P. Nas

The Indonesian Town Revisited reflects the growing interest in new towns and the urban sprawl around Jakarta, the economic crisis and its effects on the construction sector. Furthermore, a new direction in research is related to the growing interest in middle range cities. Some well-established topics are also covered, such as kampung improvement, urban conservation and migration.

The Indonesian Town Revisited

Gerard Persoon

Rivke Jaffe

Ritual language, wild and domestic animals, and objects of material culture like houses, palaces, and works of art, are often loaded with symbolic meaning. ‘Reading the landscape’, or giving meaning to the natural environment, is a cultural act as well, and one must discover what mountains, coastlines, and islands mean to different groups of people. In this book, written on the occasion of Professor Reimar Schefold’s retirement from the Department of Cultural Anthropology at Leiden University, colleagues and former students from the Netherlands and abroad demonstrate the variety and wealth of the field of symbolic anthropology. The regional focus of the book is Indonesia. The studies presented range from small island communities in western, northern, and eastern Indonesia to urban settlements in Java and Sumatra. All the contributions are in one way or another related to Reimar Schefold’s work over the past thirty-five years, work that includes extensive studies on material culture, rituals, and the use of symbols in the expression of ethnicity among the various cultural groups of Indonesia.

Essays in Symbolic Anthropology in Honour of Reimar Schefold

Framing Indonesian Realities

This book combines the work of twenty-one authors from East and West, some of whom are long-time residents of Jakarta and all of whom have lived and studied there for shorter or longer periods. They have in common that each of them has become fascinated by certain characteristics of Jakarta's many-sided life. The subjects they deal with range from conditions in VOC Batavia to particular national or ethnic communities to administrative developments. The essays on early colonial Batavia yield new insights into the demographic situation bases on archival research, and those essays dealing with more modern topics make use of special sources, including maps, that are not easily accessible through libraries. Reading through this volume one encounters striking parallels between the past and the present, because many aspects of present-day Jakarta are deeply rooted in the history of the city: demography and urban morphology, environmental absurdities, traffic, and floods as well as ritual and symbolism. Historians, anthropologists, sociologists, administrators, and town planners may well draw inspiration from this kaleidoscopic picture of Indonesia's capital.

Socio-cultural Essays

Jakarta-Batavia

Reimar Schefold

Gaudenz Domenig

The traditional houses and settlements of the several hundred ethnic groups of Indonesia are extremely varied and all have their own unique history. Underlying this rich diversity are fundamental similarities rooted in the ancient heritage that is shared by all the peoples in the Indonesian field of study. The multiplicity of ways in which this heritage is given shape in each local situation bears witness to an amazing creativity in adapting to regional circumstances and social changes. Inter-ethnic comparison of the architectural structures is a way to arrive at a better understanding of both the shared traditions and the diverging developments. In many cases, the variety of house forms will reflect successful attempts at one group's making distinct its buildings from those of neighbouring groups in an ongoing ethnic process of what could be called mutual contrasting, although sometimes by means of pseudo-traditions which have little to do with indigenous customs of the past. The contributions to this volume are grouped into four sections. The first consists of essays describing approaches to the transformation and variation of houses. The second set presents applications of these approaches in case studies of specific Sumatran cultures. The third group widens the perspective through the inclusion of a number of cultures from outside Sumatra, namely from Flores, Sulawesi, Kalimantan, Palu'e, and Roti. The final set deals not so much with houses as with settlements. In their pursuit of the cultural dimension of houses, the contributions focus on villages and towns, exploring their cosmological and symbolic organization.

Tradition and Transformation in Vernacular Architecture

Indonesian Houses

The concepts of "Indonesian architecture" and "architecture in Indonesia" are both quite difficult to pin down. For the architecture of this small country incorporates influences from many important cultures--from India, China and the Middle East to countries in the West--and is therefore extremely multifaceted. In fact, one might reasonably ask whether a "real" Indonesian architecture actually exists, even with reference to the country's vernacular work, which is highly diverse from an ethnic perspective in and of itself. The quest for an authentic Indonesian architecture has in fact been the subject of debate among architects there for many years, especially in regards to the work has been exported to other countries--in particular, its former colonizer, the Netherlands. (In fact, there is even a name for the hybrid style that originated during that era: Indische).This very nicely designed collection of illustrated essays, which features a special section of pictures and drawings of colonial architecture, provides a real sense of the diversity of building in modern-day Indonesia--while at the same time recognizing that such a perspective cannot be productive without taking history into account. With chapters on Modern Indonesian architecture, vernacular traditions, mosques, the effect of the Chinese diaspora, hybrid historic/contemporary Balinese architecture, the colonial period, Indische architecture and Art Deco and more, this publication provides an amazing overview and a long-overdue investigation of Indische work. Preface by Aaron Betsky.

Architecture in Indonesia

The Past in the Present

Aidan Southall

Ghaus Ansari

Studies in Urban Ethnicity, Life-style, and Class

City and Society

Peter J. M. Nas

Cities are full of symbols that bear the meanings that together constitute urban culture. These interdisciplinary case studies, from Yogyakarta to Leiden and from Buenos Aires to New York, employ urban symbolism theory and a focus on such symbols as the city's layout, statues, street names and popular culture. This book examines design proposals that show symbolic handling of the 9/11 attack on New York, the disaster symbolism of the ship washed ashore by the tsunami in Banda Aceh, and the design of the symbol of the city of Cape Town derived from a remnant of Dutch colonial architecture, or the mass pilgrimage to Elvis's Graceland in Memphis. 'Cities Full of Symbols' develops urban symbolic ecology and hypercity approaches into a new perspective on social cohesion. Approaches of architects, anthropologists, sociologists, social geographers and historians converge to make this a book for anyone interested in urban life, policymaking and city branding.--Cover.

A Theory of Urban Space and Culture

Cities Full of Symbols

This volume consists of twenty articles on the symbols and images of Third World cities, such as Jakarta, Padang, Bangkok, Beijing, Baghdad, Kathmandu, Lucknow, Francistown, Vitoria and Buenos Aires. It provides fascinating new information on a neglected phenomenon in urban studies.

P. Nas

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