Insurgent planner: Transgressing the technocratic state of postcolonial Jakarta

Abstract

In Jakarta, Ciliwung Merdeka represents a collective body of emergent insurgent planning that has endured throughout the current neoliberal era and the authoritarian regime that preceded it. Within a movement tradition that recalls the Freirean influence on Indonesian societal transformation, the organisation challenges the technocratic state and its ‘rational planning’ ideology. Insurgent planning engages with society at large, laying claim to a fundamental role of participation in emancipation. Together with other Indonesian social-political movements, it helps open a path towards another kind of state, in which a more encompassing conception of right allows diverse materialisation of citizenship at the very local level.