The Assault on Occupancy in Surabaya: Legible and Illegible Landscapes in a City of Passage |
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| Authors: | Robbie Peters |
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| Institution: | lectures in the Department of Anthroplogy at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia (Robbie.Peters@scmp.mq.edu.au). He is the author of the forthcoming book City of Shadows: Kampung and State in Surabaya, 1945–2010 and articles on urban renewal and violence in Surabaya. He is currently researching the uses of anti‐terror campaigns as a means of urban management in the city and the counter‐mapping strategies of low‐income urban communities in Indonesia. In addition, he is writing a biography of marginalization that follows the life of his late and closest friend, an Australian Aboriginal man who spent much of his life in government‐run institutions. |
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| Abstract: | This article takes as its starting point the burning down of traditional markets and clearance of squatter communities and street vendors that took place in the major Indonesian port city of Surabaya during 2007–08. It is argued that a legible landscape facilitating intervention, simulation and passage now marks a city where malls and hotels linked into new accelerated networks of unobstructed streets form the dominant presence. Using recent anthropological investigation from a poor neighbourhood and broader economic analysis of urban trends, the article demonstrates that while this landscape both displaces the poor and generates unprecedented revenues for the municipal government, it also contributes to a delegitimization of the city's municipal administration as it struggles to extend a legible gaze over the city's poor neighbourhoods. |
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