Robbie Peters
Biographic Data
| ID | 122200 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Robbie Peters |
| GIVEN NAMES | Robbie |
| FAMILY NAME | Peters |
| SIGNATURE | PETERS R |
| AFFILIATIONS | The University of Sydney |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3708-9013 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 15 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 27 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 15 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
"To hell with symbols!"
This article examines men who race pigeons in the back alleys of an Indonesian neighborhood amid government crackdowns on gambling. It introduces the equivocal pigeon: a bird these men present as a-symbolic, or incapable of saying things for or about them. The equivocal pigeon is an intellectually provocative animal that upsets commonsense ideas about birds and men and meaning and turns the city inside out by bringing its back alleys into view bu…
Conditional Cash Transfers and the Produced Poor in Indonesia
Indonesia's conditional cash transfer program serves only the "objectively perceivable" poor-those who fit its parameters of eligibility and appear in the official poverty data. It creates two populations of poor people: the legible and eligible, or user poor, and the illegible and ineligible, or nonuser poor. In Surabaya the nonuser poor-who constitute half of all poor people-benefit from a de facto distribution of cash transfers that operates i…
The Limits of Infrastructure
Since the 1940s, the people of the neighbourhoods (kampungs) around Surabaya's derelict Ngagel industrial estate have made a living by repurposing the remains of what was once one of Asia's most modern road, rail and industry networks. The remains-in the form of leftover fuel, labour and factory parts-are used to rebuild and repair improvised transport vehicles like bicycle-taxis (becak), minibuses (bemo) and motorbike-taxis (ojek). The repurposi…
Improvised infrastructure and redistributive rights
Through a study of the motorbike-taxi drivers of the present and the minibus drivers of the past in Indonesia, I discuss how an improvised public transport infrastructure funded by the household fills the gaps left by a heavy transport infrastructure funded by the state and corporate capital. I argue that improvised infrastructure is built and maintained by the underemployed majority through their survival strategy of crowding—or bringing the cit…
Capturing the City
In this essay I use Surabaya as a case study to argue that today's data-based urbanism excludes people from the city. Data-based urbanism differs from the revolutionary and counterrevolutionary urbanisms of the past in Surabaya that included people: the revolutionary form enabled the low-income majority of the kampung neighbourhoods to capture the 'city as a whole' through infrastructure, while the counterrevolutionary form enabled that majority …
Reflections on Covid-19 in Sydney, Australia
Motorbike-taxi-drivers as Infrastructure in the Indonesian City
This article explores how problems of inadequate urban transport and increasing underemployment in the large Indonesian city of Surabaya have been down-sourced to its men and their pedicabs, minivans and motorbikes. Motorbike-taxi-drivers have grown to around one-hundred-thousand over recent years, replacing pedicab and minivan drivers as Surabaya's iconic toiling men who traverse the city and keep its economy and people in motion. For these men,…
Corpses that Speak
This paper takes the outbreak of the revolution as a starting point to explore the potent power of the dismembered, dispersed and unburied corpse of enemies versus that of the redeemed and commemorated corpse of Indonesian solider heroes. From this starting point, the paper shows how the state formed at the moment of revolutionary violence and that it formed upon the symbology of a constructed genealogy of national heroes. It argues that those he…
Single Working-class Women and the City in Java and Vietnam
Through investigation into the lives of single migrant women who work as department store salesgirls in Surabaya and Ho Chi Minh City, this paper suggests that while commonalities exist with regard to their controlled use of beauty in the workplace, their lack of time and disposable income, and the temporary nature of their right to live in their respective cities as migrants, there are significant differences between them. These differences run …
Death and the Control of Life in an Indonesian City
Death represents sovereignty and through it people negotiate their existence, concludes Claudio Lomnitz (2008:496) in his history of Mexican death. This conclusion holds true for the politics of death in the city of Surabaya, Indonesia, but only if death is understood in topographic and genealogical terms; or, in other words, in terms of land and one’s ancestral/genealogical connection to it. Through a discussion of the politics of land occupatio…
Southeast Asian perspectives on power
Additional informationNotes on contributorsRobbie PetersRobbie Peters is a senior lecturer in anthropology at the University of Sydney and director of its Development Studies Program. He has a recent book, Surabaya, 1945–2010: Neighbourhood, State and Economy in Indonesia’s City of Struggle, Singapore: NUS Press (2013). His journal articles deal with the political economy of violence in the Indonesian city and gender and value in Ho Chi Minh City…
Surabaya, 1945–2010
Shortlist EuroSEAS Humanities Book Prize 2015 Surabaya, 1945-2010 presents the recent history of one of Indonesia's great port cities as viewed from a crowded low-income neighbourhood (kampung) called Dinoyo. By following the lives of Dinoyo residents over three generations, it provides a new perspective on landmark moments in the country's modern history, including the war for independence, the destruction of the Communist Party, the petrus anti…
Violence expressed
The Wheels of Misfortune
This focus of this paper is not Surabaya's increasingly free-flowing streets, but the people those streets displace. Based on research in a low-income neighbourhood, or kampung, of Indonesia's second largest city, this paper shows how the street facilitates displacement and exacerbates the marginalisation of underemployed kampung men. This argument is set against the struggles over the use of public space between Surabaya's kampung residents and …
The Assault on Occupancy in Surabaya
This article takes as its starting point the burning down of traditional markets and clearance of squatter communities and street vendors that took place in the major Indonesian port city of Surabaya during 2007-08. It is argued that a legible landscape facilitating intervention, simulation and passage now marks a city where malls and hotels linked into new accelerated networks of unobstructed streets form the dominant presence. Using recent anth…
Motorbike-taxi-drivers as Infrastructure in the Indonesian City
This article explores how problems of inadequate urban transport and increasing underemployment in the large Indonesian city of Surabaya have been down-sourced to its men and their pedicabs, minivans and motorbikes. Motorbike-taxi-drivers have grown to around one-hundred-thousand over recent years, replacing pedicab and minivan drivers as Surabaya's iconic toiling men who traverse the city and keep its economy and people in motion. For these men,…
The Wheels of Misfortune
This focus of this paper is not Surabaya's increasingly free-flowing streets, but the people those streets displace. Based on research in a low-income neighbourhood, or kampung, of Indonesia's second largest city, this paper shows how the street facilitates displacement and exacerbates the marginalisation of underemployed kampung men. This argument is set against the struggles over the use of public space between Surabaya's kampung residents and …
The Assault on Occupancy in Surabaya
This article takes as its starting point the burning down of traditional markets and clearance of squatter communities and street vendors that took place in the major Indonesian port city of Surabaya during 2007-08. It is argued that a legible landscape facilitating intervention, simulation and passage now marks a city where malls and hotels linked into new accelerated networks of unobstructed streets form the dominant presence. Using recent anth…
Improvised infrastructure and redistributive rights
Through a study of the motorbike-taxi drivers of the present and the minibus drivers of the past in Indonesia, I discuss how an improvised public transport infrastructure funded by the household fills the gaps left by a heavy transport infrastructure funded by the state and corporate capital. I argue that improvised infrastructure is built and maintained by the underemployed majority through their survival strategy of crowding—or bringing the cit…
Capturing the City
In this essay I use Surabaya as a case study to argue that today's data-based urbanism excludes people from the city. Data-based urbanism differs from the revolutionary and counterrevolutionary urbanisms of the past in Surabaya that included people: the revolutionary form enabled the low-income majority of the kampung neighbourhoods to capture the 'city as a whole' through infrastructure, while the counterrevolutionary form enabled that majority …
Single Working-class Women and the City in Java and Vietnam
Through investigation into the lives of single migrant women who work as department store salesgirls in Surabaya and Ho Chi Minh City, this paper suggests that while commonalities exist with regard to their controlled use of beauty in the workplace, their lack of time and disposable income, and the temporary nature of their right to live in their respective cities as migrants, there are significant differences between them. These differences run …
The Limits of Infrastructure
Since the 1940s, the people of the neighbourhoods (kampungs) around Surabaya's derelict Ngagel industrial estate have made a living by repurposing the remains of what was once one of Asia's most modern road, rail and industry networks. The remains-in the form of leftover fuel, labour and factory parts-are used to rebuild and repair improvised transport vehicles like bicycle-taxis (becak), minibuses (bemo) and motorbike-taxis (ojek). The repurposi…
Death and the Control of Life in an Indonesian City
Death represents sovereignty and through it people negotiate their existence, concludes Claudio Lomnitz (2008:496) in his history of Mexican death. This conclusion holds true for the politics of death in the city of Surabaya, Indonesia, but only if death is understood in topographic and genealogical terms; or, in other words, in terms of land and one’s ancestral/genealogical connection to it. Through a discussion of the politics of land occupatio…
The Assault on Occupancy in Surabaya
This article takes as its starting point the burning down of traditional markets and clearance of squatter communities and street vendors that took place in the major Indonesian port city of Surabaya during 2007-08. It is argued that a legible landscape facilitating intervention, simulation and passage now marks a city where malls and hotels linked into new accelerated networks of unobstructed streets form the dominant presence. Using recent anth…
The Wheels of Misfortune
This focus of this paper is not Surabaya's increasingly free-flowing streets, but the people those streets displace. Based on research in a low-income neighbourhood, or kampung, of Indonesia's second largest city, this paper shows how the street facilitates displacement and exacerbates the marginalisation of underemployed kampung men. This argument is set against the struggles over the use of public space between Surabaya's kampung residents and …
Surabaya, 1945–2010
Shortlist EuroSEAS Humanities Book Prize 2015 Surabaya, 1945-2010 presents the recent history of one of Indonesia's great port cities as viewed from a crowded low-income neighbourhood (kampung) called Dinoyo. By following the lives of Dinoyo residents over three generations, it provides a new perspective on landmark moments in the country's modern history, including the war for independence, the destruction of the Communist Party, the petrus anti…
Violence expressed
Southeast Asian perspectives on power
Additional informationNotes on contributorsRobbie PetersRobbie Peters is a senior lecturer in anthropology at the University of Sydney and director of its Development Studies Program. He has a recent book, Surabaya, 1945–2010: Neighbourhood, State and Economy in Indonesia’s City of Struggle, Singapore: NUS Press (2013). His journal articles deal with the political economy of violence in the Indonesian city and gender and value in Ho Chi Minh City…
Single Working-class Women and the City in Java and Vietnam
Through investigation into the lives of single migrant women who work as department store salesgirls in Surabaya and Ho Chi Minh City, this paper suggests that while commonalities exist with regard to their controlled use of beauty in the workplace, their lack of time and disposable income, and the temporary nature of their right to live in their respective cities as migrants, there are significant differences between them. These differences run …
Death and the Control of Life in an Indonesian City
Death represents sovereignty and through it people negotiate their existence, concludes Claudio Lomnitz (2008:496) in his history of Mexican death. This conclusion holds true for the politics of death in the city of Surabaya, Indonesia, but only if death is understood in topographic and genealogical terms; or, in other words, in terms of land and one’s ancestral/genealogical connection to it. Through a discussion of the politics of land occupatio…
Corpses that Speak
This paper takes the outbreak of the revolution as a starting point to explore the potent power of the dismembered, dispersed and unburied corpse of enemies versus that of the redeemed and commemorated corpse of Indonesian solider heroes. From this starting point, the paper shows how the state formed at the moment of revolutionary violence and that it formed upon the symbology of a constructed genealogy of national heroes. It argues that those he…
Capturing the City
In this essay I use Surabaya as a case study to argue that today's data-based urbanism excludes people from the city. Data-based urbanism differs from the revolutionary and counterrevolutionary urbanisms of the past in Surabaya that included people: the revolutionary form enabled the low-income majority of the kampung neighbourhoods to capture the 'city as a whole' through infrastructure, while the counterrevolutionary form enabled that majority …
Reflections on Covid-19 in Sydney, Australia
Motorbike-taxi-drivers as Infrastructure in the Indonesian City
This article explores how problems of inadequate urban transport and increasing underemployment in the large Indonesian city of Surabaya have been down-sourced to its men and their pedicabs, minivans and motorbikes. Motorbike-taxi-drivers have grown to around one-hundred-thousand over recent years, replacing pedicab and minivan drivers as Surabaya's iconic toiling men who traverse the city and keep its economy and people in motion. For these men,…
Improvised infrastructure and redistributive rights
Through a study of the motorbike-taxi drivers of the present and the minibus drivers of the past in Indonesia, I discuss how an improvised public transport infrastructure funded by the household fills the gaps left by a heavy transport infrastructure funded by the state and corporate capital. I argue that improvised infrastructure is built and maintained by the underemployed majority through their survival strategy of crowding—or bringing the cit…
The Limits of Infrastructure
Since the 1940s, the people of the neighbourhoods (kampungs) around Surabaya's derelict Ngagel industrial estate have made a living by repurposing the remains of what was once one of Asia's most modern road, rail and industry networks. The remains-in the form of leftover fuel, labour and factory parts-are used to rebuild and repair improvised transport vehicles like bicycle-taxis (becak), minibuses (bemo) and motorbike-taxis (ojek). The repurposi…
Conditional Cash Transfers and the Produced Poor in Indonesia
Indonesia's conditional cash transfer program serves only the "objectively perceivable" poor-those who fit its parameters of eligibility and appear in the official poverty data. It creates two populations of poor people: the legible and eligible, or user poor, and the illegible and ineligible, or nonuser poor. In Surabaya the nonuser poor-who constitute half of all poor people-benefit from a de facto distribution of cash transfers that operates i…
"To hell with symbols!"
This article examines men who race pigeons in the back alleys of an Indonesian neighborhood amid government crackdowns on gambling. It introduces the equivocal pigeon: a bird these men present as a-symbolic, or incapable of saying things for or about them. The equivocal pigeon is an intellectually provocative animal that upsets commonsense ideas about birds and men and meaning and turns the city inside out by bringing its back alleys into view bu…
Asian Studies and History (9 works) · Socioeconomic Development in Asia (8 works) · Sociology (8 works) · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies (7 works) · Business (6 works) · Political science (6 works) · Indonesian (5 works) · Law (4 works) · Politics (4 works) · Water Governance and Infrastructure (4 works)