KATHLEEN MARISKA AZALI, 121141015 (2013) Practices and Networks of Literacy: some cases of alternative libraries in Indonesia. Thesis thesis, UNIVERSITAS AIRLANGGA.

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Abstract

Libraries and archives in Indonesia display weak infrastructures, lamentable features and problems common in many other national libraries in Southeast Asia and the developing world. Yet, Indonesia also has an under-researched history of initiatives in building small, informal libraries and/or book rentals using self- or collectively-generated funds, resources and connections outside of the formal state structure. The fall of Suharto's tightly controlled New Order and its subsequent decentralization, along with the increasing availability of new media technology, have precipitated their proliferation in various, hybridized forms. Through case studies of alternative libraries in Bandung, Yogyakarta, Surabaya and Makassar, carried out through repeated site visits and interviews, I found that despite their heterogeneity, there is an overwhelmingly strong predisposition to still frame their functions solely as promoting basic literacy and minat baca (reading interest) among the Indonesian population at large, particularly children, separated and sterilised from political and economic practices. Using Bourdieu's cultural intermediaries as conceptual framework, I argue that alternative libraries sites of assembly and circulation of cultural products where the people behind them attempt to not only shape tastes and challenge the authority of established and widely distributed norms, but also pursue their own legitimacy and power into wider circuits of cultural and knowledge production.

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