Mr. Saul William Allen, M.A.431 Tempat dan tgl. lahir
296
Sekretariat Perizinan Penelitian Asing Kementerian Riset Dan Teknologi
DIREKTORI PENELITIAN ASING DI INDONESIA
2010
Abstrak
The Proposal Research explores uses of the past in contemporary Indonesia. The end of the New order government in 1998 ushered in a period of historical revisionism
and attendant scholarship addressed to those revisionist practices, conducted variously under the mantles penulisan kembali sejarah =rewriting of history and pelurusan
sejarah =straightening of History. This research will seek to understand how history is actually employed-the rhetorical strategies that underlie specific arguments advanced
on the basis of a collective vision of the past. In concrete terms: by what means is the recent past remembered and how does it come to be codified as history? How do visions
of the past come to be shared and how do narratives first espoused by the former government become politically available for fresh actors engaged in novel projects? Who
authors or re-authors these narratives and by what means do they circulate? What are the roles of religious and educational institutions in these processes? The research will
proceed along three primary axes: 1 archival research at the National archives in Jakarta; 2 digital ethnography on Indonesia’s reformist Islamic political website; 3 oral history
and ethnography among university-aged youths in Semarang. The Archival research in devoted to understanding how historical narratives were produced and consumed
during earlier periods in Indonesia’s history. The Internet research explores authors and arguments circulating on these websites and the in-person ethnography looks at parallel
arguments in the speech of specific actors. Youth represent a key community for this research since their exposure to much of history is via narratives rather than from direct
personal experience. I will seek to elucidate the role specific communities principally those organized around educational institutions or religious institutions play in the formation
of historical consciousness. Thus the broad fields implicated in this study include religious communities; narratives and publics; digital ethnography; and the constitution and
propagation of historical consciousness.