State of Authority

This book challenges and reinvigorates our understanding of Indonesia's postcolonial state. Based on recent fieldwork in locales throughout the archipelago, the essays in this volume bring to life figures of authority who have sought to carve out positions of power for themselves using legal and illegal means. These analytical portraits demonstrate that the state of Indonesia is not monolithic, but is constituted from the ground up by a host of local negotiations and symbolic practices. Book jacket.