The Dutch colonial burden: colonial collections in postcolonial times and the transfer of academic values

In this paper I will address the way Dutch Asianists transfer academic values to the next generation. The conclusion will be that they do so in a, perhaps surprisingly, unsystematic way, even to the point that there is little consensus about what constitute the major academic values. The paper consists of a preliminary analysis, based on interviews with four scholars (Jan Breman, Elsbeth Locher‐Scholten, Henk Schulte Nordholt and Wim van den Doel) and a content analysis of a selection of PhD theses, inaugural lectures, valedictory lectures, and Festschriften. These four types of writing are, more than ordinary articles and monographs, texts in which people express normative ideasAustralian National University and Leiden Universit

Public housing in postcolonial Indonesia; The revolution of rising expectations

Public housing can show us important things about Indonesia in the 1950s, because seemingly technical, neutral planning decisions were in reality highly political choices. Public housing was restarted on a massive scale in Indonesia in the early 1950s, but the building volume soon fell off because of financial constraints. This limited success raises the questions of what happened to public housing during the decolonization, which groups were reached, what the size of the public housing sector was, and why public housing soon failed to live up to the high expectations of the political leaders, and perhaps the general public too, after Independence

Ethnoregional social dramas of Southeast Asian in globalism: recasting cultural heritage for ethnic revivals

This book offers an interpretative symbolic analysis of present global phenomenon that gives rise ethnic culture as regional identity. With a multi-sited ethnography (Marcus, 1995 and 1998), this book is a sort of comparative ethnographies which sought the collective identities of the Melayu Baru or Neo-Malay and Chinese Peranakan or Nanyang in two cities of Southeast Asia. The Neo-Malay with Islam solidarity (Ummah) is attached to ethnoregional community, in contrast, the Chinese Nanyang or Peranakan got their identity remaking with syncretic popular beliefs in the Straits of Melaka. Ethnicity data of Neo-Malay and Chinese Nanyang of Georgetown of Malaysia and Medan City of Indonesia are divided into four Social Drama phases (Turner, 1982), they are: Breach, Liminal, Redress, and Reintegration. Ethnography of ethnic formations and revivals comprises of: (1) Colonialism as Breach: Ethnic Categories of the Dutch Indies and British Malay (2) Nationalism as Liminal: Ethno-national symbolic disputes (3) Ethnoregionalism as Redress: regionalizing the cultural hybridity of Neo-Malay and of Chinese Nanyang, and (4) Globalism as Reintegration: galvanizing heritage fiestas for global culture. The reproduced hybrid heritage of Neo-Malay and Chinese Nanyang is annually performed in public spaces and social media by the ethnic groups in Georgetown-Malaysia and Medan North Sumatra. Restoration of ethnic rituals and festivals arises to uphold ethnic identities of social groups. Even the solitary rituals, which move into the public spaces, solidify the ethnic identity and create “communitas” in urban areas. Beliefs and traditions are the foundation of shared identities that must have any adjustments to external factors. The observed and analyzed ethnic revivals in Georgetown and Medan city are using various reconstruction strategies; recasting of cultural heritage reproductions in the religious sites and public spaces of urban areas, re-enacting annual rituals and festivals. The ethnoregional shared identities are recast as ethnic revival strategy in globalism

Cars, Conduits, and Kampongs

Cars, Conduits and Kampongs offers a wide panorama of the modernization of Indonesian cities between 1920 and 1960. In examining the multiple responses to innovations introduced by Western colonialism, the contributors demonstrate how modernization, urbanization, and decolonization were intrinsically linked. A full text Open Access version is also available