Rebecca Meckelburg | Universitas Kristen Satya Wacana (UKSW) (original) (raw)
Papers by Rebecca Meckelburg
Land Use Policy, Jan 31, 2024
Meckelburg Rebecca Changes and Continuities in Post Suharto Indonesia the Politics of the Survival of the 1965 Narrative Honours Thesis Murdoch University, 2013
Fifteen years after the fall of the Suharto dictatorship in Indonesia, the authoritarian historic... more Fifteen years after the fall of the Suharto dictatorship in Indonesia, the authoritarian historical narrative about 1965 that was created by the New Order regime has been defended and reaffirmed by the post-New Order ‘democratic’ state. During the New Order, the 1965 narrative was used to justify and legitimize state sponsored violence against the PKI and other left wing nationalists that resulted in at least half a million deaths in the mid 1960s. This same narrative underpinned the political legitimacy of the newly emerging New Order state and articulated a version of national identity and nation building that was the antithesis of the previous era. The survival of the 1965 narrative has facilitated the survival of anti-communist ideology from the New Order. It continues to underpin political legitimacy for those in power as well as provide impunity for acts of political violence and repression that are used to defend their social and political power. Anti-communist ideology continues to support a restricted notion of citizenship and national identity. Restricted notions of citizenship today significantly constrain the freedoms of civil society to engage in open discourse about the possibilities for deepening and strengthening political democracy and its institutions. The ongoing contestation over the 1965 historical narrative indicates that history and versions of ‘the past’ are part of the dynamic of democratic politics in Indonesia. Analysis of the contestation over the 1965 authoritarian historical narrative allows us to examine the changes and continuities in concepts of national identity and citizenship, and in the categories of political ‘inclusion’ and ‘exclusion’ from the New Order authoritarian regime to the reformed democratic state that exists today.
Contemporary Southeast Asia: A Journal of International and Strategic Affairs, 2021
Meckelburg, Rebecca <https://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/view/author/Meckleburg, Rebecca.html> (2019) Subaltern agency and the political economy of rural social change. PhD thesis, Murdoch University., 2019
Covid-19 and Governance, 2021
Melbourne Asia Review, 2020
Indonesian translation Just over six months after the first COVID-19 case was officially confirme... more Indonesian translation Just over six months after the first COVID-19 case was officially confirmed in Indonesia, it is clear that it has failed to control the pandemic. As of early October 2020, infection numbers have yet to peak and continue to rise at more than 4,000 new cases per day. Testing rates, at 12,272 tests per million of population, are amongst the lowest in the world; and positivity rates, of more than 19 percent, are amongst the highest. The national government's pandemic response has been characterised by an overall rejection of coordinated large scale movement restrictions and apathy towards the responsive capacity of public health services. Globally, assessments of pandemic responses have largely focused on bureaucratic capacity and competency, trust in government, and the quality of leadership. However, in Indonesia, the national government's inaction sits in stark contrast to sub-national governments-at the provincial, district, and municipal levels-who responded relatively quickly, initiating large-scale movement restrictions and social safety nets. Alongside this, the earliest frontline responses to the social, economic, and health crises caused by the pandemic, came from independent community initiatives. At different levels of governance there has been considerable variance in responses (including conflicts) between the national and sub-national governments,
Fifteen years after the fall of the Suharto dictatorship in Indonesia, the authoritarian historic... more Fifteen years after the fall of the Suharto dictatorship in Indonesia, the authoritarian historical narrative about 1965 that was created by the New Order regime has been defended and reaffirmed by the post-New Order ‘democratic’ state. During the New Order, the 1965 narrative was used to justify and legitimize state sponsored violence against the PKI and other left wing nationalists that resulted in at least half a million deaths in the mid 1960s. This same narrative underpinned the political legitimacy of the newly emerging New Order state and articulated a version of national identity and nation building that was the antithesis of the previous era. The survival of the 1965 narrative has facilitated the survival of anti-communist ideology from the New Order. It continues to underpin political legitimacy for those in power as well as provide impunity for acts of political violence and repression that are used to defend their social and political power. Anti-communist ideology conti...
tag=1 data=NT stolen generation in court, tag=2 data=Meckelburg, Rebecca tag=3 data=Green Left We... more tag=1 data=NT stolen generation in court, tag=2 data=Meckelburg, Rebecca tag=3 data=Green Left Weekly, tag=5 data=353 tag=6 data=March 17, 1999 tag=7 data=3, 13. tag=8 data=ABORIGINES%COURTS tag=9 data=CUBILLO AND GUNNER VS THE COMMONWEALTH%ABORIGNAL ORDINANCE%FEDERAL COURT%STOLEN GENERATION%NORTHERN STOLEN GENERATION ABORIGINAL CORPORATION tag=32 data=CUMMMINGS, BARABARA
Green left weekly, 1999
tag=1 data=Stolen generation test cases reopen, tag=2 data=Meckelburg, Rebecca%Cummins, Barbara t... more tag=1 data=Stolen generation test cases reopen, tag=2 data=Meckelburg, Rebecca%Cummins, Barbara tag=3 data=Green Left Weekly, tag=6 data=04 August, 1999 tag=7 data=12. tag=8 data=ABORIGINES%COURTS tag=9 data=STOLEN GENERATION%CUBILLO AND GUNNER V COMMONWEALTH%'MIXED' DESCENT%FEDERAL COURT tag=13 data=V/F
New Mandala, 2021
Globally, scholars and journalists have drawn attention to the role of women politicians leading ... more Globally, scholars and journalists have drawn attention to the role of women politicians leading COVIDCOVID-19 pandemic responses. Other scholars have examined pandemic impacts on women in terms of increased domestic violence, care duties, unemployment and poverty. This paper examines the role women have played leading mitigation and healthcare responses to COVID-19 in Indonesia, focusing both on women in leadership positions as well as the leading role women public servants play in frontline pandemic responses at local government level. With a focus on the city of Salatiga in Central Java, I show that leadership on the frontlines of pandemic mitigation and healthcare responses is highly feminised, even while the overwhelming majority of the city-wide COVID-19 taskforce members are men.1 The taskforce is responsible for strategic pandemic mitigation policy and planning, cross-agency coordination, monitoring and enforcement of mitigation measures, budgeting and other resource allocations. Despite the leading role of this male-dominated body, I show that women lead mitigation and healthcare responses in ways that go beyond their formal responsibilities, often by default, especially when they step up to fill gaps in formal leadership of pandemic mitigation measures.
Contemporary Southeast Asia
Melbourne Asia Review, 2020
Just over six months after the first COVID-19 case was officially confirmed in Indonesia, it is c... more Just over six months after the first COVID-19 case was officially confirmed in Indonesia, it is clear that it has failed to control the pandemic. The national government's pandemic response has been characterised by an overall rejection of coordinated large scale movement restrictions and apathy towards the responsive capacity of public health services. Globally, assessments of pandemic responses have largely focused on bureaucratic capacity and competency, trust in government, and the quality of leadership. However, in Indonesia, the national government's inaction sits in stark contrast to sub-national governments-at the provincial, district, and municipal levels-who responded relatively quickly, initiating large-scale movement restrictions and social safety nets. Alongside this, the earliest frontline responses to the social, economic, and health crises caused by the pandemic, came from independent community initiatives.
New Mandala, 2020
There has been a fair bit of media predicting a nationwide Covid-19 crisis in Indonesia and while... more There has been a fair bit of media predicting a nationwide Covid-19 crisis in Indonesia and while my family and I "stay at home" in Salatiga, a small town in Central Java, and our view is somewhat skewed to what we know is happening in our area, here is what we know.
Fifteen years after the fall of the Suharto dictatorship in Indonesia, the authoritarian historic... more Fifteen years after the fall of the Suharto dictatorship in Indonesia, the authoritarian historical narrative about 1965 that was created by the New Order regime has been defended and reaffirmed by the post-New Order ‘democratic’ state. During the New Order, the 1965 narrative was used to justify and legitimize state sponsored violence against the PKI and other left wing nationalists that resulted in at least half a million deaths in the mid 1960s. This same narrative underpinned the political legitimacy of the newly emerging New Order state and articulated a version of national identity and nation building that was the antithesis of the previous era.
The survival of the 1965 narrative has facilitated the survival of anti-communist ideology from the New Order. It continues to underpin political legitimacy for those in power as well as provide impunity for acts of political violence and repression that are used to defend their social and political power. Anti-communist ideology continues to support a restricted notion of citizenship and national identity. Restricted notions of citizenship today significantly constrain the freedoms of civil society to engage in open discourse about the possibilities for deepening and strengthening political democracy and its institutions.
The ongoing contestation over the 1965 historical narrative indicates that history and versions of ‘the past’ are part of the dynamic of democratic politics in Indonesia. Analysis of the contestation over the 1965 authoritarian historical narrative allows us to examine the changes and continuities in concepts of national identity and citizenship, and in the categories of political ‘inclusion’ and ‘exclusion’ from the New Order authoritarian regime to the reformed democratic state that exists today.
Thesis Chapters by Rebecca Meckelburg
PhD Abstract, 2020
The study of rural social change in Southeast Asia and more broadly in the global South has incre... more The study of rural social change in Southeast Asia and more broadly in the global South has increasingly included examination of the revitalisation of agrarian social movements claiming land and the persistence of rural subaltern smallholder classes. While there is no doubt that capitalism and modernity have decisively infiltrated Southeast Asian social and geographical space, how rural subaltern actors engage with and respond to the possibilities presented are highly varied, sometimes running counter to the direction of state policies that encourage more urban and market-oriented economic trajectories for rural actors.
Many rural subaltern actors in Southeast Asia have not been drawn more firmly into the urban and rural wage-labour economy, nor have a majority of smallholdings been replaced by higher productivity capitalist farming enterprises. Rather millions of poor people are struggling to obtain or maintain secure access to land as a means to claim some form of autonomy and survival. The failure of peasant farmers to disappear and their often dynamic initiatives in pursuit of ongoing rural futures has led some to consider the material basis for their persistence and what implications this has for a concept of rural subaltern or peasant ‘politics’.
This thesis builds on the ‘Murdoch School’ approach in critical political economy with its grounded understanding of how capitalism and class politics operate in the Southeast Asian region, while extending its analysis beyond elite actors to examine local political economies where subaltern actors are engaged in political and social struggles. The study builds on critical traditions in social anthropology, political sociology and social geography and follows the analytical shifts in the study of Southeast and mainland Asia and the Middle East, which takes both political economy and everyday politics seriously.
The thesis argues for a theoretical approach and an ethnographic practice, that allow us to detect and analyse as a cohesive whole the repertoire of actual (and future potential) forms of popular action that rural subaltern classes engage in. Central to this approach is the need to determine the class character of the modern peasantries, who they are and how they are constituted. This includes positioning subaltern class actors as historically situated subjects which allows us to explain the differences in these actors’ life situations across space and time.
Land Use Policy, Jan 31, 2024
Meckelburg Rebecca Changes and Continuities in Post Suharto Indonesia the Politics of the Survival of the 1965 Narrative Honours Thesis Murdoch University, 2013
Fifteen years after the fall of the Suharto dictatorship in Indonesia, the authoritarian historic... more Fifteen years after the fall of the Suharto dictatorship in Indonesia, the authoritarian historical narrative about 1965 that was created by the New Order regime has been defended and reaffirmed by the post-New Order ‘democratic’ state. During the New Order, the 1965 narrative was used to justify and legitimize state sponsored violence against the PKI and other left wing nationalists that resulted in at least half a million deaths in the mid 1960s. This same narrative underpinned the political legitimacy of the newly emerging New Order state and articulated a version of national identity and nation building that was the antithesis of the previous era. The survival of the 1965 narrative has facilitated the survival of anti-communist ideology from the New Order. It continues to underpin political legitimacy for those in power as well as provide impunity for acts of political violence and repression that are used to defend their social and political power. Anti-communist ideology continues to support a restricted notion of citizenship and national identity. Restricted notions of citizenship today significantly constrain the freedoms of civil society to engage in open discourse about the possibilities for deepening and strengthening political democracy and its institutions. The ongoing contestation over the 1965 historical narrative indicates that history and versions of ‘the past’ are part of the dynamic of democratic politics in Indonesia. Analysis of the contestation over the 1965 authoritarian historical narrative allows us to examine the changes and continuities in concepts of national identity and citizenship, and in the categories of political ‘inclusion’ and ‘exclusion’ from the New Order authoritarian regime to the reformed democratic state that exists today.
Contemporary Southeast Asia: A Journal of International and Strategic Affairs, 2021
Meckelburg, Rebecca <https://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/view/author/Meckleburg, Rebecca.html> (2019) Subaltern agency and the political economy of rural social change. PhD thesis, Murdoch University., 2019
Covid-19 and Governance, 2021
Melbourne Asia Review, 2020
Indonesian translation Just over six months after the first COVID-19 case was officially confirme... more Indonesian translation Just over six months after the first COVID-19 case was officially confirmed in Indonesia, it is clear that it has failed to control the pandemic. As of early October 2020, infection numbers have yet to peak and continue to rise at more than 4,000 new cases per day. Testing rates, at 12,272 tests per million of population, are amongst the lowest in the world; and positivity rates, of more than 19 percent, are amongst the highest. The national government's pandemic response has been characterised by an overall rejection of coordinated large scale movement restrictions and apathy towards the responsive capacity of public health services. Globally, assessments of pandemic responses have largely focused on bureaucratic capacity and competency, trust in government, and the quality of leadership. However, in Indonesia, the national government's inaction sits in stark contrast to sub-national governments-at the provincial, district, and municipal levels-who responded relatively quickly, initiating large-scale movement restrictions and social safety nets. Alongside this, the earliest frontline responses to the social, economic, and health crises caused by the pandemic, came from independent community initiatives. At different levels of governance there has been considerable variance in responses (including conflicts) between the national and sub-national governments,
Fifteen years after the fall of the Suharto dictatorship in Indonesia, the authoritarian historic... more Fifteen years after the fall of the Suharto dictatorship in Indonesia, the authoritarian historical narrative about 1965 that was created by the New Order regime has been defended and reaffirmed by the post-New Order ‘democratic’ state. During the New Order, the 1965 narrative was used to justify and legitimize state sponsored violence against the PKI and other left wing nationalists that resulted in at least half a million deaths in the mid 1960s. This same narrative underpinned the political legitimacy of the newly emerging New Order state and articulated a version of national identity and nation building that was the antithesis of the previous era. The survival of the 1965 narrative has facilitated the survival of anti-communist ideology from the New Order. It continues to underpin political legitimacy for those in power as well as provide impunity for acts of political violence and repression that are used to defend their social and political power. Anti-communist ideology conti...
tag=1 data=NT stolen generation in court, tag=2 data=Meckelburg, Rebecca tag=3 data=Green Left We... more tag=1 data=NT stolen generation in court, tag=2 data=Meckelburg, Rebecca tag=3 data=Green Left Weekly, tag=5 data=353 tag=6 data=March 17, 1999 tag=7 data=3, 13. tag=8 data=ABORIGINES%COURTS tag=9 data=CUBILLO AND GUNNER VS THE COMMONWEALTH%ABORIGNAL ORDINANCE%FEDERAL COURT%STOLEN GENERATION%NORTHERN STOLEN GENERATION ABORIGINAL CORPORATION tag=32 data=CUMMMINGS, BARABARA
Green left weekly, 1999
tag=1 data=Stolen generation test cases reopen, tag=2 data=Meckelburg, Rebecca%Cummins, Barbara t... more tag=1 data=Stolen generation test cases reopen, tag=2 data=Meckelburg, Rebecca%Cummins, Barbara tag=3 data=Green Left Weekly, tag=6 data=04 August, 1999 tag=7 data=12. tag=8 data=ABORIGINES%COURTS tag=9 data=STOLEN GENERATION%CUBILLO AND GUNNER V COMMONWEALTH%'MIXED' DESCENT%FEDERAL COURT tag=13 data=V/F
New Mandala, 2021
Globally, scholars and journalists have drawn attention to the role of women politicians leading ... more Globally, scholars and journalists have drawn attention to the role of women politicians leading COVIDCOVID-19 pandemic responses. Other scholars have examined pandemic impacts on women in terms of increased domestic violence, care duties, unemployment and poverty. This paper examines the role women have played leading mitigation and healthcare responses to COVID-19 in Indonesia, focusing both on women in leadership positions as well as the leading role women public servants play in frontline pandemic responses at local government level. With a focus on the city of Salatiga in Central Java, I show that leadership on the frontlines of pandemic mitigation and healthcare responses is highly feminised, even while the overwhelming majority of the city-wide COVID-19 taskforce members are men.1 The taskforce is responsible for strategic pandemic mitigation policy and planning, cross-agency coordination, monitoring and enforcement of mitigation measures, budgeting and other resource allocations. Despite the leading role of this male-dominated body, I show that women lead mitigation and healthcare responses in ways that go beyond their formal responsibilities, often by default, especially when they step up to fill gaps in formal leadership of pandemic mitigation measures.
Contemporary Southeast Asia
Melbourne Asia Review, 2020
Just over six months after the first COVID-19 case was officially confirmed in Indonesia, it is c... more Just over six months after the first COVID-19 case was officially confirmed in Indonesia, it is clear that it has failed to control the pandemic. The national government's pandemic response has been characterised by an overall rejection of coordinated large scale movement restrictions and apathy towards the responsive capacity of public health services. Globally, assessments of pandemic responses have largely focused on bureaucratic capacity and competency, trust in government, and the quality of leadership. However, in Indonesia, the national government's inaction sits in stark contrast to sub-national governments-at the provincial, district, and municipal levels-who responded relatively quickly, initiating large-scale movement restrictions and social safety nets. Alongside this, the earliest frontline responses to the social, economic, and health crises caused by the pandemic, came from independent community initiatives.
New Mandala, 2020
There has been a fair bit of media predicting a nationwide Covid-19 crisis in Indonesia and while... more There has been a fair bit of media predicting a nationwide Covid-19 crisis in Indonesia and while my family and I "stay at home" in Salatiga, a small town in Central Java, and our view is somewhat skewed to what we know is happening in our area, here is what we know.
Fifteen years after the fall of the Suharto dictatorship in Indonesia, the authoritarian historic... more Fifteen years after the fall of the Suharto dictatorship in Indonesia, the authoritarian historical narrative about 1965 that was created by the New Order regime has been defended and reaffirmed by the post-New Order ‘democratic’ state. During the New Order, the 1965 narrative was used to justify and legitimize state sponsored violence against the PKI and other left wing nationalists that resulted in at least half a million deaths in the mid 1960s. This same narrative underpinned the political legitimacy of the newly emerging New Order state and articulated a version of national identity and nation building that was the antithesis of the previous era.
The survival of the 1965 narrative has facilitated the survival of anti-communist ideology from the New Order. It continues to underpin political legitimacy for those in power as well as provide impunity for acts of political violence and repression that are used to defend their social and political power. Anti-communist ideology continues to support a restricted notion of citizenship and national identity. Restricted notions of citizenship today significantly constrain the freedoms of civil society to engage in open discourse about the possibilities for deepening and strengthening political democracy and its institutions.
The ongoing contestation over the 1965 historical narrative indicates that history and versions of ‘the past’ are part of the dynamic of democratic politics in Indonesia. Analysis of the contestation over the 1965 authoritarian historical narrative allows us to examine the changes and continuities in concepts of national identity and citizenship, and in the categories of political ‘inclusion’ and ‘exclusion’ from the New Order authoritarian regime to the reformed democratic state that exists today.
PhD Abstract, 2020
The study of rural social change in Southeast Asia and more broadly in the global South has incre... more The study of rural social change in Southeast Asia and more broadly in the global South has increasingly included examination of the revitalisation of agrarian social movements claiming land and the persistence of rural subaltern smallholder classes. While there is no doubt that capitalism and modernity have decisively infiltrated Southeast Asian social and geographical space, how rural subaltern actors engage with and respond to the possibilities presented are highly varied, sometimes running counter to the direction of state policies that encourage more urban and market-oriented economic trajectories for rural actors.
Many rural subaltern actors in Southeast Asia have not been drawn more firmly into the urban and rural wage-labour economy, nor have a majority of smallholdings been replaced by higher productivity capitalist farming enterprises. Rather millions of poor people are struggling to obtain or maintain secure access to land as a means to claim some form of autonomy and survival. The failure of peasant farmers to disappear and their often dynamic initiatives in pursuit of ongoing rural futures has led some to consider the material basis for their persistence and what implications this has for a concept of rural subaltern or peasant ‘politics’.
This thesis builds on the ‘Murdoch School’ approach in critical political economy with its grounded understanding of how capitalism and class politics operate in the Southeast Asian region, while extending its analysis beyond elite actors to examine local political economies where subaltern actors are engaged in political and social struggles. The study builds on critical traditions in social anthropology, political sociology and social geography and follows the analytical shifts in the study of Southeast and mainland Asia and the Middle East, which takes both political economy and everyday politics seriously.
The thesis argues for a theoretical approach and an ethnographic practice, that allow us to detect and analyse as a cohesive whole the repertoire of actual (and future potential) forms of popular action that rural subaltern classes engage in. Central to this approach is the need to determine the class character of the modern peasantries, who they are and how they are constituted. This includes positioning subaltern class actors as historically situated subjects which allows us to explain the differences in these actors’ life situations across space and time.