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1 Introduction
Public participation in scientific agenda-setting and
technical decision-making has a prominent place on
the agenda of Science and Technology Studies. The
many studies have pointed out that involvement of
citizens in scientific and technological activities with a
notable impact on the way people live is an issue of
democratic principle as well as making the right
combination of different forms of expertise.
Policymakers therefore have to look for
implementation frameworks that increase public
accountability and allow for appropriate management
of available knowledge sources. Experience and
findings in the academic field of Development Studies
and among international development agencies, have
moved along a similar path.
But Science and Technology Studies and Development
Studies also show differences. One such difference is
the relatively strong emphasis in Science and
Technology Studies on ‘downstream’ processes.
Science and Technology Studies’ scholars critically
follow the institutions of science, technology and
policy in their attempts to involve a wider public (Irwin
2006). Studies on public engagement in Development
Studies typically work ‘upstream’. There is a strong
focus on concepts and creation of methods to exploit
the democratic potential of communities (Cooke and
Kothari 2001). Despite such differences, it is clear that
cross-linkages between the fields of Science and
Technology Studies and Development Studies are
fruitful and open up new insights (Leach et al. 2005).
One of the arguments developed in this article is
that a historical perspective should be added. History
contains many useful examples of public participation
in scientific agenda-setting and technical decision-
making. More than mere illustrations, historical cases
also enfold conceptual questions. What is argued
here, is that linking participation to issues (rather
than to notions of citizenship) creates a better insight
in the variety of ways in which science, technology
and society interact. A second conceptual point
made in this article, is that an innovation systems
approach creates more clarity on how and where
issue-driven participation articulates.
What an innovation system is and how it relates to
the issue-driven participation is explained first. The
connection between innovation systems and
participation is illustrated with historical material
from the agricultural innovation system of the
former Netherlands Indies (now Indonesia).
Colonialism generally is not associated with public
engagement and democratic principles.
Nevertheless, the conclusion from this article is that
developments in colonial innovation systems can
contribute to present day reforms of innovation
systems in developing countries.
2 Innovation systems and participation
The innovation system concept emerged from the
work of institutional economists searching for factors
of economic growth beyond the supply-and-demand
mechanism. Technological change, as an economic
growth factor, was considered to emerge from an
interacting set of elements – research activities,
technological experiments, formal education,
development of skills, etc. These activities sometimes
are located in specialised and separated
50
Is Participation Rooted in Colonialism?
Agricultural Innovation Systems and
Participation in the Netherlands
Indies
Harro Maat*
IDS Bulletin Volume 38 Number 5 November 2007 © Institute of Development Studies
environments, like a private laboratory or public
research institute. They can be integrated within
broader arrangements, like education facilities. Or
they take place on-the-spot, like adjustment and
fine-tuning of processes or skills training. All
elements together form the innovation system
(Nelson and Rosenberg 1993).
An innovation system is, first, a descriptive device.
Besides institutional economists, economic historians
and historians of science and technology picked up
the notion to analyse changing interactions between
science, industry, government and other actors.
These studies point out that innovation systems
emerged in the late nineteenth century and became
a significant factor in most countries during the first
decades of the twentieth century.
Second, the innovation systems concept serves
various analytical purposes. One element, implied by
the word ‘systems’, is the internal logic. Although
‘system’ is hardly used in a strict interpretation (as in
cybernetics), it does raise the question about
dominant actors and steering options. In many cases,
a government tries to take up such a role. But even
in, for example the agricultural sector in the
Netherlands, where the government traditionally has
a firm grip on innovation, it does not imply that the
government is in all cases the first mover or plays a
role in every part of the innovation system (Maat
2003a). And, to remain with the Dutch example, the
industrial sector, although overlapping with
agriculture, gives a very different picture with a much
less prominent role for the government (Faber 2003).
A related point is the geographical ‘location’ of
innovation systems. Through legal restrictions and
subsidies, governments often favour national
innovators, thereby strengthening ties between
national actors.1But as the example from the
Netherlands above implies, within a country one can
distinguish several innovation systems and most, if not
all, innovation systems show transnational connections.
More recently, the innovation systems’ notion has
been taken up in the context of development
studies, focusing mainly on agriculture. The variety of
activities within the agricultural sector in developing
countries is bringing in actors with very different
backgrounds. Activities to incorporate innovation
within the sector show a similar diversification. The
concept is considered a useful means to realise how
current developments in relation to knowledge and
tools in agriculture can be understood. A focus on
innovation systems therefore creates insight into
barriers and opportunities for further enhancement
of innovation in agriculture (World Bank 2007).
How does public participation relate to the
innovation systems concept? Within an innovation
system, the ‘wider public’ usually gets translated into
‘end-users’, for example farmers when it concerns
agricultural innovation systems. In a development
context, this can be further specified as those who
live and work in adverse agro-ecosystems (the rural
poor or resource-poor farmers). Including
participation in the innovation systems approach
implies a more focused analytical scope. The general
idea that innovation is a result of shared effort is
specified to the question if and how end-users are
involved. An example is a study by Hall and Nahdy
(1999) of the agricultural research institutes in
Uganda that have adopted the participation agenda,
but nevertheless face huge difficulties in its
implementation.
Obstacles to participation are rarely caused by a
single actor in the system. Within the same Ugandan
context, the programme to introduce so-called
Farmer Field Schools, a tool to enhance farmer
participation, appeared to have in-built barriers, due
to arrangements made among various actors,
including international donors (Isubikalu 2007).
Besides looking at the role of particular institutions
or specific participatory methods to increase the
involvement of end-users, the analysis might also be
focused on the ‘systems conditions’ that favour (or
impede) the uptake of a particular innovation, like for
example biotechnology (Chataway 2005).
As this last example implies, an innovation systems
approach broadens the participation agenda by
including questions about the uptake of particular
technologies and how ‘user-friendly’ innovation systems
are. This not only expands the analytical focus, it also
raises a conceptual problem. The participation debate,
particularly within the field of Development Studies, is
framed exclusively around notions of citizenship and
democracy. These concepts and their translation in
approaches and methods are discussed intensively
(Mosse 2005; Cooke and Kothari 2001). And although
economic principles and material conditions are
acknowledged as important factors, theoretical framing
of the participation debate focuses primarily on
IDS Bulletin Volume 38 Number 5 November 2007 51
elements like ‘dialogic political methodologies’ (Mohan
and Hickey 2005: 69), ‘democratic spaces’ (Cornwall
2004) or a ‘radicalized notion of citizenship’ (Hickey and
Mohan 2005: 12). Such theoretical framings ignore the
role of innovation and technology (material processes in
general) in participatory processes. Moreover, the
notions of citizenship and democracy are problematic
in itself.
Marres (2005) shows how most participation
agendas build on idealised notions of democracy and
the public. These notions are particularly problematic
given the fragmented yet global nature of present
day politics.2Following Ulrich Beck’s notion of
‘subpolitics’, she shows how many decisions are
made outside, below or above, the traditional
political fora of the nation-state. Understood as a
more general process, subpolitics represent a
‘displacement of politics’. By working out a
pragmatist political philosophy and several empirical
cases, she concludes that issues are the main driver
for political displacement. Issues are not brought into
political arenas but political arenas emerge around
issues. Consequently, participation is also a process
that works out differently depending on the issue at
stake. Issues, Marres argues, ‘deser ve to be
appreciated as occasions for political democracy: it is
issues that necessitate public involvement in politics,
and such involvement is dedicated to their
settlement’ (Marres 2005: 136).
An issue-centred perception of political processes is
a useful way to highlight the political dimensions and
participatory potential of an innovation systems
perspective. As Chataway and Smith (this IDS Bulletin)
argue, looking at participation through an innovation
systems perspective blurs the distinction between an
‘entitlement view’ and a ‘productivity view’. Focusing
on issues at the core of political processes creates a
window for technology, and material processes in
general. The innovation systems approach is an
appropriate notion to see where issues (i.e. politics
from below) are likely to lock on to processes of
technological change set in motion by other
(outside) actors in the innovation system. One
example is given by Richards (this IDS Bulletin),
showing that the very act of acquiring an innovation
(like appropriate seed material) can have participatory
effects. Below, we will see how this works out in a
colonial agricultural innovation system. Colonial
history brings out some interesting cases of issue-
driven participation.
3 Participation and history
Participatory approaches in Development Studies
have a troublesome relationship with technology. The
participation agenda of creating public spaces where
reason and justice thrives, is generally set against top-
down implementation of development. Introduction
of Western technology is often assumed to have an
inherent top-down characteristic. Top-down
hierarchical processes and technocracy are basically
considered as the same (bad) phenomena.3The idea
that the creation of public spaces for free deliberation
is a counterforce to top-down bureaucracies and
technocratic tendencies originates in the philosophical
tradition of the Frankfurt School, particularly the
work of Jürgen Habermas (Wagner 1994). Because
technocracy and bureaucracy are most dominant in
Western (‘high modern’) societies, Western
technology (development projects in general) brought
to developing countries is seen as a Trojan Horse, by
which the same technocratic (and bureaucratic)
principles are pushed on the developing world. In line
with Habermas’ theory, participatory approaches,
emphasising informality and personal relationships
(‘life-world’), are considered a counterforce against
the ‘systemic arrangements’ of the development
orthodoxy.4
Critique on technocratic tendencies in international
development often comes in the form of historical
accounts. The origin of the participator y movement
in international development is generally set in the
1970s. Participatory approaches in international
development were a response to and protest against
the colonial and early post-colonial development
programmes (Cornwall 2000; Hickey and Mohan
2005). Indeed, development aid in the 1950s and
1960s was generally put in terms like ‘technical
assistance’ and ‘transfer of technology’, and most
projects showed clear hierarchical structures with aid
workers and scientists trained in the USA and
Europe on top. The 1970s was the period that gave
birth to an alternative approach. This, it is suggested,
was a turning point in history.
Contrasts between old and new usually work well as
a normative argument. From a historiographic
viewpoint such contrasts are very problematic. When
participation in development is understood as
inclusion of the public based on individualised notions
of agency and citizenship, the late colonial initiatives
and early international development programmes
indeed show a glaring void. Colonial administrations
Maat Is Participation Rooted in Colonialism? Agricultural Innovation Systems and Participation in the Netherlands Indies
52
and the development institutes in the 1950s and
1960s worked with a different notion of
development. For them, development aimed at
national economies rather than individuals. Poverty
was primarily seen in terms of Gross Domestic
Products and much less as a state of individuals. It
took a major development institute, the World Bank,
until the late 1960s before that emphasis was
changed (Finnemore 1997). To make sense of
participation in history requires a serious effort to
understand what the notion might imply in different
periods of time rather then judging events in the past
from current ideas about what is, or ought to be.
Writing a full history of participation, if such an
endeavour would at all be possible, is beyond the
scope of this article.5What is suggested here is that
late colonial history provides some interesting
examples of participation, perceived as the
settlement of issues within an innovation system. The
case presented here is the agricultural innovation
system in the former Netherlands Indies.
4 The colonial agricultural innovation system
As noted above, in most countries a focus on
innovation in more systematic forms emerged in the
late nineteenth century. The same can be said about
the Netherlands Indies. During the 1880s, sugar
planters, suffering from economic depression and an
epidemic cane disease, set up research stations to
improve the cultivation and processing of cane.
Although privately funded, the stations cooperated
with the Botanical Garden, a public institute that
included research laboratories in botany and
chemistry. The example of the cane planters was soon
followed by plantation owners working with other
cash crops, such as tobacco, tea and rubber. The
community of plantation owners and managers was a
relatively small group of well-educated Europeans.
The exchange of demands for, and availability of,
technology was well organised through journals,
meetings and personal contacts (Maat 2003b).
In the late 1890s, the colonial government set up a
similar system for the cultivation of food crops. One
reason for the government to do so was the
staggering economy in previous years. However,
together with economic recession, the colonial
administration had to face growing civil unrest,
especially among the Javanese peasantry. This came
out, for example, in a sharp rise of cane-burnings, a
form of protest that ‘was grounded in the discontent
born of insecurity’ (Elson 1979: 226). Official
investigations into the causes of the unrest
acknowledged this indirectly by pointing out that the
colonial administration had failed to address the
needs of the rural population (de Jong 1998: 350).
This critique was turned into new measures, first
with the creation of so-called demonstration fields.
On these fields, administrators, advised by staff from
the colonial Botanical Garden, had to show how
agricultural tools and methods could be optimally
applied. Besides being beneficial to farmers, the
demonstrations were also supposed to instruct
administrators themselves, primarily the local leaders.
In 1899 there were in total four demonstration fields
close to a major village in different parts of Java. In
1907 there were about ten such fields scattered over
the islands Java and Madura (Maat 2001).
In the first decade of the twentieth century, research
and education facilities were added. In 1903, an
Agricultural School was opened in Bogor (the
colonial name was Buitenzorg) next to the Botanical
Garden where the Javanese leaders could receive
agricultural training. A year earlier the colonial
administration had asked the director of the
Botanical Garden, Melchior Treub, to write a
proposal for a Department of Agriculture (DoA). The
existing Botanical Garden and its research facilities
were to form the core of the DoA. More research
on food crops, particularly rice, was the main
ingredient. Treub proposed three major areas of
study. The first was research on the rice plant in its
various stages. ‘The demands and peculiarities of the
different paddy species and varieties have to be
checked on these points. This research is combined
with local expert judgement in different parts of
Java regarding soil and climatic conditions’ (Treub
1902: 13). The other two research themes were pest
control and soil analyses, the latter aimed at opening
up new land for rice production. In 1905 the DoA
became effective, headed by Treub.
Where Treub set out the research agenda, the
political justification of the DoA in Dutch parliament,
given by the minister of colonies, hinted at the wider
social welfare issue. The minister stated that
‘prevention of crop failure and similar disasters is not
enough, but first of all serious effort must be put in
augmentation of cultivation and bigger production,
in order to supply the ever increasing population
with sufficient food’ (Idenburg 1904: 405). Treub’s
proposal was implemented without major
IDS Bulletin Volume 38 Number 5 November 2007 53
modifications. The research on rice and other food
crops was put under a specialised Experiment Station
for Rice and Second Crops. A researcher was
appointed for each of the themes.
A few years after the start of the DoA, the
performance of the institute was brought into
question. The initiative to create the institute formed
part of a series of (rather late) responses to the
economic and social instability in the colony. One
other initiative was a further investigation of the
economic situation of the local population. The chair
of the committee leading the investigation,
H.E. Steinmetz, criticised the demonstration fields of
Treub’s department. His main objection concerned
the supervision of the fields by local leaders. As
members of the elite, these leaders took little
interest in the ‘mundane’ activities of rice farmers.
Similar criticism was expressed by one of Treub’s
direct colleagues, Jacob van Breda de Haan. On leave
in the Netherlands, he advised the Minister of
Colonies to educate young Javanese who were
interested in agriculture (and not just the elite) and
put them in charge of demonstrations, supervised by
European agronomists (van den Doel 1994: 230–32).
The colonial government took the advice seriously
and informed Treub. But Treub was against the idea
and made a counterproposal. Again he stressed the
need for more scientific research. ‘Three conclusions
that can be drawn from contemporary studies and
examinations with specific significance for practice
are: (1) there is a bigger chance than expected that
improved varieties will be found soon; (2) the
limitations of selection can be assessed better; (3) the
consequences of crosses can often be predicted with
mathematical precision’ (Creutzberg 1972: 347–8). He
therefore requested to create a new ‘selection
garden’ and build a model rice farm. The first was to
select the best rice varieties, the latter to discover
factors leading to yield maximisation.
The head of the Directorate of Agriculture in the
Netherlands, Herman Lovink, was asked to review
the proposal. Lovink saw no harm in the selection
garden but was not convinced by the plan to build a
model farm. In his response he first presented some
of the experiences with agricultural extension in the
Netherlands and then drew the conclusion that
barriers for progress and deficiencies in knowledge
must be sought on the farms together with the
farmers. According to Lovink, an experimental rice
farm will not reveal real shortcomings, and will only
have scientific value and hardly any practical use. ‘It
therefore seems that Professor Treub is not taking
the right position. The question is not what maximum
possible amount of rice can grow on a certain area,
but how it will be possible, once acquainted with rice
cultivation as conducted by the Javanese, to increase
together with the Javanese farmer his rice yields
economically, taken into account his development,
workforce and his capital’ (Creutzberg 1972: 387).
Lovink wrote this in July 1909 and in December of
the same year, he was appointed to the position of
Treub, who was repatriated because of illness.
The different views between the two directors can be
explained partly by their backgrounds. Treub was from
of a successful generation of biology students. One of
his study partners at Leiden University in the late 1860s
was Hugo de Vries, who later became one of the
rediscoverers of Mendel’s laws. Treub, and Dutch
biologists in general, including those working in the
colonies, were well informed about international
developments in biology and genetics, participated in
conferences and published internationally. With his
fellow biologists and many other academics he
considered too much focus on science applications as
a threat to the purity of science.6Lovink was from the
‘applied’ side. He had combined school and work from
a very early age and became director of a consultancy
firm for reforestation in his mid-twenties. He turned
the then small company into one of the biggest Dutch
agroforestry consultants. His qualities were noticed by
the Minister of Trade and Industry, who invited him in
1901 to lead the agricultural department. Prior to his
appointment in the Indies, Lovink had reorganised the
Dutch agricultural services, research and education
institutes to make them most effective for Dutch
agriculture. He was, in retrospect, the architect of the
Dutch agricultural innovation system (Maat 2003a).
Under Lovink’s leadership, the model farm, as
proposed by Treub, was never accomplished. He
opened the agricultural school for all male students,
regardless of background. The Dutch and Javanese
functionaries together formed the colonial
Agricultural Extension Service, established in 1911.
The extension work also comprised supervision over
new agricultural schools in different parts of Java
and an increasing number of demonstration fields,
moved from a central location near larger villages to
rural areas. These fields were not just windows for
innovation, but mechanisms to get information
Maat Is Participation Rooted in Colonialism? Agricultural Innovation Systems and Participation in the Netherlands Indies
54
about local farming conditions, bottlenecks and
possible improvements.
The question about entry conditions for the
agricultural training was related to a wider issue, the
colonial education system. Education was fiercely
debated in those days. The educational system in the
Netherlands Indies was by and large separated
between primary schools, with instruction in local
languages, and secondary (middle level and higher)
schools, where mastering the Dutch language was a
requirement.7The Dutch orientation became
problematic, especially in relation to the Javanese
elites and the ‘creole’ class of Indo-Europeans. These
groups usually mastered Dutch sufficiently and urged
for considerable expansion of the (Dutch) secondary
and tertiary school types. This would provide them
access to the higher level positions in society in
general, and the colonial administration in particular.
Precisely that last thing was something the Dutch
rulers tried to prevent. By restricting the growth of
the middle and higher level (Dutch) schools, and at
the same time restricting entry of these groups in
the administration, colonial rule remained exclusively
in the hands of Dutch (Netherlands-born)
administrators. The frustration this evoked was a
major cause of the emerging nationalistic
movements in the early twentieth century (de Jong
1998: 383–6). But the colonial education system was
problematic for another reason.
The language created an extra hurdle, making the step
from primary to secondary schooling an almost
unbridgeable gap for both the rural and urban
population. Secondary schools with instruction in local
languages did not exist, making it nearly impossible for
the majority of local Indonesians to continue
education. The difference in language plus the cultural
gap between local elites and rural population also
blocked a ‘downward’ flow in the system, either in
terms of appointment of well-educated school
teachers or tuning of teaching materials and methods.
Lovink’s concerns were not only about supervision of
demonstration fields, but included the entire
educational system. In several letters to the Governor-
General, he argued that the real problem of food crop
production lay in the education of the Javanese
farmers. He proposed to include agronomy lessons in
the primary school curriculum, train school teachers in
agriculture and make sure that the agricultural advisers
from the extension service stayed in touch with the
schools (Creutzberg 1972: 391–420).
Lovink explicitly stated that the approach to
agricultural innovation on Java should not be any
different from those applied in Europe.8Of course
conditions on Java did not allow him to copy what he
had done in the Netherlands. What has become clear,
however, is that the overall political issue of improving
the situation of the (primarily rural) population on Java,
in response to economic and social instability, worked
through at the level of the agricultural innovation
system in the Netherlands Indies. The data suggests
(further evidence to that is given in the next section)
that addressing the needs of the indigenous farmers
was taken up through the creation and further
modification of the innovation system.
5 Testing the ‘sugar model’
In 1918, Lovink was repatriated and replaced by Joan
Sibinga Mulder. The new Director-General arrived in
a turbulent period. The First World War had just
ended and the Netherlands Indies, particularly Java,
faced serious food shortages. The dependence on
rice imports had become increasingly problematic
during the war. Shipping routes were unsafe and
available tonnage strongly reduced.
One of the strategies of the DoA to diminish rice
imports and reduce the risk of famines, was to
broaden the diet of the Javanese people. A crop that
emerged as a very important food crop in the 1910s
was cassava. Introduced in Java probably in the early
1800s, it covered only about 2 per cent of the
cultivated area in 1880, but was one of the top three
food crops by the end of the 1910s. The increase of
cassava production in this period was a result of a
range of factors. The opportunities for export
increased after tapioca manufacturing expanded
considerably in the late 1890s, although even at their
peak in the 1920s cassava exports only covered 15 per
cent of total production. The balance was used for
consumption.
The growing popularity of cassava was probably
caused by two favourable characteristics of the crop.
One is its tolerance for dry and adverse soil
conditions, making the crop a good alternative in dry
years. The other is the extended period of harvesting.
From the moment a cassava plant reached a certain
size, its tubers could be dug up when needed. The
inclusion of cassava in the diet of the Javanese was
more or less an ‘endogenous’ process. In the 1910s
the government stimulated cassava consumption
through various measures, but only after cassava
IDS Bulletin Volume 38 Number 5 November 2007 55
production was well established (van der Eng 1996).
As a result, cassava and other alternatives to rice
received more attention from the researchers in
Buitenzorg.9But incremental changes were not
enough to face an acute crisis.
The crisis of the immediate postwar food shortages
made projects with direct and clearly visible effects
attractive. Sibinga Mulder thought he had found such
a quick solution. He had started his career in the
sugar industry on Java. Arriving as a technician on a
plantation in 1887, he quickly made his way up in the
cane sector. In the years before he was appointed
head of the DoA, he was based in the Netherlands
and had made several trips for the Ministry of
Colonies. In January 1919 he proposed to the
Governor-General of the Indies that he start an
experiment with mechanised rice farming on
Sumatra. On one of his trips he had seen large rice
farms in California, USA, and considered it a useful
introduction to the Indies. If the experiment
succeeded, the only thing the government would
have to do would be ‘to urge the spirit of capitalist
agricultural enterprise and to provide land and water
concessions without the usual formalities’
(Creutzberg 1973: 248).
To get more information on the rice systems in the
USA, Sibinga Mulder sent one of his agronomists,
M.B. Smits, on a study trip. In his report, Smits
clarified that it was not very likely that mechanised
rice farming would succeed in the Indies. The caution
in the report is quite in contrast to the enthusiasm
shown in the preface written by Sibinga Mulder
(Smits 1920). Preparations and first activities had
already started in the same year.
A flat area near the river Selatdjaran on Sumatra was
selected for the experiment. In May 1920, about
700 ha of land was protected by a dyke 11 km long.
Problems with water management and clearing of
the land caused some delay, and in March 1921, 50 ha
was sown with rice. A lack of water and an
abundance of rats made the engineers decide to
plough the crop before maturation and to sow the
plot anew, adding another 70 ha. That season, the
rats were helped by a bug (Leptocorisa acuta Thunb.)
and most of the crop was lost. In 1923, there was
still no significant harvest and it was decided to stop
the experiment after the 1923–4 season. The total
costs were estimated at 1.3 million guilders. The
same year Sibinga Mulder was removed from office
(Creutzberg 1972: 374). Official documents do not
mention the failed experiment as a direct result.
Besides a technical experiment in rice production, the
mechanisation scheme was also testing if a
commercial system, similar to the one applied in the
cane sector, could help food production. Political
motives played an important role here as well. The
sugar industry was a favourite target for the emerging
nationalist movement to criticise colonial rule. Sugar
cane was grown on land that was rented from local
farmers, who usually planted rice on these fields. This,
the critics argued, proved that the colonial rulers
allowed Dutch entrepreneurs to exploit the soil at
the cost of a starving population. Cane planters of
course denied the negative effects of their activities.10
One of the proposals of the colonial government,
fearing the Indonesian nationalists, was to reduce and
limit the area grown with cane. Sibinga Mulder
actively supported the lobby of the cane industry to
prevent this (Taselaar 1998). Being in charge of the
DoA was an opportunity for Sibinga Mulder to
improve the image of the cane sector and, more
generally, show that commercial agriculture was the
right way forward. Besides the many technical
difficulties, the industrial approach to rice farming
also met resistance from within the DoA.
The agronomists from the Agricultural Extension
Service had developed a specific view on how
science could benefit food crop production. Smits
was one of the earliest experts who published on
this: in 1916, he wrote an overview of rice cultivation
in the Indonesian archipelago. His main conclusion
was that ‘the intensity of agriculture does not
primarily depend on the development and technical
knowledge and skills of the farmer, but on the
economic principles of the farm. […] In general one
can detect that, even if the native does not know
anything about the yield of his farm, the intensity of
the farm is in miraculous harmony with the
economic conditions’ (Smits 1916: 480). Just before
his trip to California, Smits had published a major
study about the future of food crop production in
Indonesia. He argued that the way forward was to
intensify existing farming systems. For Sumatra, the
island where he was stationed, this implied
intensification of dry (or upland) rice farming systems.
Such dry systems were at the time the main form of
rice cultivation on Sumatra, very different to Java
where wetland (paddy) rice farming dominated
(Smits 1919).
Maat Is Participation Rooted in Colonialism? Agricultural Innovation Systems and Participation in the Netherlands Indies
56
Smits was certainly not the only one who expressed
such views. It was the perception of many
agronomists working on food crop production at the
DoA.11 The need to get a proper understanding of
existing farming systems was seen as a necessary first
step for the introduction of new technology. For
example, Dutch plant breeders were very active to
improve the existing range of rice varieties. The
‘farming systems studies’ forced breeders and
agronomists to be very specific on what they
offered. ‘The native farmer seeks in many areas for
better varieties. It is a myth that he would be so
conservative that he does not like better varieties,
unless of course taste and price differences or other
adverse characteristics make the better products of
little extra economic value’ (Vink and Scheltema
1925: 200).
The agronomists at the DoA had developed a
technical approach, made possible by the
organisational changes set in motion under Lovink’s
direction. This approach implied that through
detailed analysis of local farming systems, the local
needs were addressed. In other words, it is through
the technical implementation of food crop
improvement as developed in the colonial
agricultural innovation system that participation
emerged. There is no evidence that, in relation to
food supplies, the overall objectives of the
agronomists of the DoA were very different from
what Sibinga Mulder had in mind. The differences
were framed in technical terms, disguising (not
eliminating) political factors.
Much later, Smits evaluated the mechanisation
scheme once again. In the 1930s, there was another
initiative to introduce mechanised agriculture, this
time in the other colony of the Dutch, Surinam.
Smits commented on the technical aspects as well as
the approach taken. According to Smits, a major
bottleneck for mechanisation was not the use of
machinery as such, but the control of weeds. In
climate zones with a clear dry season, the drought
implies a thorough clearing of weeds. In humid
tropical conditions as found in Indonesia and Surinam,
plant growth was continuous and weeds a constant
threat that could only be controlled by manual
weeding.12 He ended his review with an argument
against copying examples from other countries.
‘When the issue of mechanised rice farming is
addressed, one fully has to let go of the American
example and set up an entirely new system, based on
well-established indigenous experience. In doing so
one can meet all the biological requirements of the
rice plant’ (Smits 1934: 629).
The issue of food security was played out in the
Netherlands Indies first by Treub and Lovink, each
having different views about the appropriate format
for the agricultural innovation system. The two other
players, Sibinga Mulder and Smits, clashed over the
technical approach that had to be taken. Treub and
Sibinga Mulder came with more or less precooked
formats. Treub thought that creating research
facilities was paramount, whereas Sibinga Mulder
proposed an industrial approach to agriculture.
Lovink and Smits advocated a ‘contextual’ view.
Lovink emphasised the importance of education and
creating the right channels for knowledge to flow in
two directions. Smits emphasised the economic and
technical complexities of local farming systems that
demanded solutions that would fit these
complexities.
6 Colonial innovation systems and participation
There is a growing body of literature providing
evidence that the case of the agricultural innovation
system in the Dutch colonial period, as presented
here, is no exception. The common line of argument
in histories of technology in the colonies is to
emphasise interactions between colonial rule and
technology in a deterministic way. Technology then is
seen as the means through which European rulers
exploited and controlled the local population. In
many cases, the effect of certain innovations was
indeed exploitation, not least because some
technologies were employed deliberately for that
purpose. Technology, however, has many shapes and
can have various effects.
A study on African colonial settlement schemes
shows that even within the context of rigidly
disciplining projects, colonial experts learned to
understand and appreciate local expertise (Bonneuil
2000). Another example refers back to the sugar
case. On Java, the sugar research and technology
was firmly controlled by the European planters,
supporting the image of Western technology as a
tool for Western domination. On Mauritius,
however, sugar technology was affected by political
pressure of disgruntled groups within the ethnically
diverse population. Smaller sugar planters from
Indian origin protested against quality controls. To
prevent riots, cane breeders translated their
IDS Bulletin Volume 38 Number 5 November 2007 57
demands in their breeding programmes (Storey
1997). In colonial Sierra Leone, post-First World War,
food shortages resulted in food riots (against the
Lebanese community, dominating rice trade) that
were countered with the development of large
intensive wetland rice schemes, with input from
Indian experts (Richards 1986: 4–10).
These examples and the case material presented in
this article show that an innovation systems
perspective is an appropriate analytical tool to
understand the different shapes that certain
applications (or innovations) can take as a result of
particular social and technical arrangements.
Moreover, when participation is considered not as
rooted in political ideals, but as an emergent
phenomenon related to the settlement of issues, the
participatory agenda comes out much clearer in
relation to the organisation of innovation and
technical change and the choice between various
technological solutions. Colonial history provides a
challenging area for case studies on issue-driven
participation from an innovation systems perspective.
Clearly, a colonial regime is far from the political
ideal of democracy. In a colonial system, groups
suffering from economic or social injustice have little
other means to raise their voice than to protest,
indirectly, or openly and violently. Colonial
administrators are locked in the same oppressive
system and have few other means to respond than
to employ a politics of ‘issue settlement’.
This brings us to the question of what these colonial
cases can teach us in order to analyse and enhance
participation and innovation in the present
development debate. As the material shows, various
actors within the colonial innovation systems voiced
their concerns about certain approaches or
applications in technical, rather than in political
terms. Nevertheless, the issue-driven politics within
the colonial innovation systems was clearly present.
This came out at the level of leaders of institutes and
departments, who had direct contact and discussion
with administrative and political leaders, as well as at
the lower levels of agronomists and researchers,
showing commitment to the ‘locality’ they had
become to know. A better understanding is needed
about how responsiveness and operational flexibility
in relation to issue politics plays out in the much
more global character of the (agricultural) innovation
systems that serve the international development
agendas.
Maat Is Participation Rooted in Colonialism? Agricultural Innovation Systems and Participation in the Netherlands Indies
58
Notes
* I am grateful to reviewers for comments on an
earlier version of this article and members of the
Participatory Approaches and Up-scaling
programme for the many discussions on technology
and participation. I am especially grateful to Paul
Richards for joint teaching on this topic and his
detailed comments to this article. I also want to
thank Diana Akullo and Chris Opondo for providing
insight into ‘their’ East African innovation systems.
Research for this article was supported by the
Dutch Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO),
grant No. 360–53–020.
1 Governments and economic analysts often echo
what Nelson and Rosenberg (1993) call a ‘spirit of
technonationalism’, as can be detected in
explanations of the rapid Asian industrialisation in
the 1980s and 1990s.
2 However, she shows that the very same point
was discussed in the 1920s between the
American philosopher John Dewey and the
journalist Walter Lippmann. One of the books
from Lippmann’s hand is Phantom Public, a title
aptly catching his unease with idealised notions of
citizenship in political theory (Marres 2005: 182).
3 Cornwall (2000: 17) portrays the emerging
participatory movement in the 1970s as follows:
‘The welter of declarations that emerged in this
period promised a decisive shift, away from top-
down, technocratic and economistic interventions
towards greater popular involvement in the
development process’.
4 There are numerous references to Habermas in the
participatory literature. For a critique on the dualism
in his theory, see Wagner (1994: 188–90). For
discussion on his more recent work in relation to
globalisation and politics, see Marres (2005: 11–16).
5 One historical line runs through protestant
religion back to the sixteenth-century
Reformation (Henkel and Stirrat 2001).
6 The discussion about pure science versus applied
science, the common phrasing in those days, formed
an important ingredient in the debates about
academic reform in the Netherlands (Maat 2001).
7 There were, of course, primary schools with
instruction in Dutch, the European Elementary
School (Europese Lagere School) and, separately, a
Dutch Indies School and Dutch Chinese School.
8 In a letter dated 27 May 1911, he wrote: ‘I can not
deny that, as my understanding of life and work of
the indigenous farmer increases, I become more
convinced that the indigenous farmer, when
approached the right way, is not any less susceptible
for applying improvements on his farm than his
European colleague’ (Creutzberg 1972: 404).
9 Louis Koch (1934), head of the breeding station in
that period, wrote a dissertation on cassava
selection.
10 The question, if renting out land to and working
for the sugar factories was really less attractive to
Javanese farmers than growing rice, is a debate
kept alive by historians (Knight 1992).
11 The common methodology applied by the
agronomist was labelled ‘farm analysis’
(bedrijfsontleding). These detailed descriptions of
technical and economic factors leading to
particular forms of production in a village usually
ended with recommendations to improve these
local farming systems.
12 The introduction of herbicides in the 1930s and
1940s changed the situation. Another advantage of
a dry period is that the (muddy) top soil gets hard
enough to carry the machines (Grist 1975: 198).
IDS Bulletin Volume 38 Number 5 November 2007 59
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