On the verge of displacement

Abstract

Jakarta is a city of high aspirations of the entrepreneurial and professional middle classes. For the rich, this brave new world of malls, office parks, and apartments represents an optimistic economy. The displaced poor, however, express an emotional economy of fear and anger that begets a politics of resistance. This study seeks to grasp the new urbanisms that uncover this ‘structure of feeling’ among the poor. I suggest that the urban imaginary of Jakarta is co-constituted by a symbiosis of optimism and ambitions on the one hand and, on the other, by pessimism, fear, and anger materialized in the resistance of the occluded and expressed through processes of questioning and cursing the profit-seeking dreams that are transforming the cityscapes. Exploring the making of Jakarta in this way can lead to a fuller understanding of the politics of urban transformation – one that moves away from assuming globalizing neoliberalism is the sole or primary force shaping the urban world.