Pasar Baru: colonial space and contemporary hybridity
Lilawati KURNIA
ABSTRACT Pasar Baru is a shopping arcade, which still retains some of its colonial legacy in a vastly changing city space of Jakarta. Originating from a Chinese settlement area, this shopping arcade has survived the worst anti-Chinese riots in Jakarta in 1998. The paper examines the complex way space and identity has been constructed and negotiated in this site since the colonial period. This paper shows that the Dutch-made cosmopolitan hybrid modernity actually offers (partial) solution to multi-ethnic urban society, while the spatial and social segregation based on race, class and religion, a postcolonial legacy, which is now the trend of the spatial development in Jakarta, actually aggravates the inter-group conflict in the metropolis.
KEYWORDS: Pasar Baru, colonial space, cosmopolitan hybrid, anti-Chinese riots
Author’s biography
Lilawati Kurnia teaches at German Department and Cultural Studies Master Programme at the Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia. She got her PhD at the Faculty of Humanities, UI and her M.A from Gesamthochschule Kassel, Germany. She has published several articles i.a. ‘Fire in mind: collective memroy in Sapardi Djoko Damono’s poetry’ ‘Api dalam Ingatan. Memori Kolektif dalam Puisi Sapardi Djoko Damono’, in Anthology ‘Reading Sapardi’ (Anthology 'Membaca Sapardi') (Obor Publisher, 2010); ‘The art of culinary, power and multiculturalism in Master Cooking Boy by Etsushi Ogawa’, in Wacana (Vol. 8, No.2, 2006). She also translates in her free time and has published Public Space, Identity and Collective Memory: Post-Suharto Jakarta (English-Bahasa Indonesia Ruang Publik, Identitas dan Memori Kolektif: Jakarta Pasca-Suharto) (author: Abidin Kusno, Yogyakarta: Ombak, 2009); and three German children books published by Obor Publisher.