State, Capital, and the Crisis of Social Reproduction in Indonesia

A Rejoinder

Bibliographic Data

ID19216631
AuthorsTrissia Wijaya (0000-0002-4193-5908, The University of Melbourne), Kanishka Jayasuriya (0000-0002-0010-1229, Murdoch University, corresponding author)
Year2026
Volume56
Issue5
Pages1-11
Publication date2026-06-08
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Contemporary Asia (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0047-2336 • E-ISSN: 1752-7554
PublisherRoutledge (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/00472336.2026.2675692
OpenAlexW7163866448
LanguageEN
References cited26

This rejoinder to Mudhoffir (Citation2026) identifies three key theoretical points of disagreement in the response to our commentary on Indonesian protests of 2025 (Wijaya and Jayasuriya Citation2026). First, the “authoritarian continuity thesis” advanced by our critics misses the way in which the “rule of capital” is organised within the state apparatus. The response to our article rests on an instrumentalist reading of the Indonesian state, which is contrasted to a more structural understanding set out in our 2026 commentary. Second, this perspective enables a better comprehension of the shifts in the form of authoritarian political regimes in response to a variety of often overlapping crises. Third, protests must be understood not simply as a set of grievances about elite impunity but signify a fundamental shift in the structure of the working or labouring class, which is itself the product of capitalist transformation over the last decades. Here, it is contended that these conflicts now find expression in new forms of politics over access to means of social reproduction.

Reproduction · Social change · Social reproduction · Asian Studies and History · Demographic Trends and Gender Preferences · World Systems and Global Transformations

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