This article demonstrates how an integral element of the fabric of governance on the eastern Indonesian island of Lombok, and many other parts of the Indonesian archipelago, are non-state local security arrangements, such as night watches and militias. These groups play a significant role in the local infrastructure of security and law enforcement. Consequently, this article challenges a common assumption by legal scholars, and many other observers of Indonesia, that state-based institutions such as the police are the exclusive, and only legitimate, mode of law enforcement in Indonesia. Through an ethnographic engagement with the idea of law enforcement on Lombok, I seek to broaden these assumptions about legitimate modes of statecraft. These non-state entities fill a void in the Indonesian law enforcement architecture that the state is unable or unwilling to fulfil (or potentially finds it more practical to delegate to local non-state institutions).
Zulkifli
In addition to offering insight into the discipline of sociology, sociology of education textbooks constitute a major source of sociological knowledge. This article examines the scholarly content of Indonesian sociology of education textbooks by focusing on the degree of commonality between their core content and sources, and between their core content and academic scholarship. The results of this examination reveal a low level of commonality among the core contents of the seven selected textbooks—a heterogeneity that reflects not so much the plurality of Indonesian society and educational institutions or the application of sociological theories and approaches required by the Indonesian curriculum, but rather the diversity of the textbooks’ sources and their authors’ scholarly publication records.
Fredy B.L. Tobing and Asra Virgianita
Changes in international politics have yielded new perspectives regarding the relations between Indonesia and Latin American countries. The fall of the Soviet Union ushered in an era where relations among countries are based not only on deep
Thijs Schut
Development discourses often assume linear rural transitions, in which educated young people are supposed to leave their rural communities, becoming urban. However, drawing on fieldwork in Flores (East Indonesia), I argue that tertiary educated young people do return to their natal communities upon graduation. There, they want to act—by virtue of their education—as vanguards of positive change and alter what they consider backward, rural livelihoods and practices. Yet, educated young people often depend on these livelihoods and practices, too, especially when they cannot obtain work, which is common in rural Flores. To better understand the tensions inherent to these young people’s position within their rural communities, I map the reasons for their returns to rural Flores.
Islam, Travel, and Learning
A Case Study on Indonesian Muslim Student Diasporas in Saudi Arabia
Sumanto Al Qurtuby
Introduction Traditionally and historically, Muslim students have been one of the most important agents of distributing Islamic thinking and religious practices in Indonesia. Indonesian Muslim students who studied Islam in the Middle East and
When Transit States Pursue Their Own Agenda
Malaysian and Indonesian Responses to Australia's Migration and Border Policies
Antje Missbach and Gerhard Hoffstaedter
transit states, but may face open refusal and more subtle forms of noncompliance. This article demonstrates in particular that Australia's outsourced policies to prevent asylum seekers’ irregular departure from Malaysia and Indonesia did not meet the
Interiority and government of the child
Transparency, risk, and good governance in Indonesia
Jan Newberry
early childhood education) was one of many aimed at children in the zaman emas , or golden age of zero to eight years of age. Since 2001, there has been a dramatic increase in the programming for early childhood care and education (ECEC) in Indonesia
Keeping the Future at Bay
Waria, Anticipation and Existential Endings in Bali, Indonesia
Sylvia Tidey
as I shadow her during her work as an HIV outreach worker and peer-educator for local gay men 1 and waria – or Indonesian transgender women – in Bali, Indonesia. 2 Claudia is a waria herself and has been living with HIV for over a decade. I
Sarah Pink and John Postill
recent interest in ethnographies of possible futures ( Halse 2013 ) and in how technologies might figure in those futures ( Pink et al. 2018 ). The context for our research was Indonesia's emerging economy, where an increasing number of women are working
Indonesian Publishing
New Freedoms, Old Worries, and Unfinished Democratic Reform
Michael Nieto Garcia
Indonesia is in the midst of a publishing renaissance. The number of published titles doubled in 2003 to a sum greater than any year under Suharto. Titles unimaginable 10 years ago now line bookstore shelves: books about Marx, books by and about ethnic Chinese, and books with the words ‘sex’ or ‘homosexual’ and ‘Islam’ in the same title. In 2000, the publisher of Nobel Prize–nominated author Pramoedya Ananta Toer released a special Emancipation Edition of the previously banned Buru Quartet, named after the island on which the Suharto regime had imprisoned the writer for almost 14 years.