Birth, Life, and Afterlife of An Indonesian Graveyard: Environmental Rule and Its Discontents

Abstract

Abstract The social history of graveyards in Asian cities is understudied but provides a uniquely apt ground from which to view socio-environmental concerns in an urban setting. Legally established in 1926, the Mandailing burial ground in the Indonesian city of Medan was produced through a set of legal and racial discourses introduced during the period of high colonialism. As this article demonstrates, these discourses were activated by large-scale land conversions that brought upland migrants down to coastal port cities and provoked them to question their identity. Placing the Mandailing graveyard within the context of “middle landscapes” that balance nature and culture illuminates how landscapes for the dead continue to manifest environmental change, including upland deforestation, flooding, and a rising tide of waste, in and beyond the city among the living. This article posits that such environmental anxieties were accompanied by social renovation from below, with the graveyard lending itself to a quest to enact a better future. The concentration of multiple issues within a single site makes the graveyard a singularly rich entry point for discussing how environmental rule and its discontents promote social change.