The Dutch colonial burden: colonial collections in postcolonial times and the transfer of academic values

In this paper I will address the way Dutch Asianists transfer academic values to the next generation. The conclusion will be that they do so in a, perhaps surprisingly, unsystematic way, even to the point that there is little consensus about what constitute the major academic values. The paper consists of a preliminary analysis, based on interviews with four scholars (Jan Breman, Elsbeth Locher‐Scholten, Henk Schulte Nordholt and Wim van den Doel) and a content analysis of a selection of PhD theses, inaugural lectures, valedictory lectures, and Festschriften. These four types of writing are, more than ordinary articles and monographs, texts in which people express normative ideasAustralian National University and Leiden Universit

Ethnoregional social dramas of Southeast Asian in globalism: recasting cultural heritage for ethnic revivals

This book offers an interpretative symbolic analysis of present global phenomenon that gives rise ethnic culture as regional identity. With a multi-sited ethnography (Marcus, 1995 and 1998), this book is a sort of comparative ethnographies which sought the collective identities of the Melayu Baru or Neo-Malay and Chinese Peranakan or Nanyang in two cities of Southeast Asia. The Neo-Malay with Islam solidarity (Ummah) is attached to ethnoregional community, in contrast, the Chinese Nanyang or Peranakan got their identity remaking with syncretic popular beliefs in the Straits of Melaka. Ethnicity data of Neo-Malay and Chinese Nanyang of Georgetown of Malaysia and Medan City of Indonesia are divided into four Social Drama phases (Turner, 1982), they are: Breach, Liminal, Redress, and Reintegration. Ethnography of ethnic formations and revivals comprises of: (1) Colonialism as Breach: Ethnic Categories of the Dutch Indies and British Malay (2) Nationalism as Liminal: Ethno-national symbolic disputes (3) Ethnoregionalism as Redress: regionalizing the cultural hybridity of Neo-Malay and of Chinese Nanyang, and (4) Globalism as Reintegration: galvanizing heritage fiestas for global culture. The reproduced hybrid heritage of Neo-Malay and Chinese Nanyang is annually performed in public spaces and social media by the ethnic groups in Georgetown-Malaysia and Medan North Sumatra. Restoration of ethnic rituals and festivals arises to uphold ethnic identities of social groups. Even the solitary rituals, which move into the public spaces, solidify the ethnic identity and create “communitas” in urban areas. Beliefs and traditions are the foundation of shared identities that must have any adjustments to external factors. The observed and analyzed ethnic revivals in Georgetown and Medan city are using various reconstruction strategies; recasting of cultural heritage reproductions in the religious sites and public spaces of urban areas, re-enacting annual rituals and festivals. The ethnoregional shared identities are recast as ethnic revival strategy in globalism

A voz dos bandos: colectivos de justiça e ritos da palavra portuguesa em Timor Leste colonial

Este artigo examina as relações entre o discurso da justiça e a prática do ritual nos bandos do governo colonial português em Timor Leste, entre a segunda metade do século XIX e as primeiras décadas do século XX. Os bandos consistiam em ordens e instruções de comando emanadas pelo governador português em Díli, e comunicadas de forma cerimonial por oficiais às populações dos diversos reinos timorenses dispersos pelo país. Bandos eram um instrumento por excelência de governação colonial dos assuntos indígenas, servindo para arbitrar conflitos, punir transgressões e, em geral, instituir realidades no mundo timorense. Contudo, esta instituição assumiu igualmente uma singular expressão nos usos timorenses, servindo bandos para comunicar também as ordens de autoridades tradicionais, os liurais. O artigo acompanha as variações coloniais e indígenas que os bandos adquiriram em Timor Leste, conceptualizando-os enquanto colectivos de justiça. Ao considerar assim os bandos como colectivos – formações heterogéneas em que elementos linguísticos e não linguísticos se combinam na produção de efeitos de poder sobre as populações – o artigo propõe uma via conceptual alternativa às perspectivas linguísticas e literárias de análise do discurso colonial

Colonial heritage as bricolage: Interpreting the colonial built environment in Surabaya, Indonesia

One of the most visible and enduring vestiges of colonialism is its buildings. In this article I address the question of how current approving references to the colonial buildings in Indonesia should be explained, looking at one particular city, Surabaya. The cheerful, innovative adoption of colonial themes defies an analysis in terms of ‘imperial debris’. I propose to borrow the term ‘bricolage’ from Claude Lévi-Strauss to describe this process in which people make new associations between selected colonial buildings and their own present lives. Bricolage is the selective conceptual appropriation of the colonial buildings for whatever objective the user finds convenient: objects to boost city marketing, a company advertisement, stops on a heritage tour, amusing backdrops for pictures and selfies, a counterpoint to a consumerist lifestyle in shopping malls. For colonial building enthusiasts, the love of colonial design and old urban quarters is more than a matter of the aesthetics of urban spaces, but also, indirectly, a critique of the transformation of modern cities by short-sighted real-estate developers and city administrators, who demolish irreplaceable buildings in acts of ‘architectural suicide’

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