude is well-noted in certain classes which have endured religious education, especially of a Pietist background.

He defines spirit of capitalism as the ideas and esprit that favour the rational pursuit of economic gain: “We shall nevertheless provisionally use the expression ’spirit of capitalism’ for that attitude which, in the pursuit of a calling, strives systematically for profit for its own sake in the manner exemplified by Benjamin Franklin.” The rationalization is partially a product of the fact that Luther and his religious descendents read the Old Testament and New with equal weight, and so is due to greater influence of Jewish thought. Weber points out that such a spirit is not limited to Western culture if one considers it as the attitude of individuals, but that such individuals — heroic entrepreneurs, as he calls them — could not by themselves establish a new economic order (capitalism). He further noted that the spirit of capitalism could be divorced from religion, and that those passionate capitalists of his era were either passionate against the Church or at least indifferent to it. The most common tendencies were the greed for profit with minimum effort and the idea that work was a curse and burden to be avoided especially when it exceeded what was enough for modest life. As he wrote in his essays:

In order that a manner of life well adapted to the peculiarities of the capitalism… could come to dominate others, it had to originate somewhere, and not in isolated individuals alone, but as a way of life common to the whole groups of man.

After defining the “spirit of capitalism,” Weber argues that there are many reasons to find its origins in the religious ideas of the Reformation. Many observers like William Petty, Montesquieu, Henry Thomas Buckle, John Keats, and others have commented on the affinity between Protestantism and the development of commercialism.

Weber shows that certain types of Protestantism favoured rational pursuit of economic gain and that worldly activities had been given positive spiritual and moral meaning. It was not the goal of those religious ideas, but rather a byproduct — the inherent logic of those doctrines and the advice based upon them both directly and indirectly encouraged planning and self-denial in the pursuit of economic gain.

Weber traced the origins of the Protestant ethic to the Reformation, though he acknowledged some respect for secular everyday labor as early as the Middle Ages. The Roman Catholic Church assured salvation to individuals who accepted the church’s sacraments and submitted to the clerical authority. However, the Reformation had effectively removed such assurances. From a psychological viewpoint, the average person had difficulty adjusting to this new worldview, and only the most devout believers or “religious geniuses” within Protestanism, such as Martin Luther, were able to make this adjustment, according to Weber.

In the absence of such assurances from religious authority, Weber argued that Protestants began to look for other “signs” that they were saved. Calvin and his followers taught a doctrine of double predestination, in which from the beginning God chose some people for salvation and others for damnation. The inability to influence one’s own salvation presented a very difficult problem for Calvin’s followers. It became an absolute duty to believe that one was chosen for salvation, and to dispel any doubt about that: lack of self-confidence was evidence of insufficient faith and a sign of damnation. So, self-confidence took the place of priestly assurance of God’s grace.

Worldly success became one measure of that self-confidence. Luther made an early endorsement of Europe’s emerging labor divisions. Weber identifies the applicability of Luther’s conclusions, noting that a “vocation” from God was no longer limited to the clergy or church, but applied to any occupation or trade.

However, Weber saw the fulfillment of the Protestant ethic not in Lutheranism, which was too concerned with the reception of divine spirit in the soul, but in Calvinistic forms of Christianity. The trend was carried further still in Pietism. Baptism diluted the concept of the calling relative to Calvinists, but other aspects made its congregants fertile soil for the development of capitalism–namely, a lack of paralyzing ascetism, the refusal to accept state office and thereby develop unpolitically, and the doctrine of control by conscience which caused rigorous honesty.

The “paradox” Weber found was, in simple terms:
•According to the new Protestant religions, an individual was religiously compelled to follow a secular vocation with as much zeal as possible. A person living according to this world view was more likely to accumulate money.
•The new religions (in particular, Calvinism and other more austere Protestant sects) effectively forbade wastefully using hard earned money and identified the purchase of luxuries a sin. Donations to an individual’s church or congregation was limited due to the rejection by certain Protestant sects of icons. Finally, donation of money to the poor or to charity was generally frowned on as it was seen as furthering beggary. This social condition was perceived as laziness, burdening their fellow man, and an affront to God; by not working, one failed to glorify God.

The manner in which this paradox was resolved, Weber argued, was the investment of this money, which gave an extreme boost to nascent capitalism.

By the time Weber wrote this essay, he believed that the religious underpinnings of the Protestant ethic had largely gone from society. He cited the writings of Benjamin Franklin, which emphasized frugality, hard work and thrift, but were mostly free of spiritual content. Weber also attributed the success of mass production partly to the Protestant ethic. Only after expensive luxuries were disdained, could individuals accept the uniform products, such as clothes and furniture, that industrialization offered.

In his remarkably prescient conclusion to the book, Weber lamented that the loss of religious underpinning to capitalism’s spirit has led to a kind of involuntary servitude to mechanized industry.

The Puritan wanted to work in calling; we are forced to do so. For when asceticism was carried out of monastic cells into everyday life, and began to dominate worldly morality, it did its part in building the tremendous cosmos of the modern economic order. This order is now bound to the technical and economic conditions of machine production which today determine the lives of all the individuals who are born into this mechanism, not only those directly concerned with economic acquisition, with irresistible force. Perhaps it will so determine them until the last ton of fossilized coal is burnt. (Page 181, 1953 Scribner’s edition.)

Weber maintained that while Puritan religious ideas had had a major influence on the development of economic order in Europe and United States, they were not the only factor (others included the rationalism in scientific pursuit, merging observation with mathematics, science of scholarship and jurisprudence, rational systematisation of government administration and economic enterprise). In the end, the study of Protestant ethic, according to Weber, merely explored one phase of the emancipation from magic, that disenchantment of the world that he regarded as the distinguishing peculiarity of Western culture.

In the final endnotes Weber states that he abandoned research into Protestantism because his colleague Ernst Troeltsch, a professional theologian, had initiated work on the book The Social Teachings of the Christian Churches and Sects. Another reason for Weber’s decision was that Troeltsch’s essay had provided the perspective for a broad comparison of religion and society, which he continued in his later works (the study of Judaism and the religions of China and India).

This book is also Weber’s first brush with the concept of rationalization. His idea of modern capitalism as growing out of the religious pursuit of wealth meant a change to a rational means of existence, wealth. That is to say, at some point the Calvinist rationale informing the “spirit” of capitalism became unreliant on the underlying religious movement behind it, leaving only rational capitalism. In essence then, Weber’s “Spirit of Capitalism” is effectively and more broadly a Spirit of Rationalization.

The essay can also be interpreted as one of Weber’s criticisms of Karl Marx and his theories. While Marx’s historical materialism held that all human institutions – including religion – were based on economic foundations, The Protestant Ethic turns this theory on its head by implying that a religious movement fostered capitalism, not the other way around.

Other scholars have taken a more nuanced view of Weber’s argument. Weber states in the closing of this essay, “it is, of course, not my aim to substitute for a one-sided materialistic an equally one-sided spiritualistic causal interpretation of culture and history. Each is equally possible, but each if it does not serve as the preparation, but as the conclusion of an investigation, accomplishes equally little in the interest of historical truth.” Weber’s argument can be understood as an attempt to deepen the understanding of the cultural origins of capitalism, which does not exclude the historical materialist origins described by Marx.

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The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

Overview
Although The General Theory was written in the aftermath of the Great Depression and was taken by many to justify the assumption by government of the responsibility for the achievement and maintenance of full employment, it is for the most part a highly abstract work of theory and by no means a tract on policy. Its full meaning and significance continues to be debated even today. As a book, it is a difficult read for a modern student of economics, although it is enlivened by some brilliant rhetorical passages, including the description of the stock market in Chapter 12 and the concluding chapter 24 on the (rather tentative) policy implications Keynes derived from his theory.

Contrary to popular belief, Keynes was by no means the first to advocate public works or deficit spending in a depression, but his book provides the theoretical framework within which temporary measures like the New Deal can be justified against the “Treasury View” that public borrowing simply crowds out private investment so that government should always balance its annual budget. Keynes himself placed equal emphasis on redistributive taxation and a monetary policy of ‘cheap money’ as well as fiscal policy, and he did not believe governments should run deficits for current consumption, as opposed to public investment. The book provides the basis for a longer term commitment to the welfare state but Keynes was by no means a socialist in the usual sense and did not advocate big government for its own sake.

The central argument of the book is that the level of employment is determined, not by the price of labour as in neoclassical economics, but by the spending of money (aggregate demand). He argues that it is wrong to assume that competitive markets will, in the long run, deliver full employment or that full employment is the natural, self-righting, equilibrium state of a monetary economy. On the contrary, under-employment and under-investment are likely to be the natural state unless active measures are taken. Although few modern economists would disagree with the need for at least some intervention, policies such as labour market flexibility are underpinned by the neoclassical notion of equilibrium in the long run. One implication of The General Theory is that a lack of competition is not the fundamental problem and measures to reduce unemployment by cutting wages or benefits are not only hard-hearted but ultimately futile. Keynes does not set out a detailed policy program in The General Theory, but he went on in practice to place great emphasis on the reduction of long-term interest rates and the reform of the international monetary system as structural measures needed to encourage both investment and consumption by the private sector.

Just as the reception of The General Theory was encouraged by the 1930s experience of mass unemployment, its fall from favour was associated with the ‘stagflation’ of the 1970s. Although Keynes explicitly addresses inflation, The General Theory does not treat it as an essentially monetary phenomenon nor suggest that control of the money supply or interest rates is the key remedy for inflation. This conflicts both with neoclassical theory and with the experience of pragmatic policy-makers. Furthermore the main Keynesian prescription for inflation, incomes policy, has lost credibility.

However, many of the innovations introduced by The General Theory continue to be central to modern macroeconomics. For instance, the idea that recessions reflect inadequate aggregate demand and that Say’s Law (that supply creates its own demand) does not hold in a monetary economy. President Richard Nixon famously said in 1971 that “We are all Keynesians now” (ironically, shortly before Keynesian economics fell out of fashion), a phrase often repeated by Nobel laureate Paul Krugman.

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The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money

The book is unusual insomuch as it was written to appear sympathetic to socialism, beginning with an account of Karl Marx, in order to encourage socialists to read it. Schumpeter hoped they would achieve self-recognition of the problems with socialism in the light of the book, without having to be explicitly told: if the book appeared to be favourible to capitalism, he feared socialists, his target audience, would not bother to read it.

Schumpeter’s theory is that the success of capitalism will lead to a form of corporatism and a fostering of values hostile to capitalism, especially among intellectuals. The intellectual and social climate needed to allow entrepreneurship to thrive will not exist in advanced capitalism; it will be replaced by socialism in some form. There will not be a revolution, but merely a trend in parliaments to elect social democratic parties of one stripe or another. He argued that capitalism’s collapse from within will come about as democratic majorities vote for the creation of a welfare state and place restrictions upon entrepreneurship that will burden and eventually destroy the capitalist structure. Schumpeter emphasizes throughout this book that he is analyzing trends, not engaging in political advocacy. “If a doctor predicts that his patient will die presently,” he wrote, “this does not mean that he desires it.”

In his vision, the intellectual class will play an important role in capitalism’s demise. The term “intellectuals” denotes a class of persons in a position to develop critiques of societal matters for which they are not directly responsible and able to stand up for the interests of strata to which they themselves do not belong. One of the great advantages of capitalism, he argues, is that as compared with pre-capitalist periods, when education was a privilege of the few, more and more people acquire (higher) education. The availability of fulfilling work is however limited and this, coupled with the experience of unemployment, produces discontent. The intellectual class is then able to organise protest and develop critical ideas against free markets and private property, even though these institutions are necessary for their existence. This analysis is similar to that of the philosopher Robert Nozick, who argued that intellectuals were bitter that the skills so rewarded in school were less rewarded in the job market, and so turned against capitalism, even though they enjoyed vastly more enjoyable lives under it than under alternative systems.

In Schumpeter’s view, socialism will ensure that the production of goods and services is directed towards meeting the ‘authentic needs’ of people[citation needed] and will overcome some innate tendencies of capitalism such as conjecture fluctuation, unemployment and waning acceptance of the system.[citation needed] It is interesting to note that Schumpeter’s theories of the transition of capitalism into socialism is, according to some analysts, ‘nearly right’.

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Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy