The global child and non-governmental governance of the family in post-Suharto Indonesia

Abstract

State interventions in the family under Suharto's New Order were pervasive and deep, from education to the local delivery of social welfare through citizen-housewives. In the heady and chaotic period since the end of Suharto's regime in the late 1990s, there has been an explosion of programmes aimed at early childhood in response to transnational initiatives that suggest a new global child. Local women as wives and mothers are once again involved in the delivery of these programmes. Based on fieldwork in Yogyakarta, Java, this article considers stabilities and changes in non-governmental governance of families in Indonesia in the context of the democratization. New early childhood programmes illustrate forms of transnational governance, including corporate day care and international regimes of expertise on children. Yet, the re-purposing of New Order forms of governmentality now in neo-liberal forms suggests great continuity in forms of rule through the family in Indonesia, even in the era of democratic reform.