Report on the Second International Conference on Global STS: Hasanuddin University, Makassar Makassar, 24–26 July 2019

An STS report should itself be concerned with the social organization of the conference, the double or more ideas behind the conference (different goals and stakes for different institutional partners), as well as the STS content (topics, methods, and future horizons).

The Second International Conference on Global STS, "Between the Land and the Sea: Environmental Transformation and New Knowledge Production," was held at Hasanuddin University, Makassar, Indonesia, 24–26 July 2019, with postconference field trips to see prehistoric archeological sites in Maros, Bugis boatbuilding in Tanaberu and Bira, and legacy off-the-grid community life in Kajang, as well as local field trips in Makassar to the active Bugis shipping port of Paotere, the tomb of Diponegro, the anti-Dutch resistance leader in the 1825–30 war (whose famous portrait of surrender by Dutch painter Nicolaas Pieneman was transformed by Radan Saleh into one of defiance and one of the great nationalist paintings of Java and Indonesia), and the national cemetery for the fallen of the war of independence, along with visits to the many coffee shops proudly selling various local single-sourced coffees.

There were, for those interested in metrics, eighty-seven abstracts submitted and accepted to the conference from nineteen countries. In the event, forty-seven showed up, a mix of senior scholars and students, with the former endeavoring to provide constructive coaching and support to the latter, making for an intense and rewarding conference.

The First Idea, of the Conference Itself

The idea for the conference was discussed at the 4S meetings in Sydney, with the idea that conferences should be held outside of the usual capital or tourist attraction cities in Southeast Asia as a way to draw in more local scholars across the region into global STS discussions. Sulfikar Amir was ready to propose Makassar and Hasanuddin University, having held discussions already with the administrative leadership, who were eager to raise their national and international profile (see Idea 2 below). Sulfikar had already hosted the First International Conference on Global STS in Singapore at his home institution, the Nanyang Technological University (NTU). Hasanuddin University is the largest and best regarded autonomous university outside of Java, and among the top five to eight (depending on how you rank) in Indonesia, with a leading medical school, a prominent marine sciences program, and both engineering and humanities and social sciences campuses. Both former President B. J. Habibie (the science and technology czar under Suharto), and Vice President Jusuf Kalla are Bugis from Sulawesi; Kalla went to Hasanuddin University, while Habibie was energetic in supporting education across Indonesia, especially at ITB (the Institute of Technology, Bandung) and through scholarships for study abroad. Kalla intervened in the persistent fighting between engineering students and others at Hasanuddin University, sending the engineers to a new campus in Gowa. Now the task for interdisciplinary studies is to get the faculty from each campus back to work together. The conference and following workshops were notably successful in doing this.

Sulfikar Amir, currently teaching STS at NTU, is himself from Makassar and previously taught at ITB. He has been a leader in the network that has grown around the journal East Asian Science, Technology and Society (EASTS), bringing Indonesian scholars into the network and into global conversations of STS. Among other things, he organized two special issues of EASTS with Indonesian contributors. His efforts to reinvigorate the Department of Social Sciences at ITB was rewarded this year with the announcement that a new STS faculty position had been approved. Known for his book The Technological State in Indonesia on the struggles over development policy between engineers and economists under Suharto, as well as two films on the Fukushima nuclear disaster and work on very large-scale engineering projects in Singapore, Sulfikar was an ideal co-organizer with our hosts at Hasanuddin University.

Our hosts, most prominently (there was a large organizing committee) included the president of the university, Dwia Aries Tina Pulubuhu, a sociologist, who opened the meeting with a warm welcome; Prof. Jamaluddin Jompa, a deep-sea marine biologist who...