From Lombok with affection: Ethnic harmony in Lombok

11/10/2007 - 15:30

11 October 2007
15.30 - 17.00 hrs

Seminar by Associate Professor Tamrin Amal Tomagola of the University of Indonesia

Organised in cooperation with KITLV

Venue: KITLV, Reuvensplaats 2, 2311 BE, Leiden
Room 138, 15.30 - 17.00

Lombok, especially since the launching of decentralization reforms in 1999, has been the site of violence in recent years. There are, however, grass-root signs of the potential for peaceful ethnic coexistence in Mataram city, and to some extent, on the island as whole. In this lecture Tamrin Tomagola will present his research on how different layers of affection based on kinship, gender, religion and ethnicity are played-out, negotiated, constructed and experienced by a contemporary urban lower middle class Sasak community in the city of Mataram, Lombok. He argues that despite on-going challenges, the community has managed not only to keep inter-ethnic violence under control, but also to survive intact as a community.

Tamrin Amal Tomagola is a Research Associate in the Center for Research on Inter-group Relations and Conflict Resolution (CERIC, a co-operation of the University of Indonesia and Ohio University) and an acknowledged authority on inter-group relations and communal conflict in Indonesia. Currently he is a visiting research fellow at the KITLV, Leiden and involved in the ‘In search of Middle Indonesia' project.

For more information please contact Ireen Hoogenboom at hoogenboom@kitlv.nl or 071 527 2295.