Dartmouth Events

This talk discusses issues of space, politics, and identity formation of ethnic Chinese in Jakarta from a historical perspective. It considers the ways in which colonial categories produced space, which over time shaped identity. Focused on an area known in present-day Jakarta as a Pecinan (or Chinatown), the talk examines how the area was historically created under colonial condition and subsequently transformed in the postcolonial era. It then considers the construction of a new Chinatown in other part of Jakarta in the aftermath of anti-Chinese violence in 1998. Overall, this talk seeks to problematize some dominant misconceptions about ethnic Chinese in Indonesia, by considering the spatial effects of colonial and postcolonial production of identity.

Abidin Kusno is Professor at Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change and former Director of York Centre for Asian Research at York University, Toronto, Canada. His most recent publications include Jakarta: The City of a Thousand Dimensions (National University of Singapore Press, 2023).

Free and open to the public. Sponsored by the Department of Asian Societies, Cultures, and Languages and the Kwak Family Fund at Dartmouth College.