Javanese batik to the world: Europe, Africa, India and Australia

24 November 2016 ; Ruang Sidang 1 ; 13.00-15.00 wib

From the end of the 19th century, batik of Java – its technique, motifs as well as aesthetics, became a source of inspiration for textile producers, designers and artists across the world. In the early stage, this process was an outcome of colonial encounters when the wax-dyeing technique was introduced to the decorative arts of the Netherlands. In a short time batik became very popular among thousands of Western artists and craftsmen. While at times it was an informed adaptation of the Javanese technique that, in the process, was creatively adjusted to Western conditions, at the other extreme batik was used as an embodiment of Oriental fantasy.
The influence of Javanese batik on African textiles was an indirect process — an outcome of colonial globalisation facilitated by European industrialists. It also started in the last decade of the 19th century, when imitations of Javanese fabrics printed in the Netherlands and United Kingdom, started to be traded to West Africa. Javanese designs have been enthusiastically received by African people and, following a process of extensive adaptation, have become an integral part of the African textile tradition and identity.
To India, the Javanese technique was introduced in the late 1920s, following the visit of Rabindranath Tagore to Java and Bali. The great Indian poet and philosopher was fascinated with the cultural traditions of Indonesia and introduced some of them to the Visva Bharati University courses. Javanese batik helped to revive the old Indian tradition of wax-resist dyeing and provided the impulse to develop a new group of textiles that reflected Tagore’s philosophy and aesthetics.
The most recent of the cross-cultural encounters commenced in the 1970s with the introduction of the batik technique to the Aboriginal communities of the central desert of Australia. In the following years several collaborative projects took place, in which Australian and Indonesian artists worked side by side. In a process parallel to Java, in some cases patterns of Aboriginal batiks became imbued with cosmological meanings.
The great popularity of the batik technique had far-reaching consequences: it stimulated world-wide interest in Javanese culture and led to the organisation of public and private collections of Javanese art as well as numerous exhibitions and publications promoting the culture of this island.

Maria Wronska-Friend
James Cook University, Cairns, Australia
Maria Wronska-Friend is a Senior Research Fellow at the College of Arts, Society and Education at James Cook University in Cairns, Australia. She is a cultural anthropologist with a particular interest in Southeast Asian dress and textiles as well as museum anthropology. Batik of Java, analysed as a cross-cultural phenomenon, is the main topic of her studies. Her PhD from the Institute of Arts at the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, Poland, investigated the influence of Javanese batik on European art at the turn of 19th-20th centuries (Art Nouveau and Art Deco). As a museum curator she has organised several exhibitions, in Australia and Poland, promoting Indonesian textiles. She is the author of several books and exhibition catalogues on Indonesian textiles, as well as of academic papers. In October 2016, in Jakarta, she published a book ‘Batik Jawa bagi Dunia. Javanese Batik to the World’ that examines the influence of the batik technique and aesthetics on textiles made in Europe, Africa, India and Australia.

Conference ‘From Clients to Citizens? Citizenship in Democratising Indonesia’
8-10 December 2016 | Universitas Gadjah Mada, Yogyakarta | Indonesia
Organised by: Royal Netherlands Institute for Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV) and Universitas Gadjah Mada
Keynote Speakers: Engin Isin (Open University, UK) and Surya Tjandra (the Trade Union Rights Centre)
What is the impact of Indonesia’s democratization process on everyday interactions between Indonesian citizens and power holders? Democratic reforms have led to a much livelier public sphere, freer and more active public debate and more intensive political participation. Yet democratization seems to have done little to end the predatory and clientelistic practices of political elites. The persistence of these practices and the ‘stalling’ of Indonesia’s democratization process cannot be attributed solely to institutional shortcomings or selfish behaviour of elites. Instead, there is an urgent need to study politics ‘from below’ by examining the character of citizenship in Indonesia.
Indonesian newspapers rarely discuss the challenges facing the country in terms of citizenship. Conversely, citizenship studies has also paid surprisingly little attention to the forms that democratic citizenship takes in a postcolonial country like Indonesia. As citizenship is generally studied in the context of a liberal, high-capacity welfare state, there has been relatively little attention paid to the forms of democratic citizenship in the context of a weaker institutionalized state and a predominantly clientelistic political system. As a result the analysis of state-citizen interaction in postcolonial states all too often takes a narrow form of identifying ‘absences’ or deviations of (idealized) western patterns of citizenship. In Indonesia the rights-claiming, autonomous and individualistic citizen – as celebrated in the general literature on citizenship – might be found, but a focus on this particular type of citizen is hindering a much-needed understanding of a more wider range of state-citizen interactions.
Instead, the everyday forms of state-citizen interactions observable in Indonesia can be used as an opportunity to re-conceptualize our interpretation of what citizenship is or should be. Ideas about the proper ‘civic’ behavior of citizens might be shaped by different emphases on, for example, individual vs. collective rights, rights vs. duties, as well as different conceptions of political legitimacy. We need to capture these different attachments to be able to understand the different forms that citizenship may take. What kinds of conceptions and practices of rights, reciprocity and representation are observable in Indonesia? How can we describe the impact of Indonesia’s democratic reforms on everyday interactions between citizens and the state? How do particular features of Indonesia’s history and political economy – e.g. its legal pluralism, weakly institutionalized state, relatively large informal economy and clientelistic political arena – shape these emerging forms of citizenship?
With this objective this conference aims to bring together accounts of how citizenship is being practiced and perceived in Indonesia. In particular, this conference calls for papers on the everyday practices, values and attitudes that can be observed in the way citizens deal with state institutions and authorities. Papers may discuss the historical evolution of citizen rights as well as a wide range of everyday citizenship struggles involving, for example, the way people engage in land conflicts, arrange access to welfare or public services or claim recognition of ethnic identities or religious values.
Panels will be organised at the least around the following themes:
-Social media and citizen participation
-The expansion of welfare rights
-Village leadership and citizenship
-Contentious politics and Land conflicts
-Electoral democracy and citizenship
-Religion and Citizenship
-The politics of Identity
-Theorizing post-colonial Citizenship
-Citizenship and access to public services
-Minorities in Indonesia
-Labour Rights
This conference has grown out of the research program ‘From Clients to Citizens? Emerging Citizenship in Indonesia’, a research collaboration between Universitas Gadjah Mada (fakultas Ilmu Budaya and FISIP), KITLV, Leiden University and the University of Amsterdam funded by the Dutch Academy of Sciences (KNAW) and the Indonesian Ministry of Education (DIKTI).
Information for paper presenters
Paper submission is closed. Selected presenters are already notified and are expected to submit full papers by 15 November. Papers and presentations should be in English. The best papers presented at the conference will be selected for inclusion in a peer-reviewed volume on Citizenship in Indonesia. Accommodation will be provided for paper presenters.
Conference registration
We encourage students and scholars who are interested in attending the conference as observing participants to register in advance.The registration fees is Rp. 100.000 for general participants and 50.000 for students. Registration on a first come first basis as seats are limited. You can register by clicking on the registration button.

Conference ‘From Clients to Citizens? Citizenship in Democratising Indonesia’

Sejak berdirinya Negara Kesatuan Republik Indonesia telah menetapkan dirinya sebagai negara dengan keragaman budaya (multikultural). Hal itu tersurat dan tersirat dalam Undang-Undang Dasar 1945 dengan semboyan Bhinneka Tunggal Ika (‘berbeda-beda tetap satu’). Berbagai upaya telah dilakukan untuk mewujudkan cita-cita tersebut dan telah menunjukkan hasil hasil yang baik. Namun, perjalanan bangsa ini menunjukkan penghargaan dan praktek multikulturalisme selalu mengalami pasang surut. Selalu ada saja upaya untuk mempersoalkan tentang paham multikulturalisme ini. Tidak jarang isu-isu yang terkait dengan suku, agama, ras, dan antar-golongan (SARA) masih diangkat untuk kepentingan tertentu yang bersifat sesaat dan sangat merugikan kesatuan dan persatuan bangsa. Beberapa saat terakhir ini, isu terkait SARA sering muncul di tengah-tengah masyarakat di berbagai tempat di Indonesia. Terkait dengan hal itu, perlu kiranya dilakukan upaya-upaya strategis untuk terus menyebarluaskan pengetahuan dan menumbuhkan semangat untuk menjalan multikulturalisme dalam mempertahankan NKRI.
Fakultas Ilmu Budaya UGM telah menetapkan minat dan kepeduliannya terhadap kajian dan praktek multikulturalisme. Bahkan, topik ini menjadi salah satu unggulan dalam strategi pengembangan penelitiannya. Oleh karena itu, FIB UGM tentu memiliki kualitas pengetahuan yang baik tentang topik ini dan mempunyai kompetensi yang amat cukup untuk menjadi salah satu pusat pengetahuan tentang multikulturalisme. Sudah semestinya, FIB UGM ikut berperanserta positif dalam menyebarkan pengetahuan dan semangat multikulturalisme dalam rangka pembangunan bangsa. Peran serta tersebut dapat diwujudkan dalam bentuk penerapan dan pemanfaatan keahlian maupun hasil-hasil kajiannya untuk kepentingan masyarakat melalui kegiatan seminar dialogis ini.

Kegiatan Diskusi Multikulralisme dengan Organisasi Kemasyarakatan akan dilaksanakan selama 1 (satu) hari dengan melibatkan sekitar 50 orang anggota organisasi kemasyarakatan. Organisasi Kemasyarakatan yang akan diundang kali ini adalah para pimpinan di KNPI, FKPPI, GMNI, HMI, PMII, PMKRI, GMKI, KMHDI, HIKMAHBUDHI, dan organisasi kepemudaan lainnya di Daerah Istimewa Yogyakarta. Kegiatan diskusi akan dilakukan di Gadjah Mada University Club, Hotel dan Covention, Yogyakarta, pada hari Sabtu, tanggal 12 November 2016, pukul 08.30 – 12.30 WIB.
Dalam kegiatan itu, FIB UGM akan mengundang 2 (dua) orang narasumber, yaitu Prof. Dr. Heddy Shri Ahimsa Putra, M.A., M.Phil. dan Achmad Munjid, M.A., Ph.D. Masing-masing narasumber akan memberikan presentasi singkat mengenai multiculturalisme sehingga diskusi akan berjalan lancar

Masterclass on methodologies: Crossing boundaries in social scientific research

On Tuesday December 13th we organize a masterclass about methodological approaches in social sciences. These approaches influence the angle a researcher adopts towards the topic under investigation, the unit of analysis, the approach towards generalization and the type of policy recommendations resulting from the inquiry. Choices that we make in our research depend more on our academic education and the kind of scientist we prefer to be than on the characteristics of the researched problem. In this masterclass we will learn more about the different methodologies available in the social sciences, their strengths and weaknesses, and the different ways in which they may be policy relevant.

For whom

This masterclass is open for master and PhD students from all disciplines who want to know more about social scientific methodologies. To participate, the participant should pass the admission procedure. Participation in the seminar is free of any costs, although Participants have to cover their own expenses (e.g. accommodation, travel and subsistence). Selected students, who participate in the masterclass, receive a certificate of participation at the end of the masterclass.

This master class is part of the international conference: “How Indonesia works: Governance, Democracy and Citizenship” taking place on 12 and 13 December 2016, at Universitas Gadjah Mada in Yogyakarta, Indonesia.

http://www.munpop.nl/headlines/masterclass-methodologies-crossing-boundaries-social-scientific-research

International Conference ‘How Indonesia works: Governance, Democracy and Citizenship’
12 & 13 December 2016 | Universitas Gadjah Mada | Yogyakarta | Indonesia
Final conference of the Indonesia- Netherlands collaborative research program on ‘Governance, Markets, and Citizens’.
Hosts are the KITLV/Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and the Caribbean Studies in Leiden and the Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM) Yogyakarta.
Sponsors are the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) and the Directorate-General for Higher Education of the Indonesian Ministry of Research, Technology and Higher Education (MinRISTEK/DIKTI).
Invitation
How does Indonesia work? How are the most important decisions made and implemented that affect its 256 million citizens? The answer is far more complex than simply ‘by the government.’ ‘Governance’ concerns the negotiated process of making decisions in which many collective actors participate. National and international government agencies, non-government organizations, informal social movements, business lobbies, and many others all try to influence outcomes. There is no ultimate referee (Steurer 2013, Leach et al. 2007, Swyngedouw 2005).
Indonesian governance processes have been transformed in recent years. The authoritarian New Order collapsed. Decentralization and democratization have brought new players into the field. Globalization and neo-liberal economic reforms have strengthened international market actors. Our knowledge about these processes is partial and fragmented. The conference brings a combined, interdisciplinary and comparative approach to this broad yet urgent subject (Chhotray and Stoker 2009).
In the Open Seminar on 12 December 2016 international key note speakers will address four major governance challenges that Indonesia faces currently: climate change, inequality, food security and rural development policy. The three research projects in this collaborative program (see below) will contribute to the discussion about these challenges by presenting a selection of their latest results concerning the nexus governance – democracy – citizenship. We invite students and others who would like to attend this international academic seminar to respond to our call for participants.
On the second day of this conference, 13 December 2016, regional economists, political anthropologists and environmental sociologists of the joint SPIN program will present research results and discuss their collaborative papers. The challenge in this collaboration is to find constructive combinations of qualitative and quantitative methods for explaining the link between governance-democracy-citizenship related to a specific field. The papers will address the regional variation in clientalism, access to health services related to health politics, and whether administrative fragmentation can be seen as means for addressing inequality.
Background
The overarching program ‘Governance, Markets and Citizens’ (GMC) aims to identify and analyse key aspects of socio-economic and political developments in contemporary Indonesia. The participants of this program are the researchers and supervisors of three joint research projects (JRP): (1) Social and economic effects of partnering for sustainable change in agricultural commodity chains (University of Lampung/ICIS, Maastricht University), (2) Local and regional dimensions in Indonesia’s social and economic development (University of Indonesia in Jakarta/ VU University Amsterdam ) and (3) From clients to citizens? Emerging citizenship in democratizing Indonesia (Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta/ Royal Netherlands Institute for Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV) in Leiden). In the collaborative workshops organized so far the three projects centered discussions on the shared theme of governance in Indonesia.
Open Seminar 12 December: Governance, democracy and citizenship
We have invited key note speakers to address four major governance challenges in Indonesia. They will present different – but not necessarily contrasting – perspectives: macro versus micro policies, inherited versus general citizens’ rights, national versus local interests, and normative versus empirical approach to governance for development. Discussants from the three SPIN projects will reflect on how the key note’s conclusions correspond with their own program’s findings.
I. Governance, democracy and citizenship: politics for development or project hunting?
Tania Murray Li (University of Toronto): “Governing rural Indonesia: convergence on the project system”
In contemporary Indonesia as in many other parts of the global south, policy plays a limited role in guiding the practice of rural development. What proliferates, instead, is the project: a time bound intervention with a fixed goal and budget, framed within a technical matrix which renders some problems amenable to intervention, while leaving others out of account. Thinking about rural development in terms of projects has become so routine that alternative ways of thinking and acting are scarcely considered. Yet, it was not always so. This paper compares the present conjuncture, in which the project system dominates, with historical conjunctures at which projects did not take the center stage. Two empirical studies serve to illustrate how a disparate set of actors –Indonesian government officials and politicians, social development experts at the World Bank, transnational conservation agencies and rural villagers – converged on the project system, with refractory results.
Second speaker: to be announced.
II. Governance, democracy and citizenship for climate change adaptation
Gerry van Klinken (KITLV, Leiden): “Researching the citizenship of weather-related disasters in SEA: between resilience and transformation”
Weather-related disasters (storms, floods, droughts, fires) are becoming more frequent, more damaging, and they mainly affect poorer countries, especially in Asia. Catastrophic scenarios of 4 degree warming kicking in by the 2060s are now a serious object of study. Climate change magnifies the uneven distribution of risk, further amplifying poverty. Massive weather-related disasters often open up space for intense, even if temporary, political negotiation by citizens. Some of this tends towards resilience – i.e., towards providing practical solutions without disturbing the functional status quo. Some towards transformation – i.e., towards replacing the dominant regime because it has failed to fulfill the social contract with its citizens. We illustrate with some real cases.
Yunita T. Winarto (Universitas Indonesia, Jakarta): “Agrometeorological learning as policy learning in a changing climate: Would the state change its policies if farmers change their strategies?”
Climate change has produced unusual risks on agriculture and uncertainties in rainfall pattern. Farmers can no longer rely on their traditional knowledge to survive, nor on their recent empirical knowledge. Prof. Winarto and the late prof Kees Stigter have been developing a new inter- and transdisciplinary extension approach: “Science Field Shops” (Warung Ilmiah Lapangan) to improve farmers’ agrometeorological knowledge and practices. In a dialogical knowledge exchange. The scientists provide climate services to the farmers, including information about seasonal rainfall scenario’s. The farmers engage as researchers in measuring rainfall, showing its implications on the local ecosystem and evaluating yields in a standardized way. Farmers’ capability to modify their strategies is a significant component in their “policy learning”. How can the results of these Science Field Shops affect the state’s policies and governance at the national, regional and local levels for assisting farmers to cope with climate change?
III. Governance, democracy and citizenship for food security or higher incomes in rural areas
John F. McCarthy (Crawford School ANU): “Vulnerability and the Governance of Food Poverty: the Case of Rural Aceh”
While some analysts argue that the pathways out of poverty have shifted as livelihoods have increasingly delinked from land and agriculture across the global South, others contend that, large numbers of rural people remain stranded between inadequate rural livelihoods and limited prospects outside agriculture. Meanwhile, utilizing studies that rely on proxy or statistical indicators to understand this pressing issue, program interventions have been developed to address ‘food security’. This paper uses experimental, field based approaches to explore the complex drivers of vulnerability and food security in Aceh. Contrasting different views of causality, it considers how food poverty emerges as a complex problem both due to the multiple pathways leading to it as well as the varied ways of understanding it. By exploring the impliciations of experiential and relational approaches to understanding food poverty, it considers current governance initiatives to address this issue.
Pujo Semedi (Department of Anthropology, Gadjah Mada University, Yogyakarta): “Oil Palm Versus Rubber: Land Grabbing and Farmers’ Cost-Benefit Calculation in West Kalimantan”
Land grabbing has become one of the important issues in agrarian studies. Without neglecting the gravity of land grabbing as “a regressive land reform where governments take land from the poor and give (or sell or lease) it to the rich” (White, et al., 2011: 620) and its consequences to small farmers’ life, it must be put into consideration that every attempt to take away lands always meets resistance from farmers. This paper examines how farmers’ calculation of cost and benefit of two market crops, palm oil and rubber, related to their effort to deal with plantation companies’ moves to land grab and convert a vast area into palm oil fields. This paper includes ethnographic data from Meliau sub-district in West Kalimantan, and satellite images of the area obtained from Google Earth.
IV. Governance, democracy and citizenship for addressing socio-economic inequality
Riwanto Tirtosudarmo (LIPI): “Problematizing inequality and inclusiveness of the “Masyarakat Adat”: The power-knowledge nexus”
In a highly critical speech on his first public appearance in 1999 after 27 years banned to enter Indonesia, Ben Anderson, among others, make the following statement: I mention this little episode simply because I see too many Indonesians still inclined to think of Indonesia as an “inheritance,” not as a challenge nor as a common project. Where one has inheritances, one has inheritors, and too often bitter quarrels among them as to who has “rights” to the inheritance: sometimes to the point of great violence. People who think that the “abstract” Indonesia is an “inheritance” to be preserved at all costs may end up doing terrible damage to the living citizens of that abstract geographical space. Basing on the argument that Indonesia should be seen as a common project, this paper questions the construction of “Masyarakat Adat” as an idea as well as an organizing principle to mobilize the so-called indigenous people in Indonesia. The idea of indigeneity and the right for inheritance embedded in the concept of “Masyarakat Adat” implies exclusion. That contrasts the national goal of inclusive development for all the Indonesian citizens.
Jacqueline Vel (KITLV): New law, new villages? Addressing inequality in rural areas
The village (desa) is the basis for an alternative imagination of the Indonesian nation. The slogan “desa membangun Indonesia” (building Indonesia from its villages) has recently been used in campaigns for further decentralization to the level of the more than 74,000 desa. The village has always been critical in Indonesian governance discourse. The village had a core role in the colonial governance system in the Dutch East Indies, it was at the center of New Order coercion mechanisms and subsequently the epi-center of democratic reform. The new 2014 Village Law marks a considerable retreat for the Indonesian (national) state that, not too long ago, imposed its developmental policies on villages from above. This massive increase of responsibilities and budgets is likely to change the way in which most Indonesians perceive and interact with the state. What are the assumptions in this new law regarding socio-economic differentiation? How do the democratic ideals of this law relate to practices of clientalism? Will the Village law be an effective tool for reducing inequality in the rural areas?

More information can be found on:

Conference ‘How Indonesia works: Governance, Democracy and Citizenship’

and on:

http://www.munpop.nl/headlines/masterclass-methodologies-crossing-boundaries-social-scientific-research