Field Notes on Indonesia : Flores, 1949-1950
[ New Haven ]: [ HRAF - Human Relations Area Files ] [ no date ]. Oblong folio (11 x 8 1/2 inches). Brown buckram binding gilt. Previous owner's name (Harold C. Conklin) stamped on front flyleaf. Photocopied from microform (?), two pages per leaf, recto only. Microform record notes 451 leaves, but not here paginated or numbered. One volume of a planned four, this volume and it's contents stand alone. Very Good. Cloth. [27556]
Raymond Kennedy spent most of his life fascinated by Indonesia. His untimely death in Indonesia while surveying peoples and communities with a goal to publish a significant study of the area resulted in only portions of his field notes (albeit a significant portion for our sake) surviving. His notes were extensively edited by Harold C. Conklin, and put in a form that could be utilized by scholars. The first of what was to be four published books (Field Notes on Indonesia: South Celebes 1949-1950) was the only work produced in book form. The balance of Kennedy's notes and the work done by Conklin has, from what we can tell, been stuck in microform form for many years. This book is apparently a bound copy of those microform notes, a one-of if you will, that came from the files of Harold C. Conklin, with his stamp on the front flyleaf. It includes a laid in printout of the introductory matter of the South Celebes book to provide context, an essential index, and help with the use of the volume. This was to be the third book printed, but it was never produced (OCLC shows 11 copies just microform).
“RAYMOND KENNEDY, 1906-50. AFTER GRADUATION from Yale College in 1928 Raymond Kennedy began, almost fortuitously, a career in Far Eastern affairs by teaching for a year at the Brent School in the Philippines. Then, a year later, he became a field representative for General Motors in what was then called the Nether- lands East Indies. As the peripatetic automobile salesman discovered the cultural riches of the fabulous Indies, he became progressively less interested in American machines and more fascinated by Indonesian people. This led him to give up his commercial job and return to his alma mater in New Haven for graduate study in anthropology and sociology. He knew well that "he who would bring home the wealth of the Indies must carry the wealth of the Indies with him." Thus began the academic career of one of American's pioneer scholars in the field of Southeast Asian studies. Born December 11, 1906, in Holyoke, Massachusetts, Raymond Kennedy died 44 years later in the heart of tropical Java. He and Robert Doyle, a Time correspondent, were driving eastward by jeep from Bandoeng on April 27 or 28, 1950, when they were held up and murdered by unidentified assailants. This fatal trip to Indonesia had been undertaken in order to carry out an extensive research project in the field of culture contact and acculturation in Indonesia.” (The Far Eastern Quarterly, Vol. 10, No. 2 (Feb., 1951))
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