Ravando Lie1, Bronwyn Anne Beech Jones1, Prof Emer Heather Goodall2, Prof Emer John Ingleson3
1University of Melbourne, Australia, 2University of Technology Sydney, , Australia, 3University of New South Wales, Australia
Chair: Paula Hendrikx
Overview:
These two panels will explore different ways in which the future was envisioned in 20th century Indonesia. The panels will examine and compare different groups’ ideas and agendas for their community, society, and nation. Papers will address diverse forms of collective imagining and organising by various historical actors, including new ways of seeing, knowing and belonging in Indonesian history. The first panel discusses Chinese-Indonesian, Minangkabau and Malay, and transnational ideas of collective and national identity in the first half of the twentieth century. It also evaluates unionist reflections of the past and visions for the future. The second panel addresses post-independence ideas of an inclusive, egalitarian and just future for all Indonesians as well as ways of implementing these agendas through print culture, education, collective action, and centralized democracy more broadly. Papers will discuss various origins of these ideas and the internal and external interactions that influenced them. With these panels, we aim to reflect on interrelated historical processes of envisioning and making the future in 20th century Indonesia.