2013 Indonesia Study Group
19 December. Meinarni Susilowati (UIN Maulana Malik Ibrahim, Malang). Rural javanese in ‘wayang gombal’ of Jaya Baya magazine
18 December. Nicholas Herriman (La Trobe University). Witchcraft provisions in the draft legal code
11 December. Jeff Neilson (University of Sydney). Resource-based industrialisation and farmer welfare: the effects of an export tariff on the farm-gate price of Indonesian cocoa beans
9 December. Hamdan Juhannis (UIN Alauddin, Makassar). Multiculturalism in education: the case of Pondok Modern Immim, Makassar, South Sulawesi
27 November. Nicolaas Warouw (University of NSW Canberra at ADFA). Recognizing the locals: poverty reduction and REDD in Indonesia
20 November. Virginia Hooker (ANU). What are we missing? Islam-inspired art in today’s Indonesia
5 November. Kamala Chandrakirana (UN Human Rights Council & UN Social & Economic Commission for Asia and the Pacific). Right to the truth: why does it matter for Indonesia?
25 September. Anne Booth (University of London). Why are so many Indonesians still poor? Some reflections on poverty and income distribution after Suharto
3 September. John McCarthy (ANU). Food security and household vulnerability in a post-crisis context: towards a relational understanding of community driven development in post-tsunami Aceh
Policy discussions, project interventions and a wide body of literature focus on the problems creating the shocks and stressors that generate the vulnerability and the disadvantage found in post-crisis situations. Despite the deployment of sufficient resources, in many cases post-disaster reconstruction reproduces vulnerabilities without recovering pre-disaster levels of development.
In this seminar John McCarthy discussed his work on post-tsunami Aceh, where following the largest disaster in forty years, a large scale reconstruction program implemented projects to maximise beneficiary participation and bring about community driven development. Here surveys undertaken in sample villages eight years after the tsunami reveal clear evidence of longer term, chronic vulnerability and composite food insecurity among up to fifty per cent of households. Applying a relational framework and taking into account vernacular understandings of vulnerability in post-conflict Aceh, his work analyses how the logics of community driven policy narratives that apply social capital ideas and the situational logics shaping aid practices shape understandings and responses to vulnerability. Locating instances where adaptive capacity emerged, his work points to the need for more transformative approaches to address enduring, quotidian forms of vulnerability.
Dr John McCarthy is a lecturer at Crawford School of Public Policy at The Australian National University. He carries out research into issues of agrarian change, land tenure, environmental governance, and natural resource policy. He is the author of The Fourth Circle: A Political Ecology of Sumatra’s Rainforest Frontier (Stanford University Press, 2006) and has published in World Development, Development and Change, the Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography, the Journal of Peasant Studies, Human Ecology, the Journal of Southeast Asian Studies and more. His current research grants are concerned with agrarian transitions and oil palm, social capital and livelihoods in post-disaster Aceh, and food security and agrarian change. This article was written under a research grant from the Australian Research Council.
This seminar was presented by the Indonesia Study Group and the Crawford School of Public Policy.
28 August. Greg Fealy (ANU). Is rising religious intolerance caused by radical groups or mainstream attitudes?
21 August. Peter McCawley (ANU). The Indonesian economy into 2014: getting more difficult ahead?
7 August. Ed Aspinall (ANU). When brokers betray: social networks and electoral politics in Indonesia
31 July. Jean Gelman Taylor (University of NSW). The Indies on canvas
Across 300 years Dutch artists illustrated Indonesian peoples and places in pencil and in paint. Theirs is a record of deepening engagement in Indonesian societies as kin and conqueror. Seascapes were followed by port and market scenes wherever Dutch East Indies Company officials did business. The first Asian arts they encountered were Chinese, Japanese and Islamic arts. Batavia’s art market was operating by 1627, just eight years after the founding of the Company’s headquarters, and already Chinese paintings were being offered for sale, suggesting the development of new tastes and aesthetic sensibilities.
From the mid-19th century the camera complements the painted record. The moving picture offers novel perspectives on colonial society from1912. Individuals from multi-ethnic private households and palaces were artists, apprentices, viewers and purchasers.
We see progressions from painted and photographed ‘representative types’ to named individuals. Indies contributors to these visual genres were Dutch, Indonesian and Chinese. Nineteenth century Dutch and Javanese painters turned nature into landscape. Dutch and Chinese photographers recorded the destruction of forests for commercial agriculture. Dutch and Javanese artists imagined history in paint; photographers captured contemporary society. We see Indonesian wage earners taking up jobs in office, factory and clinic. We see new lifestyles, and the development of colonial civil society in the photographs of Masonic, benevolent, musical, sports and political associations. Family photographs document the ambiguities of colonial life. Indonesian family albums record the emergence of a modern consciousness of self. The images shown during the presentation also suggested the problems in using visual records for history.
24 July. Ann Kumar (ANU). Take my word for it – loanwords, and DNA, unveil a more interesting Indonesian history
Indonesia’s tropical climate poses a major problem for research into its early history. The rapid disappearance of any perishable form of written documents means that the first first ‘traditional’ historical sources are the earliest extant (which is not the same as the first ever produced) inscriptions.
These are as late as the fifth century CE. Some historians therefore relegate everything before that time to the basket of prehistory. Yet archaeological remains reveal that a highly sophisticated level of technology and society, fully comparable to ‘historical’ societies elsewhere in the world, existed much before then.
In this seminar Ann Kumar argued that research into linguistics, especially loanwords, and on DNA can make a large contribution to the writing of a more human and much more interesting early history. Ann Kumar looked at two significant movements of people out of Indonesia, ie to Japan and to Madagascar respectively. These would never have been discovered without the study of the words and genes the Indonesian migrants left behind – their words in the language, their genes in the gene-pool – neither destroyed by the climate. Ann Kumar also looks briefly at three known movements of people into Indonesia, ie Indianisation, Islamisation and colonisation, to see what the study of loanwords and genes can add to our understanding of the impact of these processes.
10 July. Sulfikar Amir (Nanyang Techological University, Singapore). Risk state and democratic response: nuclear politics in emerging Indonesia
The rise of Indonesia as a new economic powerhouse in Asia has one logical consequence: the growing demands for energy. One of the solutions the Indonesian government resort to for the issue of energy undersupply is nuclear power. The effort to develop nuclear energy as part of the national energy system dates back to the 1970s but not until recently it has received serious attention and considerable support from the central government.
The Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan apparently did not render Indonesia’s nuclear ambition to retreat. Despite a large-scale opposition against nuclear power drawn by a strong anti-nuclear movement, Jakarta remains eager to build nuclear power plants in order to turn Indonesia as the first Southeast Asian nation to have nuclear power capacity. Looking at the bewildering eagerness of the Indonesian state to build technological capacity for nuclear power production, this paper delves into the epistemological and institutional factors that underpin the state’s unfettered desire for nuclear power. The interplay between technoscience and hypergrowth impulses is critically discussed to understand how the magnitude of nuclear risk is thwarted by what this paper refers to as ‘institutionalised ignorance’.
Situating the nuclear politics in a democratic environment, the last part discusses how the newly established democratic system failed to facilitate open and fair dialogues between the state and society in assessing the potential hazards that come from the proposed construction of nuclear power plant.
12 June. Ken George (ANU). Cultural anthropology and the state of Indonesian studies in the U.S.
30 May. Sidney Jones (International Crisis Group). How Aceh became a one-party state and why it matters
8 May. Vikram Nehru (Carnegie Endowment for International, Washington). Survey of recent developments in Indonesia
Indonesia’s political parties have submitted their provisional list of candidates – the process for the 2014 parliamentary and presidential elections has finally begun. But recent events suggest that the country’s political reforms remain a work in progress. The military and the police do not appear to be fully reconciled to the rule of law. Fundamental questions about the electoral system are still being debated. And the balance of power between the executive and legislature, the centre and provinces, and the government and civil society are still being tested. It is too early to say if the slowing growth momentum towards the end of 2012 has been arrested. Exports continue to slow while imports appear stable, making it increasingly likely that the trade and current account deficits that so startled markets and policy-makers in 2012 could persist through at least the first half of 2013. In contrast, growth in foreign and domestic investment in the first quarter was strong, consumer confidence remains high, portfolio flows continue to pour in, and the stock market has recently reached record highs. On the macroeconomic policy front, the government’s dithering on raising fuel prices is exacerbating uncertainty and crowding out infrastructure investment and social expenditures. And accelerating inflation, together with large inflows of short-term capital and significant external financing requirements, poses complications for macroeconomic management. On the structural front, a recent spate of trade restrictions and new draft trade and industrial laws currently being considered by parliament potentially mark a shift towards a more interventionist and import-substitution development strategy. Targeting and financing challenges facing Indonesia’s social assistance programs are making it increasingly difficult to protect poor and vulnerable households in the face of slowing growth and rising inequality.
24 April. Priyambudi Sulistiyanto (Flinders University). Emergence of local power in Yogyakarta
This presentation explored the emergence of local power in Yogyakarta. There has been considerable continuity and change in this historic city especially since decentralisation was adopted in 2001 (Richter, 2008; Sulistiyanto, 2009; Park, 2012; Kadir, 2012; Tickamyer and Kusujiarti, 2012). Politically, local people were presented with many political parties to vote in both national and local elections, but only two of them, the National Mandate Party (PAN) and the Indonesian Democratic Party-Struggle (PDIP) shared most of the votes. Economically, local people had been through many crises caused by domestic and external factors such as the 1998 economic meltdown and the 2008 worldwide economic crisis. Socially, local people also adapted to changes happened in their surroundings where contestations between local, national and global social, religious and cultural actors were intense and deepened. This presentation aims to do a few things: firstly, mapping out political affiliations and social and religious activism of local people in Yogyakarta; secondly, finding out the changing of local economic configurations in Yogyakarta with attention the rise of new business actors; and thirdly, looking at the relationship among local social and religious organisations which are existed in this city.
17 April. Ross Tapsell (ANU). Where old and new media collide: convergence and media freedom in Indonesia
The media industries in Indonesia are currently undergoing profound change due to the convergence of ‘old’ and ‘new’ media. Media companies which previously only specialised in one platform (such as print, radio, television or online) are now forming larger, multi-platform media conglomerates. Media owners are creating multi-platform ‘news services’. Previously separate offices of newspapers and television stations are being synchronised. Journalists are renamed as ‘content providers’, and editors ‘curators’ of this content. Citizen journalism, where the general public takes on the role of journalists and reports information, is fast becoming incorporated into mainstream news media content, increasingly produced for mobile devices such as the iPad, iPhone or Blackberry. Sensing a drastic change in the media landscape, the Indonesian government began drafting a Convergence Bill (Undang-undang Konvergensi Telematika).
This process of convergence provides a ‘fork in the road’ for media freedom in Indonesia. It is providing an opportunity for information to become more concentrated, controlled and cartelised. Convergence is also providing greater diversity of opinion and expression through a variety of platforms and mediums, particularly involving social media and citizen journalism. This seminar to some extent speculated who benefits and who suffers from this process, including a discussion of the roles of media moguls running for President in 2014. But the central question of this seminar was to discuss the broader implications for media freedom in Indonesia in this “new era” of media convergence.
13 March. Dan Slater (University of Chicago). Reclaiming oligarchy: accountability dynamics in Indonesia’s collusive democracy
Democratic elections cannot prevent the super-wealthy from forging cozy ties with officeholders and conspiring to defend their super-wealth. Yet this does not mean that ‘oligarchy’ is as globally ubiquitous or locally intractable as neo-Marxist scholars of Indonesia suggest. This essay reclaims the classical notion of oligarchy as rule by the few, and hence as antidemocratic by definition. While oligarchy can be defined in as many ways as democracy, any definition must capture two intrinsic features: its active engagement in government rule, and its normatively troubling antidemocratic character. In an explicit effort to stand on the shoulders of theoretical giants such as Machiavelli, Rousseau, and Schmitt, this essay defines and distinguishes oligarchy as a form of rule in which political elites behave as if they are primarily accountable to fellow elites, but only minimally accountable to the general citizenry. Empirically, this approach helps us gauge how substantively democratic or oligarchic a regime is upon an authoritarian collapse, and trace how shifting accountability practices can decisively alter the character of oligarchy – and even overturn oligarchy entirely – over time. This essay adopts this dynamic, accountability-centered framework to assess the contingent origins, ongoing shifts, and uncertain future of oligarchic rule in post-Suharto Indonesia.
27 February. Marcus Mietzner (ANU). Jokowi: Indonesia’s next president
In this seminar, I argued that a seismic shift is currently taking place in the lead-up to the 2014 presidential elections. After having been populated by conventional political figures for years (Megawati, Bakrie, Prabowo), opinion polls now show Joko Widodo (“Jokowi”) as the front-runner. This shift is only comparable to Yudhoyono’s entry into the political race in 2003. Indeed, the moment and size of Jokowi’s lead are more forceful and compelling than Yudhoyono’s more than a decade ago. In my talk, I explained why Jokowo’s lead is unlikely to erode; why he is going to run; why he is going to be nominated - and most importantly, why he is going to win.
6 February. Jesse Grayman (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore). Humanitarian subjects in post-conflict and post-tsunami Aceh, Indonesia
In this talk I discussed how the humanitarian encounter in Aceh following the tsunami and then the Helsinki peace agreement has produced a diverse array of new ‘humanitarian subjects’ and their impact on the tentative revival of Aceh’s civil society. I began with a review of two contrasting short essays written by young Acehnese intellectuals that were published during the urgent early years of humanitarian intervention in Aceh. The writers take us back to the utter catastrophe of tsunami but do not neglect to acknowledge how Aceh’s history of separatist conflict has had an impact on recovery efforts. Their narratives set up representative endpoints in a range of outcomes produced by Acehnese civil society’s encounter with humanitarianism. At one end of the spectrum we have subjects that some in the humanitarian industry—and in local parlance—have labeled ‘champions’. At the other end of the spectrum we have humanitarian subjects committed to efforts that expose and disrupt hierarchy. Based upon a series of ethnographic interviews I conducted in 2012, I filled in this broad spectrum of outcomes with the life histories and recollections of a group of informants who have been active participants in civil society during and after Aceh’s so-called “NGO era.”
Jesse Hession Grayman recently completed his PhD in the Department of Anthropology at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. The title of his dissertation is ‘Humanitarian Encounters in Post-Conflict Aceh, Indonesia’ based on five years of fieldwork in Aceh working with four different international humanitarian and development organizations involved in post-conflict recovery.
5 February. Katy Cornwell (Monash University) and Titik Anas (Centre for Strategic and International Studies). Survey of recent developments
The third quarter of 2012 witnessed a slowdown in growth to 6.2 per cent (year-on-year), compared with 6.5 percent in 2011. It is unlikely that Indonesia will achieve the 6.5 percent growth target of 2012. If oil and gas were excluded, the growth rate would be about 6.9 per cent. This slowing of growth is not a specifically Indonesian story, and, in fact, Indonesia’s growth remains strong compared with most countries in the region.
Alongside sustained strong economic growth, the overall incidence of poverty in Indonesia has declined substantially over the last decade. However, the benefits of this growth have not been shared equally among the entire population, and there are signs of increased inequality. While this could be seen as part and parcel of economic progress, high inequality in an economy can impede poverty reduction efforts, increase civil unrest, destabilise the political situation and restrict the domestic market. We examine national and provincial Gini coefficients over the last decade, in an attempt to identify the sources of this rising inequality.
In the countdown to the new year, workers staged rallies demanding increases in minimum wages and an end to outsourcing. The newly elected Governor of Jakarta, Joko Widodo, was among the first to agree to a raise of 44 per cent; other administrative heads followed, agreeing to increases up to 70 per cent. With minimum wages across the country determined at the provincial level of government, and sometimes at the district and municipal levels, the increases are not consistent across all regions in Indonesia.
Other special focus areas of the Survey include the Jakarta floods, the APEC agenda, HIV/AIDS and decisions made by the constitutional court.