Please join us for an important, lively, timely discussion of Joshua Barker’s new book. February 24th, 4-6 pm. The Boardroom, 315 Bloor Street West, Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy. Register here.

About the Book:

In State of Fear: Policing A Postcolonial City, Joshua Barker reckons with how fear and violence are produced and reproduced through everyday practices of rule and control. Examining the ethnographic and historical genealogies of Indonesian policing, Barker focuses on the city of Bandung, which is permeated by anxieties about security, in spite of the fact that it’s a relatively safe city according to the data. Drawing from his fieldwork there during the latter years of the authoritarian New Order regime, Barker traces the complex relationship between the state and vigilante groups like neighborhood watch patrols and street gangs. Through interviews with police officers, vigilantes, and street-level toughs, he uncovers a struggle between two visions of social control that continues to animate policing in Indonesia: the modern, bureaucratic approach favored by the state, and a territorial approach that divides the city into fiefdoms overseen by charismatic individuals of authority. Synthesizing insights from in-depth ethnographic, historical, and theoretical work, Barker reveals how authoritarianism can take root not just from the top down but also from the bottom up.

About the Speakers:

Danilyn Rutherford is President of the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. Previously, she was associate professor of anthropology at the University of Chicago and, more recently, professor of anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is the author of Raiding the Land of the Foreigners and Laughing at Leviathan.

Abidin Kusno is a Professor in the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University and the former Director of York’s Centre of Asian Research (YCAR). Before his arrival at York, he was the Canada Research Chair in Asian Urbanism and Culture at the Institute for Asian Research at the University of British Columbia. His research interests include global cities, urban/suburbanism, politics and culture, history and theory of architecture, urban design and planning, nationalism, colonialism and post-colonialism, and Asian studies. His research focuses on Indonesia in particular and he is a speaker of Bahasa Indonesia and Hokkien.

Emily Hertzman (Event Chair) is a sociocultural anthropologist whose research focuses on mobilities, identities, religious practices, and politics. She earned her Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Toronto in 2017, after completing both her B.A. (2001) and M.A. (2006) at the University of British Columbia. Her work examines how concepts of home and belonging are reshaped by broader societal changes including mobility, democratization, transnationalism, economic restructuring, liberalization, religious encounters, and personal identity construction. She conducts research primarily with Chinese Indonesian communities in Singkawang, West Kalimantan, as well as in Jakarta, Indonesia, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Malaysia. While a graduate student in the anthropology department, she was one of the founding members of the Ethnography Lab (2014), a faculty and student collaboration and resource center that promotes ethnographic research methods and practice inside and outside the university.

This event is sponsored by the Asian Institute, Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy

This event is co-sponsored by the Department of Anthropology and the Ethnography Lab at the University of Toronto