Termin: Donnerstag, 30.05.2024 / 16.00 Ct.
Ort: Theaterstraße 14
Vortragender: Nurman Nowak, Doktorand, Institut für Ethnologie, Universität Göttingen.
Making the city-of-uncertainty work: The urban flow of things, cityness and precarious livelihoods in Jakarta
This talk is a glimpse into my dissertation, an investigation of life in the streets of the old town of Jakarta, Kota Tua. Here everyday life is shaped by uncertainty experienced as a force that I term the urban flow of things, a force that brings about the city-of-uncertainty.
The ethnographic accounts tell of the conducts, logics and strategies of engaging with the urban flow of things from the perspective of rakyat – street vendors, trash scavengers, gate keepers of space. In myriad ways rakyat catch and capture the things and people that come and go with the urban flow which they use to build a city that works: the social structures of an urban common. These structures and their qualities enable ‘urban commoners’ to rid uncertainty of its destructive dispositions and to appropriate space at contested strategic locations which is allowing them to make the city work for their needs, necessities and desires.