Understanding Indonesia

Great Decisions 2024 | Topic 6

Despite its large size, Indonesia remains virtually invisible to most Americans. But as one of the world’s largest democracies, the world’s largest Muslim-majority nation, and as an economic driver of ASEAN, why does it fly below the radar? What are current issues in U.S.-Indonesian relations, and what role can the country play in Asia?

Download the Glossary 

Complete the opinion ballot.

Download physical opinion ballots

Latest News

Related Organizations

Recommended Readings

  • The Army and the Indonesian Genocide: Mechanics of Mass Murder

    For the past half century, the Indonesian military has depicted the 1965-66 killings, which resulted in the murder of approximately one million unarmed civilians, as the outcome of a spontaneous uprising. This formulation not only denied military agency behind the killings, it also denied that the killings could ever be understood as a centralised, nation-wide campaign.

     

  • Engineers of Happy Land: Technology and Nationalism in a Colony (Princeton Studies in Culture/Power/History) Paperback

    Based on close reading of historical documents--poetry as much as statistics--and focused on the conceptualization of technology, this book is an unconventional evocation of late colonial Netherlands East Indies (today Indonesia). In considering technology and the ways that people use and think about things, Rudolf Mrázek invents an original way to talk about freedom, colonialism, nationalism, literature, revolution, and human nature.

     

  • On the Subject of "Java" Paperback

    What are the limits of cultural critique? What are the horizons? What are the political implications? John Pemberton explores these questions in this far-reaching ethnographic and historical interpretation of cultural discourse in Indonesia since 1965. Pemberton considers in particular how the appearance of order under Soeharto's repressive New Order regime is an effect of an enigmatic politics founded upon routine appeals to cultural values.
     
    Through a richly textured ethnographic account of events ranging from national elections to weddings, Pemberton simultaneously elucidates and disturbs the contours of the New Order cultural imaginary. He pursues the fugitive signs of circumstances that might resist the powers of New Order rule through unexpected village practices, among graveyard spirits, and within ascetic refuges

     

  • Indonesia, Etc.: Exploring the Improbable Nation

    Declaring independence in 1945, Indonesia said it would "work out the details of the transfer of power etc. as soon as possible." With over 300 ethnic groups spread across over 13,500 islands, the world’s fourth most populous nation has been working on that "etc." ever since. Author Elizabeth Pisani traveled 26,000 miles in search of the links that bind this disparate nation.

     

  • A History of Modern Indonesia Since c. 1200

    Recognized as the most authoritative general account of Indonesia, this revised and expanded fourth edition has been updated in light of new scholarship. New chapters at the end of the book bring the story up to the present day, including discussion of recent events such as the 2002 Bali terrorist bombings and the 2004 tsunami.

     

Great Decisions 2024 cover image.