Wenjing Qiu is a PhD candidate at the Institute for Area Studies.

More information about Wenjing Qiu

Fields of interest

• Indonesian kampung
• Mapping
• Social movement
• History of Indonesian cities
• The relationship between Netherlands and Indonesia in city planning

Research

Mapped, Constructed and Sustained: An Ethnography of Self-Built Kampung in Jakarta, Indonesia
Supervisors: Prof. dr. Michael Herzfeld, Prof. dr. David Henley

Introduction
The kampung (‘village’ in Indonesian) is a type of self-built irregular settlement dating back to colonial times, widely found in Southeast Asia and particularly in Indonesia. The agglomeration or shattered distribution of kampung characterizes Indonesian cities. The capital Jakarta is even depicted as ‘a gigantic kampung’. Kampung is categorized into slums and informal settlements by government and international development programs, but not considered equally as slums or villages in the city in academic works of Indonesian urbanists. There is a word that kampung is ‘off the maps’, ‘seen and unseen at the same time’ (Kusno, 2019). Though ubiquitously thought as unplanned, the very existence of kampung in city planning is nonetheless significant to survey. Its status and significance are visually represented in city maps used and designed by government and planning agencies. This research is thus designed to take
Jakarta as a field site and investigate dynamics and mechanisms behind the construction processes
of kampung to reveal new facts about the relationship between self-built kampung and its potential
mapping in the whole picture of urban development in Jakarta, Indonesia.

Research questions enlightening and instructing the project are as follows:
1. Is kampung off the map? Who map kampung into the map?
2. How is kampung constructed amid the process of urban development?
3. What does kampung do with the nation-building? What new form of urbanism is created by kampung and why kampung is sustained in Indonesian cities?

Curriculum Vitae

2015-2019 BSc in Biotechnology, Jilin University
2017-2018 Exchange and taking courses in Biochemistry and Anthropology, Stockholm University
2019-2022 MA in Anthropology, Minzu University of China