Scraps of Hope in Banda Aceh: Gendered Urban Politics in the Aceh Peace Process

Abstract

Scraps of Hope in Banda Aceh offers a critical contribution to the study of post-conflict politics. The book examines the rebuilding of the city of Banda Aceh in Indonesia in the aftermath of the celebrated Helsinki-based peace mediation process, thirty years of armed conflict, and the tsunami. The research is supported by 14 documentary videos reflecting individuals’ experiences on rebuilding the city. In this monograph, Marjaana Jauhola mirrors the peace-making process from the perspective of the ‘outcast’ and invisible, challenging the traditional narrative and ideals of the peace as a success story. Jauhola addresses the alternative futures those stories point towards, and provides alternative ways to reflect the peace dialogue using ethnographic and film documentarist storytelling. Following the lives of people through their everyday experiences in the provincial capital of Banda Aceh, the book offers insights into the relations of power and structures of violence that are embedded in the peace. It tells a story of layered exiles and displacement, revealing hidden narratives of violence and grief while exposing struggles over gendered expectations of being good and respectable women and men. Scraps of Hope in Banda Aceh brings to light the multiple ways of arranging lives and forming caring and loving relationships outside the normative notions of nuclear family and home. The book consists of 7 chapters and 14 documentary videos.