The Politics of Heritage in Indonesia
The Politics of Heritage in Indonesia
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This study offers a new approach to the history of sites, archaeology, and heritage formation in Asia, at both the local and the trans-regional levels. Starting at Hindu-Buddhist, Chinese, Islamic, colonial, and prehistoric heritage sites in Indonesia, the focus is on people's encounters and the knowledge exchange taking place across colonial and post-colonial regimes. Objects are followed as they move from their site of origin to other locations, such as the Buddhist statues from Borobudur temple, that were gifted to King Chulalongkorn of Siam. The ways in which the meaning of these objects transformed as they moved away to other sites reveal their role in parallel processes of heritage formation outside Indonesia. Calling attention to the power of the material remains of the past, Marieke Bloembergen and Martijn Eickhoff explore questions of knowledge production, the relationship between heritage and violence, and the role of sites and objects in the creation of national histories.
- Uncovers how heritage sites and their politics transcend national boundaries
- Examines the politics of heritage, orientalism, and mobility from an Asian perspective
- Provides a fresh perspective on the international debate about heritage formation and cultural knowledge production
Reviews & endorsements
‘Bloembergen and Eickhoff demonstrate the Dutch roots of modern Indonesian conceptualisations of heritage, and how Indonesian practices stretch across Southeast Asia to India and beyond. This is a highly original and provocative contribution to global understandings of tradition and its ownership.' Adrian Vickers, University of Sydney
Product details
- Published: February 2020
- Format: Hardback
- ISBN: 9781108499026
- Length: 338 pages
- Dimensions: 235 × 159 × 20 mm
- Weight: 0.67kg
- Contains: 29 b/w illus.
- Availability: Available
Table of Contents
- Introduction: towards a mobile history of heritage formation in Asia
- 1. Site interventions, knowledge networks, and changing loyalties on Java, 1800–1850s
- 2. Exchange, protection, and the social life of Java's antiquities, 1860s–1910s
- 3. Great sacred Majapahit: biographies of a Javanese site in the nineteenth century
- 4. Greater Majapahit: the makings of a proto-Indonesian site across decolonisation, 1900s–1950s
- 5. The prehistoric cultures and historic past of South-Sumatra on the move
- 6. Resurrecting Siva, expanding local pasts: centralisation and the forces of imagination across war and regime changes, 1920s–1950s
- 7. Fragility, losing, and anxiety over loss: difficult pasts in wider Asian and global contexts
- Epilogue: heritage sites, difficult histories, and 'hidden forces' in postcolonial Indonesia.
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