Indonesians of Chinese descent constitute only two to three per cent of the country s population but dominate the private business sector. Serious acts of violence against this ethnic minority occurred during Indonesia s colonial past, and after a period relatively free of such incidents became increasingly frequent during the final years of Suharto s New Order. In this first book-length study of anti-Chinese hostility during the collapse of Suharto s regime, Jemma Purdey presents a close analysis of the main incidents of violence during the transitional period between 1996 and 1999, and the unprecedented process of national reflection that ensued. The mass violence that accompanied the fall of the regime in May 1998 affected not only ethnic Chinese but also indigenous or pribumi Indonesians. The author places anti-Chinese riots within this broader context, considering causes and agency as well as the way violence has been represented. While ethnicity and prejudice are central to the explanation put forward, she concludes that politics, economics and religion offer additional keys to understanding why such outbreaks occurred.

Why do some authoritarian regimes topple during financial crises, while others steer through financial crises relatively unscathed? In this book, Thomas B. Pepinsky uses the experiences of Indonesia and Malaysia and the analytical tools of open economy macroeconomics to answer this question. Focusing on the economic interests of authoritarian regimes' supporters, Pepinsky shows that differences in cross-border asset specificity produce dramatically different outcomes in regimes facing financial crises. When asset specificity divides supporters, as in Indonesia, they desire mutually incompatible adjustment policies, yielding incoherent adjustment policy followed by regime collapse. When coalitions are not divided by asset specificity, as in Malaysia, regimes adopt radical adjustment measures that enable them to survive financial crises. Combining rich qualitative evidence from Southeast Asia with cross-national time-series data and comparative case studies of Latin American autocracies, Pepinsky reveals the power of coalitions and capital mobility to explain how financial crises produce regime change.

This volume honours, and reflects on, the life and work of the Australian Indonesianist, Charles A. Coppel. His interests -- reflected in this volume -- are broad, ranging from history, politics, legal issues, and violence against the Chinese, through to culture and religion. The chapters in the volume, contributed by scholars from Australia, Indonesia, Europe, and Singapore, also all reflect a theme, inspired by Charles Coppels expression, remembering, distorting, forgetting, by which he drew attention to misrepresentations of the Chinese, seeking to locate the realities behind the myths that form the basis for the racism and xenophobia the Chinese have often experienced in Indonesia.

This volume foregrounds the dynamics of displacement and the experiences of internal refugees uprooted by conflict and violence in Indonesia. Contributors examine internal displacement in the context of militarized conflict and violence in East Timor, Aceh, and Papua, and in other parts of Outer Island Indonesia during the transition from authoritarian rule. The volume also explores official and humanitarian discourses on displacement and their significance for the politics of representation.

Since 1998, which marked the end of the thirty-three-year New Order regime under President Suharto, there has been a dramatic increase in ethnic conflict and violence in Indonesia. In his innovative and persuasive account, Jacques Bertrand argues that conflicts in Maluku, Kalimantan, Aceh, Papua, and East Timur were a result of the New Order's narrow and constraining reinterpretation of Indonesia's 'national model'. The author shows how, at the end of the 1990s, this national model came under intense pressure at the prospect of institutional transformation, a reconfiguration of ethnic relations, and an increase in the role of Islam in Indonesia's political institutions. It was within the context of these challenges, that the very definition of the Indonesian nation and what it meant to be Indonesian came under scrutiny. The book sheds light on the roots of religious and ethnic conflict at a turning point in Indonesia's history.

The disintegration of Indonesia's New Order regime in 1998 and the fall of Soeharto put an end to the crude forms of centralised authoritarianism and economic protectionism that allowed large Chinese conglomerates to dom- inate Indonesia's private sector. Contrary to all expectations, most of the major capitalist groups, though damaged considerably by the Asian Crisis, managed to cope with the ensuing monumental political and economic changes, and now thrive again albeit within a new democratic environment. In this book Christian Chua assesses the state of capital before, during, and after the financial and political crisis of 1997/1998 and analyses the changing relationships between business and the state in Indonesia. Using a distinct perspective that combines cultural and structural approaches on Chinese big business with exclusive material derived from interviews with some of Indonesia’s major business leaders, Chua identifies the strategies employed by tycoons to adapt their corporations to the post-authoritarian regime and provides a unique insight into how state-business relationships in Indonesia have evolved since the crisis. Chinese Big Business in Indonesia is the first major analysis of capital in Indonesia since the fall of Soeharto, and will be of interest to graduate students and scholars of political economy, political sociology, economics and business administration as well as to practitioners having to do with Southeast Asian business and politics.

Indonesia has a growing population of almost 300 million people, it is increasingly involved in world affairs, and has a booming economy. The need to better understand its unique, complex, and often obscure legal system, has become pressing. This is true across a wide range of sectors including, but not limited to, trade and investment, crime and terrorism, and human rights. Indonesia's democratization after the fall of Soeharto in 1998 triggered massive social and political changes that opened up this diverse, and formerly tightly-controlled, society. Law reform was a key driver of Indonesia's transformation and its full effect remains to be seen. This book offers clear and detailed explanations of the foundations of Indonesia's legal system in the context of its legal reform and rapid development. It offers succinct commentaries on a wide range of issues, examining the judicial process, the constitution, corruption and the court system, contract law, administrative law, foreign investment, taxation, Islamic law, and family law. It examines current substantive law and judicial interpretation and presents case studies of how the system operates in practice. Written in an accessible and engaging style, this book is an essential guide for readers seeking quick and clear answers to questions regarding the law and its application in Indonesia.

Based on in-depth ethnographic research (using an approach that seeks to understand how migration is experienced by the migrants themselves) a first-hand account of the experiences of women in rural China who joined the vast migration to Beijing and other cities at the end of the twentieth century.

Indonesia suffered an explosion of religious violence, ethnic violence, separatist violence, terrorism, and violence by criminal gangs, the security forces and militias in the late 1990s and early 2000s. By 2002 Indonesia had the worst terrorism problem of any nation. All these forms of violence have now fallen dramatically. How was this accomplished? What drove the rise and the fall of violence? Anomie theory is deployed to explain these developments. Sudden institutional change at the time of the Asian financial crisis and the fall of President Suharto meant the rules of the game were up for grabs. Valerie Braithwaite's motivational postures theory is used to explain the gaming of the rules and the disengagement from authority that occurred in that era. Ultimately resistance to Suharto laid a foundation for commitment to a revised, more democratic, institutional order. The peacebuilding that occurred was not based on the high-integrity truth-seeking and reconciliation that was the normative preference of these authors. Rather it was based on non-truth, sometimes lies, and yet substantial reconciliation. This poses a challenge to restorative justice theories of peacebuilding.

This is the first book in almost two decades to bring together scholars of Indonesia from the Australian academy to reflect on and engage in a deep critique of their field, resulting in some divergent views on the fundamental questions of how Indonesia should be studied and the uses of Indonesia knowledge for activism. Purdey, Monash University.