Photo: Anoek de Groot
Indonesia suffered an explosion of religious violence, ethnic violence, separatist violence, terrorism, and violence by criminal gangs, the security forces and militias in the late 1990s and early 2000s. By 2002 Indonesia had the worst terrorism problem of any nation. All these forms of violence have now fallen dramatically. How was this accomplished? What drove the rise and the fall of violence? And why has Papua allowed to be such a disturbing exception to this picture of progress?
Durkheimian anomie theory is deployed to explain these developments in a new book by John Braithwaite, Valerie Braithwaite, Michael Cookson and Leah Dunn, Anomie and Violence: Non-Truth and Reconciliation in Indonesian Peacebuilding. Sudden institutional change at the time of the Asian financial crisis and the fall of President Suharto meant the rules of the game were up for grabs. Ultimately resistance to Suharto laid a foundation for commitment to a revised, more democratic, institutional order.
Learn more:
