Out of stock

From Rebellion to Riots: Collective Violence on Indonesian Borneo

JAMIE S. DAVIDSON is Associate Professor of Political Science at the National University of Singapore.

NUS Press (First printing, 2009)
312 pages including Bibliography and Index

RM85.00

Out of stock

From Rebellion to Riots: Collective Violence on Indonesian Borneo examines contemporary violence in one of Indonesia’s most heterogeneous provinces, West Kalimantan. It documents how a communist rebellion in the 1960s and low-level conflicts in the decades that followed led to major ethnic clashes in the late 1990s, when an indigenous empowerment movement took shape and local elites sought to capture the benefits of decentralization and democratization. Citing fieldwork, internal military documents, and ethnographic accounts, Jamie S. Davidson’s historically-rooted analysis argues that explanations based on a clash of cultures, the ills of New Order-led development, or marginalization overlook the importance of an ongoing politicization of ethnic and indigenous identity. His research demonstrates that the endemic violence in this vast region is not an inevitable outcome of its ethnic diversity, and that the initial impetus for collective bloodshed is not necessarily the same as the forces that sustain it.

From Rebellion to Riots: Collective Violence on Indonesian Borneo is at its core a diachronic study of the genesis of a series of ethnic riots that took place in the province of West Kalimantan, Indonesia, from 1967 to 2001. Its primary purpose is to explain the origins of these riots, their persistence, the particular forms the violence assumed, and how and why these modalities changed over time. This is done with an eye on the wider context of coercive state-building in the country’s outer islands as pursued by the New Order regime (1966-98) headed by President Soeharto, its military, authoritarian ruler. West Kalimantan, a province rich in ethnic diversity and natural resources located on the westernmost part of the island of Borneo, has witnessed outbreaks of killings so extreme that they are considered by one leading scholar, Donald Horowitz, to be among the world’s most recurrent examples of deadly ethnic riots (2001, I, 411).

Yet, unlike such prominent cases as those of Sri Lanka, Assam, Karachi, and northern Nigeria, even Horowitz’s superb study lacks an adequate historical contextualization for the killings in West Kalimantan. Using ethnographic methods and tapping previously unused sources, including military documents, this book is a richly contextual political analysis that aims to fill this gap. Research methodology of this type begs a host of questions. How much value do we gain from examining a single case of ethnic violence even if it is studied over time? What can studying ethnic riots in this peripheral province tell us about other violent convicts elsewhere in Indonesia? Finally, how does this kind of research advance the study of group violence more generally? By demystifying the violence in this vast and rugged province, the author hope to provide answers to these questions by embedding the ethnic clashes in the parameters of grounded historical and political interpretation and by situating them in a larger pattern of riots in Indonesia and beyond. The conclusions the book draws will be of great interest to students of Southeast Asia and to scholars of collective violence and indigenous politics.

Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations

Introduction

1. Identity Formations and Colonial Contests
2. Konfrontasi, Rebellion, and Ethnic Cleansing
3. Regional State-Building and Recurrent Riots
4. Reform, Decentralization, and the Politicization of Ethnicity and Indigeneity
5. Refugees, a Governor, and an Urban Racket
6. Collective Violence in West Kalimantan in Comparative Perspective

Conclusion

Notes
Glossary
Bibliography
Index

Weight0.450 kg
Dimensions22.9 × 15.2 × 1 cm
Author(s)

Format

Language

Publisher

Year Published

5.0
Based on 1 review
5 star
100
100%
4 star
0%
3 star
0%
2 star
0%
1 star
0%
  1. Kawah Buku (store manager)

    “Thoroughly grounded in both the burgeoning theoretical literature on ethnic violence and the turbulent history of western Borneo, this nuanced study shows the need to disaggregate such vast entities as Indonesia to understand the “tipping points” towards violence.” — Anthony Reid

    (0) (0)
  2. Kawah Buku (store manager)

    “Path-breaking. Davidson assesses the prior scholarship on ethnic violence and challenges much of the conventional wisdom in a manner that has both insight and considerable value.” — Michael Leigh

    (0) (0)
  3. Anonymous (store manager)

    (0) (0)

Only logged in customers who have purchased this product may leave a review.