Indonesian Studies Working Papers series

The University of Sydney Indonesian Studies Working Papers series is an international online forum for the circulation of academic papers in English or Indonesian on Indonesia-related topics.

Papers for 2008

• Number 6, August 2008: The Political Economy of Reform: Labour After Soeharto
• Number 5, April 2008: States of uncertainty: resolving the illegal occupation of land in Kepulauan Riau
• Number 4, January 2008: On a Roll: Pramoedya and the Postcolonial Transition

Papers for 2007

• Number 3, September 2007: Taking the Streets: Activism and Memory Work in Jakarta
• Number 2, May 2007: Making the Best of What You’ve Got: Sex Work and Class Mobility in the Riau Islands
• Number 1, March 2007: Don’t Forget to Remember Me: An Audiovisual Archive of Everyday Life in Indonesia in the 21st Century

The Political Economy of Reform: Labour After Soeharto

Chris Manning
Australian National University

Abstract:
The dramatic changes in Indonesia's political and economic environment after 1998 brought to the fore tensions between economic and social policy that had been simmering for three decades under the government of president Soeharto. These strains were felt acutely, especially in areas where the interests of large disadvantaged social groups were seen to have been sacrificed in the quest for faster economic growth and crony business expansion. In several key areas where economic and social policy intersect, such as labour, agricultural policy and land rights, there has been a significant shift in favour of social groups disadvantaged during the New Order. This paper focuses on one such group, wage workers in the formal sector.

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States of uncertainty: resolving the illegal occupation of land in Kepulauan Riau

Nicholas Long
Deparment of Social Anthropology
University of Cambridge

Abstract:
The dispossession of local or indigenous populations by migrants is often attributed to social or cultural problems on the part of the locals, or ‘competitive advantages’ on the part of the migrants. This paper challenges that view through an ethnographic exposition of a land rights hearing in the Riau Archipelago. The case explores how parallel claims to ownership and residence are established through such diverse means as title deeds, forest clearance, kinship, and civil-administrative registration, and asks what happens when these parallel templates clash. The paper thus offers a fresh approach to thinking about dispossession, land rights and local bureaucracies.

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On a Roll: Pramoedya and the Postcolonial Transition

Keith Foulcher
The University of Sydney

Abstract:
The publication in 2004 of Menggelinding I, a collection of 58 articles, essays and short works of literature by Pramoedya Ananta Toer in the period between 1947 and 1956, illuminates an important chapter in the early history of post-colonial literature in Indonesia, as well as in Pramoedya’s own literary and intellectual biography. Most historians describe Pramoedya’s move into radical cultural politics as occurring after his visit to China in 1956, at about the same time LEKRA began to be more assertive in its cultural political stance. However a careful reading of these earlier sources – covering the Revolution and its immediate aftermath, Pramoedya’s visit to the Netherlands in 1953 and the polemics surrounding the so-called crisis in literature of the same year – suggests that there may be more continuity in Pramoedya’s development than is generally recognised, and that the lines of the LEKRA-non LEKRA polemics of the early 1960s were already being drawn in the early years of the post-independence period.

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Taking the Streets: Activism and Memory Work in Jakarta

Doreen Lee
Department of Anthropology, Cornell University

Abstract:
The discourse of public space in Indonesia contains both the anxieties and the hopes of the social classes affected by this idea of ‘public space’ and what it promises. This paper takes up the discourse of the street to analyse the ways that ideas of the street and urban subjectivity have shaped each other. Rather than analysing the historical development of city space at length, it examines the cultural practices of the Student Movement in the post-Soeharto era that take up the discourse of the street, and compares these to the inclination of most middle-class urbanites to impose boundaries against the masses.

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Making the Best of What You’ve Got: Sex Work and Class Mobility in the Riau Islands

Michele Ford and Lenore Lyons
The University of Sydney and the University of Wollongong

Abstract:
The islands of Batam, Bintan and Karimun on the Indonesian border with Singapore and Malaysia have an extensive sex industry which caters predominantly to foreign visitors. This paper explores the place of ‘sex as work’ for women involved in the industry and the opportunities for class mobility that sex work may present to them. We argue that these opportunities are the product of the Riau Islands’ particular spatiality, including a geographical proximity to Singapore and Malaysia, and a pattern of migration which has seen large numbers of temporary and long-term transmigrants from throughout the archipelago moving in and out of the islands in search of work. In this paper we explore these issues through the stories of two women, Lia and Ani, who – as a result of their marriages to foreign men – have moved out of the sex industry and into the lower middle class.

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Don’t Forget to Remember Me: An Audiovisual Archive of Everyday Life in Indonesia in the 21st Century

Henk Schulte Nordholt and Fridus Steijlen
KITLV – Leiden

Abstract:
This paper presents the outline of a new and ambitious project by KITLV Leiden and Offstream Filmmakers in Jakarta to document aspects of everyday life in Indonesia during the 21st century. The intention is to create an audio visual archive which consists of recordings made in eight different places throughout the Indonesian archipelago: Jakarta, Surabaya, Delanggu (Central Java), Payakumbuh (West Sumatra), Kawal (Island of Bintan), Sintang (West Kalimantan), Bittuang (Tana Toraja), and Ternate. Every four years recordings are made at the same spots in these places. The paper discusses some theoretical aspects of the quest for ''everyday life'' and its implications for the project.

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