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Electrifying Indonesia
Technology and Social Justice in National Development
Anto Mohsin
New Perspectives in Southeast Asian Studies
Alfred W. McCoy, Ian G. Baird, Katherine A. Bowie, and Anne Ruth Hansen, Series Editors
“A groundbreaking study of electrification as nation building in postcolonial Indonesia. Mohsin sheds light on how electrification became bound up with negotiations about the meanings of social justice and the hopes of postcolonial Indonesian society. This book is a welcome addition to the growing STS literature on Southeast Asia.”
—Suzanne Moon, author of Technology in Southeast Asian History
Electrifying Indonesia tells the story of the entanglement of politics and technology during Indonesia’s rapid post–World War II development. As a central part of its nation-building project, the Indonesian state sought to supply electricity to the entire country, bringing transformative socioeconomic benefits across its heterogeneous territories and populations. While this project was driven by nationalistic impulses, it was also motivated by a genuine interest in social justice. The entanglement of these two ideologies “nation-building and equity” shaped how electrification was carried out, including how the state chose the technologies it did. Private companies and electric cooperatives vied with the hegemonic state power company to participate in a monumental undertaking that would transform daily life for all Indonesians, especially rural citizens.
In this innovative volume, Anto Mohsin brings Indonesian studies together with science and technology studies to understand a crucial period in modern Indonesian history. He shows that attempts to illuminate the country were inseparable from the effort to maintain the new nation-state, chart its path to independence, and legitimize ruling regimes. In exchange for an often dramatically improved standard of living, people gave their votes, and their acquiescence, to the ruling government.
Anto Mohsin is an assistant professor in residence in the liberal arts program at Northwestern University in Qatar and an affiliated faculty member of Northwestern University’s Science in Human Culture program in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences.
Praise
“A chronicle of politics and technology in Southeast Asia’s largest country. Mohsin presents an electrifying story of how the large archipelago of Indonesia became fully connected by power grids under Suharto’s authoritarian leadership. This is a rare study that makes a great scholarly contribution both to STS and Asian studies.”
—Sulfikar Amir, author of The Technological State in Indonesia: The Co-constitution of High Technology and Authoritarian Politics
“Excellent. . . . Significantly enriches the field of postcolonial STS. It will reward the specialist of Southeast Asian studies, and indeed any reader interested in the multidimensional interplay of electrification and sociopolitical formations.”
—H-Net Reviews
“Mohsin skillfully interweaves the development of the electricity system with the establishment of the state. . . . [Electrifying Indonesia] is deeply researched, well written, and an essential addition to the literature.”
—Technology and Culture
“Provides rich insights. . . . Fascinating. . . . A fresh intervention to the study of electrification that remains dominated by technocratic and managerial frameworks. Considering the sustainable development challenge of meeting energy for all, Mohsin’s book serves as a clear reminder of how intricate such a pursuit is.”
—Journal of Development Studies
“A fascinating account that is both deeply empirical and theoretically engaging. . . . By marrying the analysis of traditional political institutions such as elections, political parties, and bureaucracies with techno-science, [Mohsin] offers new ways to think about political power, authority, and legitimacy. . . . Change[s] how we see the world.”
—Southeast Asian Studies
Table of Contents
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
1 Late Colonial and Early Postcolonial Electrification
2 The New Order’s Patrimonial Technopolitics
3 The Electric Bureaucracy
4 Java-Centrism and the Two Grid Systems
5 Social Knowledge of Rural Life and Energy Uses
6 Rural Electric Cooperatives
Conclusion
Appendix
Notes
Bibliography
Index
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Larger images
December 2023
270 pp. 6 x 9
17 b/w photos
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