Agricultural involution" and"shared poverty" (definitions given below) are the two basic concepts in the theoretical model Geertz sets up to explain the economic history of Java. To provide a historical and structural basis for these two notions, Geertz develops two lines of argument. One is the ecological argument concerning wet-rice cultivation(sawah) as opposed to slash-and-bum, or swidden, and the other the dual economy argument. This latter asserts that the foreign sector(the capital intensive sector producing agricultural produce for export) and the native sector the labor-intensive sector producing subsistence crops) were separated and coexisted during the period of Dutch colonial rule, ultimately producin a fixed, dual structure in the Indonesian economy. Geertz g probably opted for this two-tier approach in order to account for the situation then prevailing in Javanese villages and in order to better assess their prospects for the future quite gloomy and pessimistic. First, he confirmed the existence of an inherent trend toward agricultural involution which arose from the technical characteristics of sawah cultivation itself. He then traced the process by which this dormant factor evolved into a fixed, almost imeversible and self-perpetuating pattern during the period of colonial rule. Let us frst examine Geertzs line of reasoning