Yogyakarta: A Syncretic Java

We have come to the end of our brief journey. Did you like the peek into Yogyakarta? Jogja, rich with culture and history, brimming with street children and tourists. These 8-posts covered, briefly, how the social infrastructure of its affectionate people run strongly beneath political and economic manipulations, and how all of these contestations must…

Yogyakarta: If You Love Me, Love My Gods

How do you convince someone to wear a mask for their own good? How about for their community? Before COVID19 initiated the Great Mask Debate across the globe, Yogyakarta experienced a similar resistance to the use of respiratory protections. We discuss the ways we may learn from Jogja’s success dealing with Mt. Merapi’s toxic emissions…

Yogyakarta: Where the Sidewalk Ends – Godly Waria

The concept of pristine ‘nature’ has increased the marginality of street children in Yogyakarta. However, it can also be a site for opportunity. In this post, let’s talk about the waria.  The Nature of Waria  Waria is a portmanteau of woman (“wanita”) and man (“pria”). Western scholars often translated warias as “transgender”, but the Indonesian…

Yogyakarta: Negotiating Sidewalks – Wild Children

Normative conceptualisations of ‘nature’ and expectations about the ‘natural order’ can affect social organisation. We take a look at Jogja’s street children [Figure 1].   In Yogyakarta, the presence of street children in cities is viewed with contempt. Children are either presented as criminal delinquents or pitiful victims of adult incompetency (Beazley, 1999; 2002;2003a;2003b). Both perspectives…

Yogyakarta: Your Special Hotel

A bright-red mural is splashed across the underbelly of Kewek Bridge. The whimsical font and flower prints belie the anger in its outcry – Jogja Asat! Jogja is drying out!  The same political contestations underlying Yogyakartans’ self-regulated water and sanitation systems are at play in Jogja’s water shortages too – but the materiality of water…

Yogyakarta: To Each Their Own

From the craggly, heated summit of Mt. Merapi flows a river. The water gurgles, fat with fish, down to the city. There, something invisible slips into the water. This river, Kali Code, tells a story of political contestations in Yogyakarta. This is the story of nitrate in the water. [Figure 1] Nitrate Infiltration  Unsafe levels…

Yogyakarta: Banking On Waste

How would a solution to the issue of dumping look like? Let’s return to the 1980s, when political elites decided that they could bulldoze Kampung Code from existence. Enter Romo Mangun, defender of the wong cilik (‘little people’) (Lindsay, 1999). He believed that the slum clearance strategy was an affront to the Indonesian spirit of…

Yogyakarta: Changing Waste

Kali Code (pronounced tʃode) cuts through Yogyakarta City. Once upon a time, it divided two empires. Today, it is the centre of a string of river-side informal settlements, locally called Kampung Code. In the 1980s, these settlements were dubbed “daerah hitam” (dark areas) (Idham, 2018). Their zinc and cardboard homes huddled together, built from the…

Yogyakarta: ‘Natural’ Waste

How do you say “nature” in your language? What does it mean to you?  Alam, the translation for “nature” in Bahasa, is closer to what is known as “world” in English. Alam Semesta, the cosmic world, alam lahir, the material/lived world, alam batin, the inner world (of life and self). It means that culturally, “nature”…

Yogyakarta: the City, the Sea and the Volcano

Sometimes, it is the patriarchy that stands between a woman and her claim to the sultanate. Sometimes, it is the sexual-romantic-spiritual preferences of the Goddess of the Sea and the Ogre of the Volcano. They are not mutually exclusive.