Reframing modernities in contemporary Indonesia

How are modernities related to contexts? In what ways do distinct historical, socio-cultural and political situatedness, as well as actors’ mental maps of the global world play out in everyday life? “Reframing Modernities in Contemporary Indonesia” is an assessment of the perceptions and experience of modernities in relation to ideas of center and periphery in postcolonial Indonesia; namely in Manado, a Christian-majority society in North Sulawesi province, and in Yogyakarta, the special status province in Java. Stressing the importance of contextualizing the emic views this study actively challenges the notion of a homogenizing Western modernity by exploring the heterogenic nature of Indonesian societies and its response to the changing political and economic power structures on the global level, arguing that modernities need to be perceived as being qualitative.