Disciplining Dissent: Freedom, Control, and Digital Activism in Southeast Asia

I just published a piece titled ā€œDisciplining Dissent: Freedom, Control, and Digital Activism in Southeast Asiaā€ [PDF].

Urbanized parts of Southeast Asia have been places with the most vibrant digital activism for the past two decades. And, yet, the region has been marginalized from ā€œglobal accountsā€ of the role of digital media and activism that have predominantly emerged in the European and American context, with the exception of the Middle East which gained a temporal prominence immediately after the ā€œArab Springā€. This chapter attempts to sketch a comparative analysis of the relationship between digital media and politics in the region. Due to the diversity of contexts and non-linearity of political change, the question of the role(s) of digital media in supporting civil society and civic activism has no unequivocal resolution in the abstract. Rather, answers will emerge from the historical and societal experiences in specific local contexts. So, too, vary the realization of the roles of digital media to ā€œliberateā€ civil society from the fetters of state control over media and communications as well as from ā€œuncivilā€ elements within civil society itself. The distinctive constellations of forces at play underlie dramatically different cultural and sociopolitical configurations among the nation-states of this region. Experiences from Southeast Asia suggest that while digital media can have and has played an important role in political reform, it can equally play the role of furthering social divides. The role cannot be determined by technology itself, but rather by the interplay between technology and society, which while globally influenced is still substantially locally constituted.

This work is published as one of the chapters of the Routledge Handbook of Urbanization in Southeast Asia edited by Rita Padawangi.

Downloadable [in PDF] from:

(1) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/329089698_Disciplining_Dissent_Freedom_Control_and_Digital_Activism_in_Southeast_Asia or

(2)Ā https://carleton.ca/align/wp-content/uploads/Lim_DiscipliningDissent_2018.pdf

(3). https://merlyna.files.wordpress.com/2019/06/lim_discipliningdissent_2019.pdf

[Publication] Dis/Connection: Internet infrastructure in Indonesia

Another publication is just out. Titled ā€œDis/Connection: The Co-Evolution of Sociocultural and Material Infrastructures of the Internet in Indonesiaā€œ, my latest article is part of the special issue #105 of Indonesia (published by Cornell Universityā€™s Southeast Asia Program) on ā€œInfrastructuresā€. (The article is also published at JSTOR archive).

About this article, I wrote:

From warnet to mobile social media (social-media platforms accessed through mobile devices), from researchers and hobbyists of the 1990s to Indonesiaā€™s urban youth of the twenty-first century, the Indonesian internet has evolved socially, culturally, and materially. In this article, I tell a story of the Indonesian internet by looking at the historical development of the its infrastructure, especially the internetā€™s access points. My goals are two-fold. First, by teasing out the technical properties of the Indonesian informational network, I aim to materialize the ephemera of sociocultural practices in relation to internet access points. Second, by focusing my attention on the everyday vocabulary of the internet infrastructure, I intend to reveal how the infrastructure works, in relation to spaces and places, access and uses, and connection and disconnection, among others. Rather than simply being a backdrop of technological and sociocultural practices, the infrastructure is an active dimension that shapes and is shaped by these practices. There are multiple ways to conceptualize the relationship between the internet and society. Studying the infrastructure of the Indonesian internet is one of the new ways to unpack the complexity of this relationship. Furthermore, I also demonstrate the value of investigating and disassembling the elements of internet infrastructure as a method of understanding the internet and society in Indonesia and, possibly, elsewhere.

This is my contribution to the study of infrastructure, the history of technology, communication studies, as well as Indonesian studies.

About this piece, here is my musing:

ā€œI remember that I wrote this piece on 12 March 2016, after going out with my friend for 9 hours (involving lunch, a long walk, dinner, and a party). I started atĀ 10:40pm and finished it in the morning at 6:30am. It was hours in the making (the publication process was long, but thatā€™s beyond my control). This piece, however, was based on multiple field observations, started in 1999 when I didnā€™t know what I wanted to do in life (so I was just hanging out at cybercafes and writing to myself a lot) and ended in December 2015 when I had chosen what to do in life (yet still didnā€™t know what lifeā€™s all about). Yes, unintentionally, the research was spanning over 16 years! Long life the longue durĆ©e!ā€

If you have MUSE or JSTOR library access, you can also download it from: (1)Ā https://bit.ly/2JjChHpĀ or (2) at Researchgate:Ā http://bit.ly/2CFcCYv

#Reformasi@20: The Internet and Politics in Indonesia

In preparing an essay for the month of May, where Indonesia marks the 20 years of “Reformasi”, I came across what the-much-younger-me published 16 years ago — my first publication, in my pre-doctoral-program-life, written while I was in nomad. I re-read it for the first time since it was published. Relieved to find out that it’s not embarrassing for my today’s standard šŸ˜‰ Also, I am surprised to discover that it is still very relevant today. Here is an excerpt from its conclusion. Continue reading “#Reformasi@20: The Internet and Politics in Indonesia”