Edwin Jurriëns

In the age of digital communication and global capitalism, people’s mental, social and natural environments are interconnected in complex and often unpredictable ways. This book focuses on the visual media, one of the key factors in shaping the contemporary ecology of colliding environments. Case-studies include video artists, community media activists, television programme makers and literary authors in the fourth most populous country in the world, Indonesia. The author demonstrates that these actors are part of an international creative and social vanguard that reflect on, criticise and rework the multidimensional impact of the visual media in imaginative and innovative ways. Their work explores alternative and more sustainable presents and futures for Indonesia and the world. This research is urgent and timely, as Indonesia has emerged in recent years as one of the world’s most vibrant hubs for contemporary art and media experimentation. Using an innovative interdisciplinary framework of visual culture analysis that derives from a wide range of academic fields, the book will be of interest to academics in the field of Southeast Asian Studies, Media Studies, Cultural Studies and Art History, Anthropology and Sociology.

Video Vanguard

Visual Media in Indonesia

Alec Thornton

Minako Sakai

Jian Zhang

A UN report recently found that the Asia Pacific is the world’s most disaster-prone region. Indeed, considering that the region accounts for more than half of the total number of disasters in the world, building capacity and resilience to mitigate the devastating impact of disasters is a pressing task for local actors. This book takes a regional, multidisciplinary and multi-actor approach to improve understandings of how various actors respond to natural and human-induced disasters in the Asia-Pacific region. It examines the ideas and activities of four different categories of agents: civil society; military and state institutions; local cultural knowledge and the media; and economic initiatives, and these themes are approached from various academic disciplines, ranging from anthropology and cultural studies to economics, human geography and political science. The contributors draw their findings from a variety of countries in the region, including China, Fiji, India, Indonesia, Japan, Myanmar and Samoa, and importantly, focus on the interconnection between vulnerability and resilience. In turn, the book highlights how the nature and magnitude of disasters are influenced by social conditions, and aims to contribute to policies that prioritize development opportunities to enhance resilience. Further, it explores the complicated and multifaceted role of agency in building resilience, and presents a comparative framework for analysis and key findings from the Asia-Pacific region. The focus of this book on recent and ongoing disasters makes it a topical and timely contribution to the growing field of disaster management, and as such it will appeal to students and scholars of environmental studies, development studies and Asian politics.

Edwin Jurriëns

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