Presented to you through Paradigm Publishing Services
Duke University Press
Book
Licensed
Unlicensed
Requires Authentication
State of Fear
Policing a Postcolonial City
Language:
English
Published/Copyright:
2024
About this book
In State of Fear, 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.
Author / Editor information
Joshua Barker is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Toronto and coeditor of Figures of Southeast Asian Modernity and State of Authority: State in Society in Indonesia.
Reviews
“A brilliant and arresting account of governance, vigilantism, criminality, and violence in postcolonial Indonesia, Joshua Barker’s State of Fear brings a penetrating ethnographic look at Indonesia’s police and neighborhood security teams together with a revealing exploration of historical materials from the late colonial period. It will leave readers spellbound with its unflinching look at the blurring of law and violence at the margins of the state.”
-- Kenneth M. George, author of Picturing Islam: Art and Ethics in a Muslim Lifeworld
“In this brilliant, informative, and carefully crafted book Joshua Barker shows how policing performs sovereignty and produces it across scales. Policing, he argues, creates its own target and rationale: Territoriality and surveillance both work by mobilizing a state of fear—an affective condition at the heart of a political order in which the threat of violence structures everyday life. State of Fear makes a signal contribution and contains some of the smartest ethnographic writing and analysis anyone in our discipline has ever produced.”
-- Danilyn Rutherford, President of the Wenner-Gren Foundation
"Drawing on extensive fieldwork in the neighborhoods and police stations of Bandung, Barker juxtaposes two kinds of order. One is formal, defined by the law that the police claim to enforce, bureaucratic rules, and modern techniques of surveillance. The other is informal, arising from civil society... frequently through violence. These two forms of order often work at cross purposes, but they can also support each other. This fascinating study of how policing works in Indonesia and how it has transformed over time offers a grim reminder: the law does not create its own order."
-- Pratap Bhanu Mehta Foreign Affairs
-- Pratap Bhanu Mehta Foreign Affairs
"Barker’s State of Fear is a key contribution to scholarship on security, surveillance and policing in postcolonial Indonesia. His ethnographic and historical analysis provides a nuanced understanding of the mechanisms of power and control shaping daily life. The book is essential reading for scholars of anthropology, criminology and South East Asian studies, offering critical insights into the intersections of state authority, local governance and the ever-present spectre of fear in Indonesia."
-- Sharyn Graham Davies South East Asia Research
-- Sharyn Graham Davies South East Asia Research
Topics
-
Download PDFPublicly Available
Frontmatter
i -
Download PDFPublicly Available
Contents
vii -
Download PDFPublicly Available
Illustrations
ix -
Download PDFPublicly Available
Abbreviations
xi -
Download PDFPublicly Available
Acknowledgments
xiii -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Introduction
1 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Part one territoriality
31 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Part two surveillance
79 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Part three articulations
137 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Conclusion
214 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Glossary
237 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Notes
245 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
References
277 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Index
295
Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
August 28, 2024
eBook ISBN:
9781478059752
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook ISBN:
9781478059752
Keywords for this book
Indonesia; ethnography; policing; urban; state; crime; fear; social order; war on crime; Bandung; vigilantism; sovereignty; security; night watch; territoriality; neighborhood watch; gangs; urban development; surveillance; colonialism; colonial gaze; contagions; biometrics; vaccination; colonial Java; police reform; spy networks; state violence; private security; local security practices; central state control; Siskamling; Petrus campaign; neo-patrimonialism; precinct-level policing; democratization; public space; New Order
Audience(s) for this book
For an expert adult audience, including professional development and academic research
