review of: The politics of death; Political violence in Southeast Asia

systematically depict batara guru (Siwa), bima (Werkudara), Suyudana, Aswatama, Srikandi, and Hanoman in puppets from North bali, South bali, East Java, Cirebon, Kedu, banyumas, Yogyakarta, Surakarta, Demak, and Betawi.This makes it easy to compare the various styles and gives a very good impression of the differences between them.It is refreshing that the author does not start his systematization with puppets originating from the Central Javanese towns of Yogyakarta and Surakarta.Rather, he starts in North bali and continues with South bali, East Java, Cirebon, tegal, banyumas, and continues via Yogyakarta and Solo to Demak, finally ending in jakarta.This puts Central java in the same position as other regions where wayang is found, and helps to make the book an exception to the widespread bias in favour of this region.the author bases his classification on the physical puppets, although he is aware that alternative criteria such as stories, styles of presentation and manipulation of puppets, music, and many other elements of a wayang performance might have led to different categorizations.However, since wayang puppets had never before been classified systematically or satisfactorily, as a start his approach is enormously useful.Classifying old sets of puppets, while not easy, is feasible.To make meaningful classifications of modern puppets, however, is hard, because during the last half century the various styles have blurred.Many regional styles are in danger of disappearing because of the popularity of wayang being undermined by television and the forces of modernity, and because of the overriding influence of the Solo style.I find this last point very interesting, especially since the similarities among the puppets representing the six figures mentioned above suggest that the styles of most of the others are more similar to that of Yogyakarta than to that of Solo.I hope that in the future the author will provide answers to the questions this raises.Many puppets are not represented in the book.This is no surprise, since Frank dhont, Kevin W. Fogg