Tuesday, March 30th, 2010 Abidin Kusno Job Talk: The End of the Peasants and the Politics of (Peri)urbanization?

Description

The nature of Asian urbanization has been the object of theoretical attention for almost two decades. A central theme in the discussion revolves around the dissolution of the city and countryside divide; and the focus is largely on questioning whether the city is winning (through urbanization) or if the countryside is losing in the development game. Such issues however are much more complex in Asia. For instance, for Terry McGee (who is among the first to consider the specificity of the region), urbanization means “the emergence of (peri-urban) regions of highly-mixed rural and non-rural activity surrounding the large urban cores of many Asian countries” that are “significant foci of industrialization and rapid economic growth.” Yet, with studies mostly centered on the processes of urbanization, very little attention has been given to the political formation of the extended peri-urban space. This talk, through a case study of Indonesia, will make an attempt to place these extended spaces in their historical context in order to understand the political processes that have made their formation possible.

Abidin Kusno is Associate Professor at the Institute of Asian Research where he holds Canada Research Chair in Asian Urbanism and Culture (Tier II). An architectural and urban historian with interests in sociology, anthropology, visual cultures, history, and politics, his research examines the roles of built environment in shaping the political cultures of decolonization, nation building, and development. He wrote The Appearances of Memory: Mnemonic Practices of Architecture and Urban Form in Indonesia (Duke University Press, 2010) and Behind the Postcolonial: Architecture, Urban Space and Political Cultures in Indonesia (Routledge, 2000).