Graffiti as Argument and Aspiration: Some Preliminary Reflections from Yogyakarta, Indonesia

Richard Fox, Professor & Chair of Pacific and Asian Studies, Professor of Anthropology (by courtesy), University of Victoria (British Columbia, Canada)

This paper presents preliminary observations on graffiti and street art from recent fieldwork on the Indonesian island of Java. The research was conducted in the context of a new project examining ‘the aspiration for a better life’ as it is depicted in the street art, independent cinema, short stories and pop music produced and circulated in the Indonesian Special Region of Yogyakarta. The study focuses on changing ideals of romantic intimacy, family organization and personal fulfilment, and how these ideals are inflected by the intersection of gender, generation and social class. Engaging an interdisciplinary body of scholarship at the crossroads of anthropology, philosophy and Asian cultural studies, the project aims to forge a new approach to the analysis of cultural production as embodying a form of public argument. Skeptical of prevailing accounts of ‘the public sphere’, ‘publics’, ‘flows’, ‘scapes’ and related metaphors, the project aims to rethink conceptions of human agency and collective life as they pertain to the study of media and popular culture.

Richard Fox is Professor and Chair of Pacific and Asian Studies, and Professor of Anthropology (by courtesy), at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada; he is also the President of the Canadian Council for Southeast Asian Studies and the Director of the Luce-funded Canadian Southeast Asian Studies Initiative. Richard has conducted extensive ethnographic and archival work in Java and Bali, and is currently running a five-year SSHRC-funded project based in the Javanese regency of Bantul.