The Development Of The Japanese Wood Trade PDF Download

My dissertation examines the twentieth century timber trade between Japan and Indonesia and the development aid programs that supported this exchange. By approaching the timber trade as and "ecology of production," I examine how both countries were shaped by the interplay of three factors: the economic exchanges that took placed between both nations, the transference of material, financial, and technical assistance through overseas development aid (ODA), and their relationship to the forests. I look beyond the role that exports or domestic government policies played in Japan's development by examining where the nation's resources came from, how it interacted with its trade partner Indonesia, and how both nations attempted to shape the forests to suit their economic ambitions. Growth can never be self-determined. Rather, it is intimately linked to a society's relationship to the global market and to natural environments, be they local or distant.This dissertation serves as an institutional history of the timber trade between Japan and Indonesia. As such, it deals primarily with the interplay between nations and the various national and international institutions they act through or cooperate with. The major focus of this work is the Japan International Cooperation Agency, or JICA, which was founded by Japan in 1974 as the vehicle through which its aid activities were channeled. As an institutional history detailing JICA's attempts to foster Indonesia's timber industry in the second half of the twentieth century, my dissertation provides insight the role Japan strove to create for itself in postwar Asia. It also illuminates the ways in which Japanese aid workers and, to a lesser extent, their Indonesian counterparts conceptualized their roles as the facilitators of aid projects. It traces the slow development of understandings that moved beyond the framing of the woods as wealth and towards a recognition of importance of maintaining healthy ecosystems. It also illuminates the ways in which Japanese institutions gradually built partnerships with Indonesian ones, a significant change from their approach in the colonial period, when Japan sought to supplant indigenous organizations with its own.