Carnegie, Paul J. (2016) Of social imaginary and violence: responding to Islamist militancy in Indonesia. Institute of Asian Studies, Universiti Brunei Darussalam, Gadong.
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Abstract
In the early 2000s, Indonesia witnessed a proliferation of Islamist paramilitary groups and terror activity in the wake of Suharto’s downfall. Having said this, over the years since Suharto’s downfall, the dire threat predictions have largely failed to materialize at least strategically. This outcome raises some interesting questions about the ways in which Indonesian policy-makers responded to the security threat posed by Islamist militancy. Drawing on Temby’s thesis about Darul Islam and negara Islam Indonesia and combining this with Colombijn and Lindblad’s concept of ‘reservoirs of violence’, the following paper establishes that persistent and excessive punitive action by the state is potentially counter-productive in the long run. On its own, punitive action fails to address effectively the conditioning factors underlying militancy and its different social imaginary. If over-utilized, it runs too high a risk of antagonizing and further polarizing oppositional segments of the population by perpetuating a ‘ghettoized’ sense of enmity and alienation amongst them towards the state and wider society. This paper argues that a more nuanced approach that both supports and utilizes various preventative measures is also critical for addressing complex and deeply rooted types of insecurity. By situating localized responses to the problem in historical context, the paper underscores the importance of charting a course between strategic and human security concerns to counter the specific imaginary of extreme thinking and limit the conditions under which Islamist militancy reproduces in Indonesia.
| Item Type: | Other |
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| Uncontrolled Keywords: | counter terrorism policy; Indonesia; imagined communities; Islamism; militancy |
| Subjects: | H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General) J Political Science > JQ Political institutions Asia |
| Divisions: | Faculty of Business and Economics (FBE) > School of Government, Development and International Affairs |
| Depositing User: | Repo Editor |
| Date Deposited: | 05 Dec 2016 22:58 |
| Last Modified: | 05 Dec 2016 22:58 |
| URI: | https://repository.usp.ac.fj/id/eprint/9163 |
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