13th Urban Research Forum
Time : March 5, 2015
Venue : Multimedia Room 3rd floor, Rectorat Building UGM
Time : 08.00 – 16.00 WIB
Speakers : 8 persons

1. Prof. Dr. Hiroyuki Hashimoto (Otemon Gakuin University)
2. Mr. Kiener Johannes (Osaka City University)
3. Dr. Abdul Wahid, M.Hum., M.Phil. (History Dept., Universitas Gadjah Mada)
4. Dr. Suzie Handajani, M.A. (Anthropology Dept., Universitas Gadjah Mada)
5. Indro Baskoro M. P., S.Sn. (Institut Seni Indonesia Yogyakarta)
6. Irwandi, S.Sn., M.Sn. (School of Recorded Media Arts, Institut Seni Indonesia Yogyakarta)
7. Diananta Pramitasari, Ph.D. (Architecture and Planning Engineering Department, Universitas Gadjah Mada)
8. UGM Faculty of Social and Political Sciences (in confirmation)

Chairperson: 1. Dr. Laksmi Adriani Savitri, M.Si. (Anthropology Dept., UGM)
2. Dr. Fortunata Tyasrinestu, M.Si. (Faculty of Art Performance ISI Yogyakarta)
(in confirmation)
Terms of References
(1) Each speaker will give a 20 minutes presentation in English.
(2) The abstract and short CV need to be submitted to the committee
on February 12, 2015 to urp.fib@ugm.ac.id
(3) The full paper presentation and the power point need to be submitted to
the committee on March 1, 2015 at the latest.

Condition
The committee covers acommodation during the seminar.

The Theme of Urban Research Plaza Forum 2015:

“Urban Cultural Innovation: Making A Social Channel with Excluded People”

Urban area can be defined as a meeting place where individuals from different places with diverse cultural backgrounds interact. But still, we never realized that the exclusion still occurs in urban area across the world, for example, towards the disabled people, less fortunate people, LGBT, people with certain health illness, elderly people, etc. As the impacts, they are not holding the same opportunities to access public or urban spaces, although everybody is entitled to have the same opportunities and rights to access public spaces, albeit their gender, race, religion, or social condition. This is the main theme of the 13th Urban Research Plaza, how to make an urban cultural innovation and making a social channel with excluded people using the perspective of social, science, culture, and humanities.

By delivering this theme, the attention will be drawn into how excluded people in urban areas can merge into wider social interaction and become a short of new innovatif culture. It is important to learn how this so called urban cultural innovation has shaped the live of the excluded people and it has become a vehicle for the agents of culture to explore its potential in the present and future to articulate their ‘voices’ and existency in the communities.

It is necessary to reconsider the relationship between art and culture as it can be used as a tool to create greater social access and engagement within marginalized community. It also can be used to develop networking and to expand a community’s role from audience to active participants. It always offers a new model for art in the urban context. Art and cultural integration is absolutely needed when used as a tool to provide wide access for community in solving increasingly complex social issues, particularly in urban community.

Introduction
URP (Urban Research Plaza) of Osaka City University

The Urban Research Plaza was opened in April 2006. It is a brand new research center created by Osaka City University. The University has put its energy into urban studies, and produced results befitting a metropolitan university.

As its name indicates, the strongest feature of Urban Research Plaza is its framework, based on the image of a ‘public square.’ Unlike ordinary graduate schools and research institutions, Urban Research Plaza does not house permanent facilities or staff members who do research within the facilities and contribute to society with their research results. Instead, the Urban Research Plaza features small, re-locatable satellites (‘field plazas’ and overseas centers) to be opened in Osaka and foreign cities, in addition to the small number of staff and core facilities (Takahara Hall) located at the university campus. Its staff members constantly go out into the field and go abroad for research and activities for community development. With this in mind, the Urban Research Plaza serves as the center of networks for research and urban revitalization, or an open forum where people gather and meet around the theme of ‘cities.’

Cities are supposed to be an arena where new knowledge and culture is created through encounters and discourse amidst a gathering of a large number of people unknown to each other. The Urban Research Plaza is aimed at creating a research organization in urban settings of the 21st century that will implement a wide variety of endeavors with its unique structure and approach.

Osaka is currently a ‘city of suffering’ which faces the greatest problems in Japan in more ways than one. The philosophy of the Urban Research Plaza is to be a research institution in accord with Osaka City’s communities, and to share pain, pleasure and rage with the citizens.

Overseas Center of URP
Urban Research Plaza Yogyakarta Office

The Urban Research Plaza (URP) Yogyakarta Office was established by Osaka City University in cooperation with the Indonesia Institute of the Arts (ISI) and Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM) as one of overseas satellite centers of URP in Osaka, Japan. It is located in Faculty of Cultural Sciences UGM and was first known as Urban Culture Research Center (UCRC). Though the cooperation had been started long ago since year 2003 but the sub-center had just been effectively running only after year 2006 following name-shifting from UCRC into URP.

Very small number of officials does not hamper the office to actively inviting local scholars, practitioners and governmental elements the sub center annually holds an international forum to discuss urban issues aiming to spread the spirit of urban studies and to find the best possible solutions for urban problems.

Pemateri: Emma Baulch
(Senior Research Fellow School of Media and Communciations
Creative Industries Faculty Queensland University of Technology)

Judul: Mobile Indonesians: Social Differentiation and Digital Literacies in The 21st Century

15 Januari 2015
Ruang Sidang 1 FIB UGM – Pukul 13.00

The talk will be presented by Emma Baulch and Jerry Watkins , co-investigators on the research project ‘Mobile Indonesians: social differentiation and digital literacies in the 21st century’, funded by the Australian Research Council. In the talk, Emma and Jerry will present their preliminary findings from their research into the roles of mobile phones in two areas of public communication in Indonesia, pertaining to public health (particularly HIV outreach) and popular culture, respectively. The widespread uptake of mobile phones in recent years has the capacity to enhance HIV outreach workers ability to collect and analyse public health data, and by extension, to empower locally based community health organisations to monitor and evaluate their programs, and to input national level policies. The same popularisation of mobile phones has also shaped consumption of popular culture in new ways, with new political consequences. Mobile phones not only enhance the political power invested in pop idols, but also render the socio-cultural implications of consuming pop much more complex and diffuse. Emma and Jerry will briefly talk about these two case studies in their research into mobile phones, with a view to provoking a discussion about new research agenda pertaining to Indonesian digital society.

Hari: Selasa, 30 Desember 2014
Waktu: 09.00-11.00 WIB
Temlat: Ruang Sidang Pimpinan, Gedung Poerbatjaraka Lantai 1 FIB UGM
Pembicara:
1. Drs. Sudibyo, M.Hum. (FIB UGM/ Ketua Manassa Cabang Yogyakarta)
2. Dr. Maharsi, M.Hum. (UIN Sunan Kalijaga Yogyakarta)

16 Desember 2014
Ruang Sidang 1 FIB UGM – Pukul 09.00

Pemateri: Timo Markus Duile
(PhD Candidate, University of Bonn, Germany)

Judul:
“Nature and Identity: Dayak movements within the context of ecological conflicts in West-Kalimantan”

Moderator:
Mark Philip Stadler, MA, MSc
(PhD Fellow at Asian Dynamics Initiative, Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies, University of Copenhagen)

Nature in the Indonesian province of West-Kalimantan is contested in at least two ways: First, it is contested as a resource, especially since palm oil plantations found their way into West-Kalimantan and capital seeks for new strategies of accumulation in this part of the Indonesian periphery. A massive loss of forest and an accumulation of land in the hands of palm oil companies since the 80s are the result. Secondly, nature is contested in a discoursive-symbolic way: Actors are arguing about the very meaning of nature. The hegemonic meaning of nature that takes nature as an ensemble of resources and as the opposition of human society is challenged by indigenous actors like AMAN or the Pontianak-based Institut Dayakologi.
Alternative interpretations of nature became an important source for neo-traditional Dayak identity, since these interpretations helps indigenous activists to distinguish themselves from their constitutive outside, that are, the state of Indonesia as a neo-extractivist regime, palm oil companies and modernity with its premises of the distinction between nature and culture.
How do indigenous actors, then, conceptualize nature in contrast to hegemonic perceptions of nature and how can these conceptualization challenge ownership structures and strengthen traditional identities? Referring to Phlippe Descola’s ontological concept of animism and naturalism, indigenous activist’s concepts of nature are analyzed and it will be discussed whether their draft of nature and identity can challenge the threats indigenous societies are confronted with.

FIB Weekly Forum

11 Desember 2014
Ruang Sidang 1 FIB UGM – Pukul 13.00

Pemateri: Dr. Tod Jones
(Curtin University Australia)

Judul:
“Gerakan Warisan Budaya di Yogyakarta – Exploring Heritage Movements in Yogyakarta”

Abstrak:
In the last decade, movements have coalesced across Asia aimed at collective challenges (to elites, authorities or cultural codes) by people with a common purpose and solidarity to protect and conserve heritage. Many of these heritage movements have now risen to prominence at the national scale. However, these movements have for the most part escaped the attention of heritage researchers for two reasons. First, heritage politics researchers have a preference for a site or group case study approach that, while rich in thick description, does not often analyse the internal dynamics and politics of heritage movements. Second, the concerning tendency in the cannon of heritage research to characterise such movements as amateur, antiquarian and nostalgic (Davison, 2000; Hewison, 1987) took the focus of researchers away from the practices of these movements, and researchers have only slowly returned to this topic. This paper provides an account and analysis of the dynamics of heritage movements in Central Java, Indonesia with the two goals of developing an understanding of the reasons heritage movements have grown in prominence in Indonesia, and developing a toolset for heritage movement analysis. In particular, I seek to explore the importance of the political changes in Indonesia and Central Java/Yogyakarta through adapting the concept of Political Opportunity Structures, Collective Action Frames and Transnational Advocacy Networks from social movement theory. The focus of the paper will therefore be on how the internal dynamics of the heritage movement, their relationship with political elites and other groups, and external political circumstances relate to conservation politics.

Dr. Tod Jones adalah Dosen Senior pada jurusan Geografi Universitas Curtin Australia, Faculty of Humanities.