Events

CHAIRPERSON

Dr Rita Padawangi, Singapore University of Social Sciences

ABSTRACT

The research looks at the institutionalisation of urban land-ownership during the colonial period in Java since the introduction of local government and the rise of the municipalities in the early twentieth century. It looks into how urban land-ownership was tied to the political economy of the municipalities, the commodification of urban real estate as a result of the rise of a European-dominated, middle class real estate market and the politicisation of urban land aligning with rising political identities. The creation of the municipalities as part of the decentralization act of 1903 was predicated on the assumption that it would relieve some of the financial burden of the Dutch government by transferring the duty of financing local governance towards the municipalities and, later, provinces, of the Netherlands Indies. Urban land ownership thus were tied to the question of municipal reproduction. The commodification of urban land had its role in developing and determining urban political identities in Indonesia that has repercussion to the present day. The rise of colonial urban real estate also affected the way in which cities were designed and how municipalities ‘sold’ their cities, producing urban imaginaries that aligned with the prevailing domestic logic of the colonial family. The political economy of the municipalities were tied to its ability to sell urban real estate meaning that urban imaginaries took on the desires of its urban middle class and determined a particular type of city that was in opposition to the indigenous, kampung-dwellers, solidifying fault-lines of Indonesian political identities that echoes to the present day. The reactions from the kampungs were also important because, in many ways, it determined the relationship of many Indonesian with their local government for a long time to come. It will also try to theorise ways in which an urban approach to Indonesian history allow us to connect colonial domesticity with rising political identity and problematise present day politics in connection to this institutionalised division of land ownership.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Farabi Fakih is a lecturer at the Department of History, Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM) Yogyakarta and is lead researcher of the project. He obtained his doctorate degree in Leiden University, the Netherlands, in 2014 on the decolonisation of the Indonesian state and the rise of the managerial state in the 1950s and 1960s. He has maintained strong interest in urban history and has conducted research on colonial urban imaginaries. He is currently working on urban land ownership in Java and on the production of urban discourse on Yogyakarta during its position as the revolutionary capital of the Republic of Indonesia between 1946-1948.

Mutiah Amini is a lecturer at the Department of History, UGM Yogyakarta. She obtained her doctorate at UGM writing on women history and is the main researcher on women history at the History Department at UGM. She has published an article on the gender bias in Indonesian historiography and has researched extensively on women history, including the relationship between women and mass media in colonial history and is currently conducting a research on Indonesian feminists in the twentieth century. She is particularly interested in the research on urban land ownership and how it ties with colonial domesticity in order to place a gendered perspective on Indonesian urban history.

Sri Margana is the head of the Department of History at Universitas Gadjah Mada. He obtained his doctorate at Leiden University on the political struggles of the Blambangan, a frontier region of eastern Java, in the 18th and early 19th century. Margana has a wide range of research interests including in art history and urban history. He has edited and published two books in Indonesian on the urban culture and Javanese cities during the colonial and independence period. His interest in the research is to understand changes in the urban land system and its effect on the people.

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