After the New Order: Space, Politics, and Jakarta

Chapter 1. The Nation-State and the City Hall

3 Chapter 1 The Nation-State and the City Hall The city hall is a crucial feature of the European transformation of social space and of the emergence of urban modernity.1 However, it did not always represent civic identity, especially when situated in a colonial context. In a colony, the city hall often enacted practices that contradict its ideal form as an institution of civic pride. There was thus a discrepancy between the meaning of “city hall” in Europe and its meaning in the colonies, even though the term refers to the buildings of the same type and similar architectural style. Therefore, an investigation into the city hall could not be anything other than an inquiry into power relations within a specific context, as Anthony King points out: The main point is that buildings, building types, architectural symbols, and forms have no permanent social meaning beyond the history, society, and culture—maybe only the speech community—in which they exist. Meanings are not stable. It is the constantly changing social order that forever inscribes, and reinscribes, its socially and culturally differentiated categories onto the built environment. In the same way, those categories are then inscribed onto the subjectivities of different social selves.2 The significance of the city hall in Jakarta therefore needs to be understood within the sociopolitical relations of colonialism, postcolonial nation-building, and democratic transformation in the current era. This chapter outlines a history of the city hall in Jakarta across different times, giving particular attention to the architectural and spatial representation of power. It draws on the ideas of the governing elites, the system of governance and the sociohistorical contexts of which the city hall is a part. The account is loosely chronological, starting from the early formation of Batavia under the Netherlands East Indies Company 4 after the new order (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie [VOC]) and the colonial state to the era of decolonization, the subsequent authoritarian regime, and the present period of democratic reform. It traces the history of Jakarta’s city hall from its status as the stadhuis (city hall) of European merchant-administrators and the colonial state to its postcolonial incarnations. Along the way, I interpret the city hall’s symbolic elements in the urban setting to create what Laura Kolbe calls “a narrative element in the townscape” central to the justification of political rules, and reveal its contradictions by addressing the following questions:3 How did the city hall contribute to the development of the political cultures of the state? What is the position of the city hall within the broader dynamics of power relations between the city and the nation? How has the city hall developed the inherited structures, leadership styles, and mission to address the challenge of the present ? In the context of the shifting of power, what kind of new sociopolitical spaces has the city hall tried to open up? And finally, what can the symbolism of the city hall tell us about old and the new political practices? Such questions are framed around the idea that the city hall is a symbol of civic autonomy embodied in the urban “public” space, in a critical relation to the authority of the state and private capital. While adorned with iconographic and symbolic elements to represent political idealism, the city hall can also be subjected to different public perceptions. As Chattopadhyay and White point out, a city hall “is more than a shell or a stage.”4 Instead, it is “the most public of public space.” Yet, “its ability to accommodate the ‘public’ has yet to be explored .”5 This ability has to be understood within the historical context of the formation and transformation of the city hall in a particular place. As is shown in this chapter, the colonial foundations of the city hall in Batavia/Jakarta, along with its centralized mode of state governance, continued to structure its meaning in much of the postcolonial era. The attachment of the city to the nation-state has made the city hall a citadel of authority rather than a space for interplay between citizens and officials. With governors and council members appointed by the government and its ruling party (instead of being elected by citizens) throughout the twentieth century, the city hall thus offered only limited access to the public. Such practices have contributed to the insulation of the city hall from the general population. This is the main story of...