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Approximately one million innocent Indonesians were killed by their fellow nationals, neighbours and kin at the height of an anti-communist campaign in the mid-1960s. This book investigates the profound political consequences of these mass killings in Indonesia upon public life, highlighting the historical specificities of the violence and comparable incidents of identity politics in more recent times. Mixing theory with empirically based analysis, the book examines how the spectre of communism and the trauma experienced in the latter half of the 1960s remain critical in understanding the dynamics of terror, coercion and consent today. Heryanto challenges the general belief that the periodic anti-communist witch-hunts of recent Indonesian history are largely a political tool used by a powerful military elite and authoritarian government. Despite the profound importance of the 1965-6 events it remains one of most difficult and sensitive topics for public discussion in Indonesia today. State Terrorism and Political Identity in Indonesia is one of the first books to fully discuss the mass killings, shedding new light on a largely unspoken and unknown part of Indonesia’s history.
Identity and Pleasure: The Politics of Indonesian Screen Culture critically examines what media and screen culture reveal about the ways urban-based Indonesians attempted to redefine their identity in the first decade of this century. Through a richly nuanced analysis of expressions and representations found in screen culture (cinema, television and social media), it analyses the waves of energy and optimism, and the disillusionment, disorientation and despair, that arose in the power vacuum that followed the dramatic collapse of the militaristic New Order government. While in-depth analyses of identity and political contestation within the nation are the focus of the book, trans-national engagements and global dimensions are a significant part of the story in each chapter. The author focuses on contemporary cultural politics in Indonesia, but each chapter contextualizes current circumstances by setting them within a broader historical perspective.
This book examines popular culture in Indonesia, bringing material on Indonesia’s media and popular culture to an English readership for the first time. It includes analysis of important themes including citizenship, gender, class, age and ethnicity, showing how developments in Indonesian society more generally are inextricably linked to popular culture.
The premise of Social Science and Power in Indonesia is that the role and development of social sciences in Indonesia over the past fifty years are inextricably related to the shifting requirements of power. What is researched and what is not, which frameworks achieve paradigmatic status while others are marginalized, and which kinds of social scientists become influential while others are ignored are all matters of power. These and other important themes and issues are critically explored by some of Indonesia's foremost social scientists in this seminal work.
This book examines popular culture in Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation, and the third largest democracy. It provides a full account of the key trends since the collapse of the authoritarian Suharto regime (1998), a time of great change in Indonesian society more generally. It explains how one of the most significant results of the deepening industrialization in Southeast Asia since the 1980s has been the expansion of consumption and new forms of media, and that Indonesia is a prime example of this development. It goes on to show that although the Asian economic crisis in 1997 had immediate and negative impacts on incumbent governments, as well as the socioeconomic life fo...
"What is the relevance of the area studies approach to Southeast Asia?" The current state and future directions of area studies, of which Southeast Asian studies are a part, is a central question not only to scientists working in the field but also those engaged in university politics. This collection of nine articles is written by specialists from different disciplinary backgrounds and working in institutions of higher learning all around the world. It provides an up-to-date insight into the current state of the study field, its strengths and weaknesses and seeks ways to reconfigure Southeast Asian studies in order to meet the challenges of a region that is caught up in profound transformation as a consequence of both globalization and localization.
The essays in Knowing Southeast Asian Subjects ask how the rising preponderance of scholarship from Southeast Asia is de-centering Southeast Asian area studies in the United States. The contributions address recent transformations within the field and new directions for research, pedagogy, and institutional cooperation. Contributions from the perspectives of history, anthropology, cultural studies, political theory, and libraries pose questions ranging from how a concern with postcolonial and feminist questions of identity might reorient the field to how anthropological work on civil society and Islam in Southeast Asia provides an opportunity for comparative political theorists to develop more sophisticated analytic approaches. A vision common to all the contributors is the potential of area studies to produce knowledge outside a global academic framework that presumes the privilege and even hegemony of Euro-American academic trends and scholars.
Under the New Order regime (1967-98), the Indonesian military sought to monopolise the production of official history and control its contents. The goal was to validate the political role of the armed forces, condemn communism and promote military values. A detailed examination of the Indonesian military's image-making under Suharto.
(Un) Civil Society and Political Change in Indonesia provides critical analysis of Indonesia’s civil society and its impact on the country’s democratization efforts that does not only take the classical, pro-democratic actors of civil society into account but also portrays uncivil groups and their growing influence on political processes. Beittinger-Lee offers a revised categorization of civil society, including a model to define the sphere of ‘uncivil society’ more closely and to identify several subcategories of uncivil society. This is the first book to portrays various uncivil groups in Indonesia, ranging from vigilantes, militias, paramilitaries, youth groups, civil security tas...