Jakarta Under Water: The 2007 Flood and The Debate On Jakarta’s Future Water Infrastructure

Mohsin, Anto (2015) Jakarta Under Water: The 2007 Flood and The Debate On Jakarta’s Future Water Infrastructure. Jurnal Wilayah dan Lingkungan, 3 (1). pp. 39-58. ISSN E-ISSN: 2407-8751

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Official URL: http://ejournal2.undip.ac.id/index.php/jwl/article...

Abstract

This paper examines the debate in the wake of the 2007 flood in Jakarta, the biggest one to occur in the city’s history. By analyzing textual sources both online and in the archives as well as interviews with several actors in the debate, I demonstrate that a new sociopolitical condition in Indonesia facilitated a vibrant discourse in the wake of a so-called “natural disaster.” In a democratizing society such as Indonesia, state actors no longer monopolized the social production of a “risk object” or a source of danger or harm. I show that the Indonesian public, who participated in the debate, shaped “networks of risk objects” either by “emplacing” a risk object (i.e. defining an entity as an object and linking it to a potential harm) or by “displacing” it (i.e. challenging the existence of a risky object or delinking it from a putative danger) (Hilgartner 1992). These non-state actors managed to insert themselves into a sphere once dominated by the technocrats, in large part because the press was no longer controlled by the state. In doing so they exposed the messiness and vulnerability of the city’s water management system. The “risk objects” they identified run the whole gamut of entities that make up the entire Jakarta’s water management sociotechnical system, which includes water technologies, laws, practices, institutions, conditions, policies, and the environment.

Item Type:Article
Subjects:G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > GE Environmental Sciences
G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > GT Manners and customs
Divisions:UNDIP Journal > Jurnal Wilayah dan Lingkungan
Faculty of Engineering > Department of Urban and Regional Planning
Faculty of Engineering > Department of Urban and Regional Planning
ID Code:48037
Deposited By:INVALID USER
Deposited On:17 Mar 2016 16:33
Last Modified:17 Mar 2016 16:34

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