Gerry Van Klinken
Biographic Data
| ID | 100817 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Gerry Van Klinken |
| GIVEN NAMES | Gerry |
| FAMILY NAME | Van Klinken |
| SIGNATURE | VAN KLINKEN G |
| AFFILIATIONS | Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7702-1705 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 61 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 244 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 58 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 3 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1996 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
The pulse of the earth
Afterword
Revolutionary Worlds
Debate on Conflict, identity, and state formation in East Timor, 2000–2017, by Gerry van Klinken, Hoko Horii, Antero Benedito da Silva, Sara Niner, and Gordon Peake
The Bijdragen occasionally organizes a book debate in which we invite three scholars to review a recently published book, followed by a response from its author.In this issue of the Bijdragen, that convention has, by necessity, been thwarted.Not long after the 2019 publication of his important work, Conflict, identity and state formation in East Timor, 2000-2017, James Scambary passed away suddenly.He was just 59.That it occurred at the height of…
Typhoon disaster politics in pre-1945 Asia
Purpose This paper focuses on the adaptations societies make to climate-related disasters. How they learnt from them in the past should indicate how they will respond in the more climate-stressed future. National typhoon disaster politics arise when citizens demand disaster protection from their state. Design/methodology/approach The paper analyzes one episode of typhoon politics in each of three Asian countries before 1945: the Philippines (1928…
Postcolonial Citizenship in Provincial Indonesia
Indonesia
Indonesia is a very significant country (the fourth largest by population, the biggest Islamic democracy, a BRICS candidate) yet Western knowledge of it is in steady decline.University area studies programs continue to close, feeding growing isolationism in the world's wealthiest countries.What can be done to help social science departments rediscover their curiosity for this most fascinating of countries?Provide good textbooks, for one thing, bu…
Living in a Sacred Cosmos
Endangered; When newspaper archives crumble, history dies
Historians accept the death of oral sources, but expect newspaper archives in state institutions to be available for ever. Yet the majority of Indonesian newspaper titles in the National Library are today endangered. These crumbling papers are often the only copy in the world. This article first reviews the role these archives have played in pathbreaking historical work, both Indonesian and foreign. Provincial newspapers record the chatter of a n…
Citizenship in Asian history
This article introduces a special issue of Citizenship Studies in which historians of East, South and Southeast Asia continue the project of globalizing citizenship by analyzing practices and conceptions of citizenship in pre-colonial China, India and Indonesia. Building on the recent global turn in citizenship studies as well as historicizing this turn, we shift the conceptual focus from formal membership and contracts to practices and acts of c…
Debate on The Killing Season
The Contentious Politics of Anti-Muslim Scapegoating in Myanmar
Recent anti-Muslim violence in Myanmar cannot be understood primarily as a spontaneous outburst of religious feeling among the general population. Rather it was a shocking repertoire deployed by a semi-organised social movement with clear political goals, which overlapped with those of Myanmar&s;s military elite. In this article we trace the history of contention that saw key collective actors emerge who staged violent events and then framed them…
Politics of Citizenship in Indonesia
Indonesia democratised in 1998 after more than three decades of authoritarian rule. At first, much scholarly work focused on the democratic transition itself: laws, parties, voter behaviour (vote-b
Informality and citizenship
For many citizens in postcolonial states like Indonesia, the reality and experience of citizenship depend not just on the content of laws and regulations but also on the strength of their personal social networks. In this introduction to the special issue, we argue that instead of being antithetical to citizenship, this reliance on personal connections to deal with state institutions should be seen as a constitutive dimension of citizenship. Draw…
Citizenship and local practices of rule in Indonesia
Citizenship develops in relation to the specific way in which the colonial state and local societies reshaped each other. This article traces the history of that relationship in Indonesia over the last two hundred years. At first, a central colonial state with insufficient resources to enforce its will negotiated halfway accords with a host of local rulers. Villagers ‘belonged’ to their patrimonial ruler, with the choice to submit or run away. By…
Citizenship in Myanmar
Myanmar veteran David Steinberg called it “that unfortunate land.” Its politics are “opaque”; its problems “intractable” (Burma/Myanmar: What Everyone Needs to Know, Oxford: Oxford University Press
The Cultural Dimension of Peace. Decentralization and Reconciliation in Indonesia, written by Birgit Bräuchler
Data, Disciplines, and Dialogue
A common assumption in Digital Humanities ( dh ) project design is that ‘data’ is simply there, ready to ‘drive’ the research. The funders of a dh project described in this paper adhered to this positivistic assumption in their founding White Paper. They saw disciplines as blinders, best left behind in order to better see ‘patterns’. However, positivism was not a real-world option for the social scientists, mathematicians, and information scienti…
Today
The year 1965 marked a dramatic turning point in Indonesian history. On 1 October, a shadowy group of left-wing military officers calling itself the 30 September Movement kidnapped and killed sever
Genocide Finally Enters Public Discourse
This article describes public discussion in Indonesia and abroad before, during and after the International People’s Tribunal 1965 (IPT). Hearings were held in The Hague in November 2015. As a “tribunal of inquiry,” it derived its legitimacy from Indonesian and international civil society, while seeking guidance from conscience and the highest principles of international law and justice. Although pressure had grown since democratization in 1998 f…
The Contentious Politics of Anti-Muslim Scapegoating in Myanmar
Recent anti-Muslim violence in Myanmar cannot be understood primarily as a spontaneous outburst of religious feeling among the general population. Rather it was a shocking repertoire deployed by a semi-organised social movement with clear political goals, which overlapped with those of Myanmar’s military elite. In this article we trace the history of contention that saw key collective actors emerge who staged violent events and then framed them f…
The Politics of Timor-Leste
The Making of Middle Indonesia
Beyond the Green Myth
State of disorder
The Maluku Wars
Throughout the Suharto era, political scientists found Latin American corporatist models of the all-pervasive state among their most useful tools. But the Maluku conflict forces us to reexamine these long-held convictions about the Indonesian state and its relations with society. Today nobody talks corporatism, and observers are looking for other heuristic aids to help explain violence in Indonesia. Perhaps we should be looking at Africa's failed…
Informality and citizenship
For many citizens in postcolonial states like Indonesia, the reality and experience of citizenship depend not just on the content of laws and regulations but also on the strength of their personal social networks. In this introduction to the special issue, we argue that instead of being antithetical to citizenship, this reliance on personal connections to deal with state institutions should be seen as a constitutive dimension of citizenship. Draw…
The state and illegality in Indonesia
Cover photos: Front: A pendekar (strongman) of the Betawi Brotherhood Forum.This volume is the product of an extended and intensive process of collaboration in which many individuals participated
Citizenship in Myanmar
Myanmar veteran David Steinberg called it “that unfortunate land.” Its politics are “opaque”; its problems “intractable” (Burma/Myanmar: What Everyone Needs to Know, Oxford: Oxford University Press
The State and Illegality in Indonesia
Cover photos: Front: A pendekar (strongman) of the Betawi Brotherhood Forum.This volume is the product of an extended and intensive process of collaboration in which many individuals participated
The Contentious Politics of Anti-Muslim Scapegoating in Myanmar
Recent anti-Muslim violence in Myanmar cannot be understood primarily as a spontaneous outburst of religious feeling among the general population. Rather it was a shocking repertoire deployed by a semi-organised social movement with clear political goals, which overlapped with those of Myanmar’s military elite. In this article we trace the history of contention that saw key collective actors emerge who staged violent events and then framed them f…
In Search of Middle Indonesia
and Van Klinken 2007b; Van Klinken and Barker 2009; Aspinall and Van Klinken 2011). People in intermediate social and geographical locations influenced outcomes just by being able to pass on information and resources to others.Why had so little research been done on the middle classes in provincial towns who did much of this mediating work?we asked ourselves.We decided to put 'Middle Indonesia' on the research agenda
Citizenship and local practices of rule in Indonesia
Citizenship develops in relation to the specific way in which the colonial state and local societies reshaped each other. This article traces the history of that relationship in Indonesia over the last two hundred years. At first, a central colonial state with insufficient resources to enforce its will negotiated halfway accords with a host of local rulers. Villagers ‘belonged’ to their patrimonial ruler, with the choice to submit or run away. By…
Blood, timber, and the state in West Kalimantan, Indonesia
West Kalimantan (West Borneo) has a history of violent communal conflict. 1 It also has extensive forests that have been looted for decades. The argument will be that these two are linked, but not by the grievances of the forest dwellers. Except in its first few days, the two main episodes of 1997 and 1999 were not driven mainly by grievances among marginal groups. Rather, explanations based on the ‘resource curse’ carry more weight. These focus …
Indonesian Politics in 2008
The ‘normal’ politics of 2008, in between the big electoral events of 2004 and 2009, illustrated the ambiguities of democratic change. Hung gubernatorial elections in North Maluku and South Sulawesi led local elites to ask Jakarta to intervene. A long campaign of demonstrations and violent intimidation by fundamentalist groups against the unorthodox Islamic group Ahmadiyah persuaded the government to impose a semi-ban on the group. At the same ti…
Citizenship in Asian history
This article introduces a special issue of Citizenship Studies in which historians of East, South and Southeast Asia continue the project of globalizing citizenship by analyzing practices and conceptions of citizenship in pre-colonial China, India and Indonesia. Building on the recent global turn in citizenship studies as well as historicizing this turn, we shift the conceptual focus from formal membership and contracts to practices and acts of c…
Genocide Finally Enters Public Discourse
This article describes public discussion in Indonesia and abroad before, during and after the International People’s Tribunal 1965 (IPT). Hearings were held in The Hague in November 2015. As a “tribunal of inquiry,” it derived its legitimacy from Indonesian and international civil society, while seeking guidance from conscience and the highest principles of international law and justice. Although pressure had grown since democratization in 1998 f…
Today
The year 1965 marked a dramatic turning point in Indonesian history. On 1 October, a shadowy group of left-wing military officers calling itself the 30 September Movement kidnapped and killed sever
Brokerage and the Making of Middle Indonesia
Indonesia is the world's fourth most populous nation, extending 5,000 km west to east. Its grand myth of national becoming, the Revolution of 1945, intended to weld together a disparate colonial patchwork, stands in uneasy contrast with the spatial unevenness of its actual history of national integration. Socially speaking, there are two Indonesias: a central Indonesian heartland that owned the revolution and much other mobilizational activity be…
Decolonization and the Making of Middle Indonesia
Indonesia contains about 200 provincial cities with populations between 50,000 and one million, yet they have attracted far less scholarly attention than the country's few million-plus cities. Recent democratization and decentralization have brought to light patterns of communal and local mobilization in these cities, centered on elections and other political events, that have not been seen in Indonesia since the 1950s and early 1960s. Provincial…
State of disorder
Three centuries of conflict in East Timor
In this gem of a book Doug Kammen reconstructs 300 years of East Timorese history by looking through the lens of one clan in one town. He frames the long arc of his story with a murder mystery dati
Forbidden Memories of 1965
Three books on Papua
Review of: Pieter Drooglever, An act of free choice; Decolonisation and the right to self-determination in West Papua. Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2009, xviii + 854 pp. ISBN 9781851687152. Price: GBP 125.00 (hardback). Esther Heidbüchel, The West Papua conflict in Indonesia; Actors, issues and approaches. Wettenberg: Johannes Herrmann, 2007, iii + 223 pp. ISBN 9783937983103. Price: EUR 20.00 (paperback). Muridan S. Widjojo, Adriana Elisabeth, …
Indonesia's Politically Driven Anti-corruption Agenda and the Post-Election Future
Despite the apparent appeal of Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's record of fighting corruption foreigners would be wise not to jump to simple conclusions about the centrality of the anti-corruption agenda in this year's presidential contest. Not every group of voters views the corruption issue the same way. After a detailed review of recent anticorruption activities and a strong counter-reaction, van Klinken concludes that the conte…
Big states and little independence movements
(2000). Big states and little independence movements. Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars: Vol. 32, East Timor, Indonesia, and the World Community: Resistance, Repression, and Responsibility, pp. 91-96
Indonesia in transition
This essay is my attempt to guide readers through the thicket of print and film resources from and about Indonesia in a way that provides a structure for making sense of the evergrowing body of literature about Indonesia. The choice of literature recommended in this essay is inspired by my own fascination with the theme of transition from a traditional to a modern society. Just what we understand by “tradition” and “modernity” is, of course, deba…
Will the next Indonesian succession be violent
Chronology
Big states and little independence movements
(2000). Big states and little independence movements. Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars: Vol. 32, East Timor, Indonesia, and the World Community: Resistance, Repression, and Responsibility, pp. 91-96
The Maluku Wars
Throughout the Suharto era, political scientists found Latin American corporatist models of the all-pervasive state among their most useful tools. But the Maluku conflict forces us to reexamine these long-held convictions about the Indonesian state and its relations with society. Today nobody talks corporatism, and observers are looking for other heuristic aids to help explain violence in Indonesia. Perhaps we should be looking at Africa's failed…
Communal Violence and Democratization in Indonesia
Through close scrutiny of empirical materials and interviews, this book uniquely analyzes all the episodes of long-running, widespread communal violence that erupted during Indonesia’s post-New Order transition. Indonesia democratised after the long and authoritarian New Order regime ended in May 1998. But the transition was far less peaceful than is often thought. It claimed about 10,000 lives in communal (ethnic and religious) violence, and nea…
Renegotiating Boundaries
For decades almost the only social scientists who visited Indonesia’s provinces were anthropologists. Anybody interested in politics or economics spent most of their time in Jakarta, where the action was. Our view of the world’s fourth largest country threatened to become simplistic, lacking that essential graininess. Then, in 1998, Indonesia was plunged into a crisis that could not be understood with simplistic tools. After 32 years of enforced …
Renegotiating boundaries
For decades almost the only social scientists who visited Indonesia’s provinces were anthropologists. Anybody interested in politics or economics spent most of their time in Jakarta, where the action was. Our view of the world’s fourth largest country threatened to become simplistic, lacking that essential graininess. Then, in 1998, Indonesia was plunged into a crisis that could not be understood with simplistic tools. After 32 years of enforced …
The Combative ‘I’
as a genre in Indonesia has emerged from small beginnings in the colonial period to rival the production of novels since independence in 1945. But, contrary to earlier expectations, the (auto)biography has not become an exploration of inwardness under the tender influence of Western education. Rather it is an essential weapon of self-promotion in a competitive world where power is fragile and personalised. Revealing nothing of their inner selves …
Blood, timber, and the state in West Kalimantan, Indonesia
West Kalimantan (West Borneo) has a history of violent communal conflict. 1 It also has extensive forests that have been looted for decades. The argument will be that these two are linked, but not by the grievances of the forest dwellers. Except in its first few days, the two main episodes of 1997 and 1999 were not driven mainly by grievances among marginal groups. Rather, explanations based on the ‘resource curse’ carry more weight. These focus …
Indonesian Politics in 2008
The ‘normal’ politics of 2008, in between the big electoral events of 2004 and 2009, illustrated the ambiguities of democratic change. Hung gubernatorial elections in North Maluku and South Sulawesi led local elites to ask Jakarta to intervene. A long campaign of demonstrations and violent intimidation by fundamentalist groups against the unorthodox Islamic group Ahmadiyah persuaded the government to impose a semi-ban on the group. At the same ti…
State of Authority
A major realignment is taking place in the way we understand the state in Indonesia. New studies on local politics, ethnicity, the democratic transition, corruption, Islam, popular culture, and other areas hint at novel concepts of the state, though often without fully articulating them. This book captures several dimensions of this shift. One reason for the new thinking is a fresh wind that has altered state studies generally. People are posing …
Decolonization and the Making of Middle Indonesia
Indonesia contains about 200 provincial cities with populations between 50,000 and one million, yet they have attracted far less scholarly attention than the country's few million-plus cities. Recent democratization and decentralization have brought to light patterns of communal and local mobilization in these cities, centered on elections and other political events, that have not been seen in Indonesia since the 1950s and early 1960s. Provincial…
Indonesia's Politically Driven Anti-corruption Agenda and the Post-Election Future
Despite the apparent appeal of Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's record of fighting corruption foreigners would be wise not to jump to simple conclusions about the centrality of the anti-corruption agenda in this year's presidential contest. Not every group of voters views the corruption issue the same way. After a detailed review of recent anticorruption activities and a strong counter-reaction, van Klinken concludes that the conte…
Glossary
Index
Preliminary Material
The state and illegality in Indonesia
Why did we write this book? The popular 1998 reformasi movement that brought down President Suharto’s regime demanded an end to illegal practices by state officials, from human rights abuse to nepotistic investments. Yet today, such practices have proven more resistant to reform than people had hoped.Many have said corruption in Indonesia is “entrenched.” We argue it is precisely this entrenched character that requires attention. What is state il…
Abbreviations
Building relations
Building things has been the essence of development in Indonesia, at least since the oil boom began in the mid-1970s. Indeed, the word pembangunan, a central trope of the New Order regime, means both development and building (Heryanto 1988). But the very large construction industry is plagued by poor standards and corruption. It is widely known that money is routinely skimmed off construction contracts to pay off tendering committees, public work…
Three books on Papua
Review of: Pieter Drooglever, An act of free choice; Decolonisation and the right to self-determination in West Papua. Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2009, xviii + 854 pp. ISBN 9781851687152. Price: GBP 125.00 (hardback). Esther Heidbüchel, The West Papua conflict in Indonesia; Actors, issues and approaches. Wettenberg: Johannes Herrmann, 2007, iii + 223 pp. ISBN 9783937983103. Price: EUR 20.00 (paperback). Muridan S. Widjojo, Adriana Elisabeth, …
The state and illegality in Indonesia
Cover photos: Front: A pendekar (strongman) of the Betawi Brotherhood Forum.This volume is the product of an extended and intensive process of collaboration in which many individuals participated
The State and Illegality in Indonesia
Cover photos: Front: A pendekar (strongman) of the Betawi Brotherhood Forum.This volume is the product of an extended and intensive process of collaboration in which many individuals participated
Dan Slater, Ordering power
In this feature we highlight a recently launched book. We invite specialists in the field to comment on the book, and we invite the author to respond to their comments. In this issue we focus on Dan Slater's Ordering power: Contentious politics and authoritarian. Those invited to comment on the book are William Case, Gerry van Klinken and John Roosa. Registered readers may participate in the debate
Forbidden Memories of 1965
Asian Studies and History (40 works) · Political science (37 works) · Law (32 works) · Sociology (31 works) · Politics (27 works) · Economics (16 works) · Law (14 works) · Democracy (13 works) · Political economy (13 works) · Development economics (12 works)