The Dimensions of Javanese villages

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to develop a method, based on avail- Java and Madura, and to explore the significant relationships between able statistics, of describing basic dimensions of the 76 regencies in the dimensions thus measured. Previous work of the Government and some reports pertinent to villages were examined and on the basis of a part of these sources it was possible to derive a list of community dimensions through the procedure of factor analysis. Correlations among the 33 variables were calculated. The resulting correlation matrix was factor analyzed using the principal component method and rotated by the Varimax procedure. Nine factors were extracted which account for about three-quarters of the variance in the variables. The nine successively emerging factors are interpreted as designating certain basic dimensions and labelled as follows: Factor I Institutional complexity, Factor II Traditional pattern of village government, Factor III Rural-urban continuum, Factor IV Size of regency, Factor V Socio-economic condition, Factor VI Communalism, Factor VII Sosial density, Factor VIII Social organizational stability, Factor IX, Occupational differentiation. The relative magnitude of the factors was also examined. Factor VII, social density, seemed to be the most general factor in terms of the proportion of the variance it explained. Factor IV, size of regency was the strongest in terms of internal stability. Two devices were developed to describe and compare the regencies. The West-Javanese regencies have been shown to be more heterogeneous compared with those in Central and East-Java. Village governments in West-Java were less traditional than those in Central and East-Java. The degree of institutional complexity of Central-Javanese village government has been proved to be higher than those in East-Java. Although the scale was shown to be useful in describing the regencies comparatively, the profile was better in describing individual regencies. Some implications of the findings were illustrated.