May 12, 2024 Last Updated 5:01 AM, May 8, 2024

Fiction & Essays Fiction & Essays Fiction & Essays Fiction & Essays Maluku Maluku ROOT

Film revolution?

Women are now on both sides of the camera

Urban poetry

Subversive ‘underground’ voices in Indonesian rap Michael Bodden It’s Jakarta, June 2004 and the boom box is playing a hip-hop beat. It’s a far cry from the meditative gamelan music, saccharine love songs or even the sensual dangdut one expects to hear in Java. The rapper is Xaqhala and he spins a gritty, rhythmic poem of everyday youth experience.

Comic heyday!

Indonesia’s comic scene is in a golden age but the industry remains marginal and plagued by self-doubt

Crossing male boundaries

Confidence crisis for Bali’s women mask dancers

Woman power

In Bali, a new all-female dance-drama troupe is flouting traditional gender roles

More voices

Women and marginalised groups seize new opportunities in the arts

Peace at last?

The latest agreement in Aceh seems too good to be true, but it’s also Aceh’s best chance for peace yet.

Reviews

Review: This book is a useful contribution to a very small body of scholarly work in English on Indonesian literature. Pam Allen

Aid must embrace social change

Aid must embrace social change

The looming AIDS epidemic

Intravenous drug use is exacerbating the spread of the HIV virus

Lecture me not

Helping to boost English teaching seemed a splendid idea, but then Indonesian realities intervened

A shared vision

Portraits of Islamic women from different centuries and different organisations

A new agenda for democracy

Is democracy stalled? An in-depth survey suggests hope for the future

Forty years on

With Suharto gone, the anniversary of the 1965 coup attempt is more controversial than ever

Kampung Kamal

Half a century after Herb Feith first lived in Kamal, Nikolas Feith Tan retraces his grandfather’s steps

Partnership or pretence

Who should call the shots – international donors or local NGOs?

A free lunch?

Much aid comes with strings attached – crippling loan repayments, exploitation of resources and vulnerability to unfriendly international markets

The activists' dilemma

Many are ambivalent about international aid

Where it hurts in Papua

An Indonesian NGO finds injustices in unexpected places

Reconstruction meets resistance

NGOs and local people work together to rebuild communities, until feudalism intervenes

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Labouring in vain?

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The Labour Party (Partai Buruh) was revived in the wake of opposition to the Omnibus Law on Job Creation, but failure in the 2024 election shows they failed to connect...

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A documentary embraced by TikTokers is changing how young people understand Indonesia’s past

Indonesians call for climate action through music

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Self-education and lived experience of the impacts of climate change, are driving a grassroots environmental movement

Book review: Clive of Indonesia

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