Political Culture and Habitation: An Introduction

Abstract

This book is about the pertinent practices of power in Indonesia with a focus on habitation. The book explores and unfolds the meanings of the relationship between people and place that constructs, develops, sustains, and conserves their culture and habitation in Southeast Asia; this relationship is regarded as the source and generator of cultural productions in terms of the built environment, artifacts, arts, works, and collective behaviors. One of the foremost sources of power in Indonesia is the patrimonial system of culture and tradition. This system categorically values and highly favors a strong leadership and dominant personality as father figure over a sociopolitically organized system and mechanism.