Jakarta, Drawing the City Near

by AbdouMaliq Simone

Jakarta, a city rife with disparities like many cities in the Global South, is undergoing rapid change. Alongside its megastructures, high-rise residential buildings, and franchised convenience stores, Jakarta’s massive slums and off-hour street markets foster an unsettled urban population surviving in difficult conditions. But where does the vast middle of urban life fit into this dichotomy? In Jakarta, Drawing the City Near , AbdouMaliq Simone examines how people who the largest part of the population, such as the craftsmen, shopkeepers, and public servants, navigate and affect positive developments. In a city where people of diverse occupations operate in close proximity to each other, appearance can be very deceptive. Set in a place that on the surface seems remarkably dysfunctional, Simone guides readers through urban spaces and encounters, detailing households, institutions, markets, mosques, and schools. Over five years he engaged with residents from three different districts, and now he parses out the practices, politics, and economies that form present-day Jakarta while revealing how those who face uncertainty manage to improve their lives. Simone illustrates how the majority of Jakarta’s population, caught between intense wealth and utter poverty, handle confluence and contradictions in their everyday lives. By exploring how inhabitants from different backgrounds regard each other, how they work together or keep their distance in order to make the city in which they reside endure, Jakarta, Drawing the City Near offers a powerful new way of thinking about urban life.

Genres: Cities

320 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2014

Reviews

[Ssuryani]

A seminal reading from Maliq about Jakarta that 'signifies' his early endearing affect towards urban life in the city.

+ = The book clearly avoids the tendency to make generalisations about slippery conditions of working class as urban inhabitants, in which he used a term 'the urban majority'. Rather, it generously show the energy of the city through attentive observation of various economies that runs the oscillation of urban life. It is rare to read stories about preman in Tanah Abang, FBR, and ghost in Tebet in scholarly literature.

- = Although the book explicitly argues on the notion of 'near South' in discussing the city life of Jakarta, it seems to shy away from extending further the North/South binary, nor challenging directly the forces of material circulation that continuously shape the temporality of urban space. Suffice to say that the book is dedicated truly into drawing the nearness of city life than operating with 'jargony' statements.

[Bimana Novantara]

Buku ini perlu dibaca oleh semua pembuat kebijakan yang ada di pemprov DKI Jakarta.