Moving beyond the elite: Local understandings of communal violence and its aftermath in eastern Indonesia

03/12/2008 - 09:00

3 December 2008
15:30 - 17:00 hrs

The Leiden Southeast Asia Seminar by Chris Duncan (Arizona State University)

Venue: KITLV, Room 138 (Conference Room), Reuvensplaats 2, 2311 BE, Leiden

At the end of the twentieth century Indonesia was plagued by a number of communal conflicts that analysts variously described as ethnic, religious, or separatist. What was the basis for these descriptions and how did they resonate with local communities? What is the difference between ethnic violence and religious violence and does this matter to those involved? How did local understandings and experiences of this violence shape people's actions? This paper looks at how participants in one of these conflicts framed a particular series of events as being based on religious or ethnic differences, and how this interpretation affected subsequent understandings of the violence and their participation in it. The paper looks at the province of North Maluku in eastern Indonesia where a local ethnic conflict over a redistricting initiative in 1999 escalated into a province-wide religious conflict between Christians and Muslims. I explore how these changing perceptions influenced people's willingness to take part in the fighting, how it shaped their experiences of the violence, and how it affected the conflict's intensity. The paper explores how rumors, narratives of suffering, and experiences of violence (either as victims or perpetrators) influenced how the conflict was actualized and how it is remembered.   Christopher R. Duncan is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Religious Studies and in The School for Global Studies at Arizona State University. He is a cultural anthropologist whose research focuses primarily on eastern Indonesia. His current project explores communal violence and its aftermath in the eastern Indonesian province of North Maluku. His has also conducted research on the missionization and resettlement of the Forest Tobelo, a group of forest-dwelling foragers on the island of Halmahera in North Maluku. He is also taking part in a collaborative project comparing rural-rural migration in Indonesia (South Kalimantan and North Maluku) and Vietnam. He is the editor of Civilizing the Margins: Southeast Asian Government Policies for the Development of Minorities (Cornell University Press 2004 / National University of Singapore Press 2008).

For more information on this seminar please contact Esrih Bakker at bakker@kitlv.nl / 071-527 2295