Michelle Ann Miller

Jakarta in Post-Suharto Indonesia: Decentralisation, Neo-liberalism and Global City Aspiration

In this paper, an examination is made of Jakartas changing political and economic position since the mid 1990s. This period of transformation is dealt with in four parts: the first relates to spatial and administrative changes to Jakarta and its wider urban region; the second considers the impact and implications of the 1997 Asian financial crisis (krismon) and ensuing political transformation which saw the resignation of President Suharto; the third part details the decentralisation laws of 1999 and their implications for urban and regional development; and the fourth considers the context of the 2008–10 global financial crisis (krisis global) in which ‘neo-liberalisme’ became a political slur in Indonesia, ironically at the same time as the governor of Jakarta declared ‘global city’ aspirations.

Why scholars of minority rights in Asia should recognize the limits of Western models

Abstract This article considers the relationship between ethnic and racial minority rights and citizenship in Asia. The most ethnically divided and populous region in the world, Asia is home to some of the most contrasting state responses to ethnic minority assertions of diversity and difference. Asia is also awash with wide-ranging claims by geographically-dispersed ethnic minorities to full and equal citizenship. In exploring the relationship between ethnic minority rights claims and citizenship in Asia, this article considers the relevance of certain core assumptions in Western-dominated citizenship theory to Asian experiences. The aim is to look beyond absolutist West–East and civic–ethnic bifurcations to consider more constructive questions about what Asian and Western models might learn from one another in approaching minority citizenship issues.

Introduction – Ethnic minorities in Asia: inclusion or exclusion?

Abstract This special issue, devoted to ethnic minorities in Asia, originated with the International Symposium on Ethnic Minorities in Asia: Subjects or Citizens, held at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore. As one of the most ethnically-diverse regions in the world, Asia is the site of large indigenous minority populations as well as non-indigenous minorities through ever-growing legal and illegal migrant flows. This article maps out some of the key themes explored by the contributors to this special issue in the processes and structures of accommodation for Asias minorities. These themes revolve around the changing meaning of citizenship in Asian contexts, state models of accommodation, constructions and representations of identity and belonging, post-colonial legacies and nation-building, the legitimacy of minority rights claims, and questions of human security. This article provides an overview of the theoretical and empirical contributions that the essays in this special issue bring to the study of ethnic minority issues in increasingly heterogeneous and divided Asian societies.

Disaster Governance in an Urbanising World Region

In the early twenty-first century, Asia’s accelerated urban transition is both a major source and target of increasingly frequent and costly environmental disasters. Asia is home to more than half of the global urban population, and its share is increasing. Currently, over 1.5 billion people live in Asia’s urban settlements. High rates of rural to urban migration coupled with industrialisation and the advent of automobile societies that are drivers of global climate change and related environmental degradation have amplified the exposure, intensity and human as well as material costs of environmental disasters. The dominant pattern of urban expansion along Asia’s coastlines and river deltas is also producing extended urban agglomerations that are at or below sea level, raising the vulnerabilities of their growing populations to floods, storm surges, typhoons and the unpredictable impacts of climate change on local ecologies. As Asia’s environmental disasters occur at multiple scales and impact upon urban populations in different ways with unintended and often long-term consequences, a multi-sector and multidisciplinary approach is needed to adequately address the multitude of theoretical and practical dimensions of disaster governance in urbanising Asia.

Introduction: Asian Cities in an Era of Decentralisation

In early 21st-century Asia, more people live in cities and other urban areas than in any other region in the world. Around 1.5 billion people reside in urban Asia, accounting for more than half of the global urban population even though Asia is still one of the world’s least urbanised regions. Amidst the growing challenges presented by burgeoning populations, space restrictions, heavy industrialisation and environmental degradation, national governments in Asia are increasingly turning to different forms of decentralisation—the devolution of central state power and resources to the sub-national scale—in search of strategies for managing urban development. The push towards decentralisation across much of Asia over the past two decades has been driven by a number of often competing interests and voices. The dominant discourse, led by the international development community and its attendant donor and lending agencies, has championed the conferral of central state authority, power and material resources to local governments as a means of encouraging greater community empowerment and participation in formal decision-making processes by local stakeholders (World Bank, 2005; Wignaraja and Sirivardana, 2004; Miller, 2012). Yet among the supporters of decentralisation themselves, there are considerable variations in motivations and agendas. For instance, the liberal democratic left would argue that decentralisation facilitates the deepening of democracy and the institutionalisation of key aspects of good governance. For the neo-liberal right, however, decentralisation’s main purpose is to improve economic efficiency and the provision of public services, often via structural adjustment programmes aimed at correcting failed or failing areas of central state authority (Crawford and Hartmann, 2008, p. 12). In Asia, where many countries have been plagued by internal conflicts, decentralisation has also been seen as a panacea for local grievances against centralised rule and, in extreme cases such as the province of Aceh in Indonesia, as an alternative to outright secession from the parent state (Miller, 2009; Phelps et al., 2011). For urban Asia, decentralisation has increasingly been regarded as a means by which to bring city and municipal governments closer to the people in dealing with issues related to environmental sustainability, community building, political

Crossing Borders: Governing the Globalising Urban Matrix of Compound Disasters in Asia and the Pacific

The chapter conceptually situates our original contribution to scholarship in four key areas: (1) through our treatment of environmental disasters as compound events with multiple causalities and far-reaching consequences, (2) by adopting an inclusive multi-sector, multi-disciplinary and multi-scalar approach to disaster governance, (3) by framing the urban transition in the Asia-Pacific region within an urban-rural matrix that encompasses the ecological reach and demands of cities into remote and rural areas, and (4) by interrogating the border as a site that is selectively porous and bounded, depending on the nature of the flows of cross-border environmental harm at different junctures and according to the range of strategic interests at stake. The idea of the national border is explored in this chapter within the context of the particularities of the Asia-Pacific region, where urbanisation is realigning the possibilities for cross-border disaster governance, while at the same time raising new problems for socioeconomic resilience and stability at multiple scales. The chapter concludes with an overview of the structure of the volume, explicating the threads of connectivity between the theoretical essays and case studies.

Kampung, Islam and State in Urban Java

the author notes that his respondents were reluctant to talk about their lives in Singapore, greater exploration of these issues is essential if we are to accept the claims made about the central role that Batam plays in the lives of Singaporean Malay working-class men. Overall, I was disappointed that Lindquist was unable to move beyond the narrow focus of his doctoral work and situate this study in its historical and ethnographic context. As a study of one group of marginalised working-class migrants in Indonesia, the book is insightful and well-written. As a study of migration and tourism in the Indonesian borderlands it lacks sufficient attention to the complex interplay of local and global forces that shape life in the Riau Islands.