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Social Science Cultural

Shadow Play

Information Politics in Urban Indonesia

by (author) Sheri Lynn Gibbings

Publisher
University of Toronto Press
Initial publish date
Jul 2021
Category
Cultural, General, General
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9781487537739
    Publish Date
    Jul 2021
    List Price
    $39.95
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9781487525729
    Publish Date
    Aug 2021
    List Price
    $39.95
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9781487508197
    Publish Date
    Oct 2021
    List Price
    $89.00

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Description

Focusing on government-organized relocations of street vendors in Indonesia, Shadow Play carefully exposes the reasons why conflicts over urban planning are fought through information politics.

 

Anthropologist Sheri Lynn Gibbings shows that information politics are the principal avenues through which the municipal government of Yogyakarta city seeks to implement its urban projects. Information politics are also the primary means through which street vendors, activists, and NGOs can challenge these plans. Through extensive interviews and lengthy participant observation in Yogyakarta, Gibbings shows that both state and non-state actors engage in transparency, rumours, conspiracies, and surveillance practices.

 

Gibbings reveals that these entangled information practices create suspicion and fear, form new solidarities, and dissolve relationships. Shadow Play is a compelling study explaining how we cannot understand urban projects in post-Suharto Indonesia and the resistance to them without first understanding the complexities embedded in the information practices.

About the author

Sheri Lynn Gibbings is an adjunct professor in the Department of Global Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University and a research affiliate at the University of Manitoba.

Sheri Lynn Gibbings' profile page