Professor Pamela Nilan

This essay comprises reflections of scholars in and originating from the Global South, plus some comments from Northern scholars, forming an integrated dialogue. It focuses on the development of youth studies in Africa, Latin America, parts of Asia, and the Caribbean, illuminating how youth studies in, from, and for the South emerge as a result of struggle-to get recognition, to theorize beyond dominant Northern frameworks, and state-led developments, and to be heard. Paradoxically, youth studies from the South are strongly influenced by the work of Northern scholars. Despite these influences, Northern ideas struggle to grasp local contexts and conditions and consequently there is a need for more localized knowledge and theorizing to make sense of young people's lives outside the Global North. The reflections provide a reminder that struggles over the meaning and situation of youth, within particular contexts, are highly political.

Street art in the Indonesian city of Yogyakarta is popular, dynamic and vibrant. Like other cities such as Buenos Aires, it has become something of a tourist attraction in its own right. This article examines Yogyakarta street art as a visual phenomenon that activates political change potential in three ways. First, it provokes the critical consideration of ordinary people who pass by the walls and surfaces of the city every day. Second, it suggests alternative futures within the context of achieving social justice and redress of past wrongs. Third, it challenges the mainstream elite artworld of Indonesia that is anchored in galleries and commodification. Street artists constitute their grassroots art practice collectively, offline and online. Data was gathered ethnographically over two years. Analysis of data proceeds in the form of rhizoanalysis, in keeping with a non-representational framework drawn from the work of Deleuze and Guattari. The street art of Yogyakarta is considered as an assemblage, one characterised by the creative process of (political) becoming. The street artworks generate meaning through visual juxtapositions, gags and texts that imply lines of flight into a future generated by radical questioning. We argue that Yogyakarta street art can be read as a form of rebel imaginings.

In the countries of the Global South, religious faith may serve as an amplifier for positive youth activism that strives for enhanced viability. This paper investigates how the positive social and environmental activism of young Muslims and Christians in Indonesia sets out to (re)shape the world according to theological precepts of divine harmony and the connectivity of all life and all humans. We make use of the work of Jeffrey, C., and J. Dyson [2022. "Viable Geographies." Progress in Human Geography46 (6): 1331¿1348.] on viability and ecosystems of practice in youth activism. We also employ the notion of immanence¿where the transcendent divine is directly experienced in the events and physical elements of the material world. Devout young activists in Indonesia make collective use of their respective theological traditions to expand their windows of perception, and to operationalise prefigurative strategies to make their world more viable.

Divorce for female civil servants in Indonesia is more complex than for non-civil servants due to a pseudo-administrative process. This condition requires submitting a written application for divorce permission to their agency and proceeding through multiple lengthy stages. During this process, women must verbally disclose sensitive personal details to state authorities. Failure to obtain written permission or to report the divorce within a specific period can result in disciplinary action. This paper examines how female civil servants protect their privacy while seeking divorce permission, focusing on managing personal information, controlling divorce-related details at work, and handling the information turbulence that arises. The researcher collected data from 12 female civil servants at Indonesia's Directorate General of Taxes (DGT) who had applied for divorce permission. The findings reveal the subjective experiences and strategies women civil servants use to manage sensitive personal issues. The quasi-administrative nature of the divorce permit process introduces complexities that extend beyond formal procedures. Regulations governing the submission of divorce permits, overseen by government agencies, often add to the burden these women face, neglecting their privacy and psychological well-being. Impartial individuals and gender preferences in the verification team can exacerbate distress. Therefore, revising the divorce permit regulations to enhance privacy and sensitivity is crucial. The study recommends early information about the process and communication training for maintaining privacy.

With a focus on contemporary religion, this article considers Catholic youth in Muslim-majority Indonesia who are active in the public sphere and committed to the cause of nationalist unity. A current push by Islamist extremists threatens and excludes those of other faiths. Young Catholics are sometimes made to feel as though they do not belong in the modern imaginings of caliphate and enforced Shari'a law. They find the marginalisation deeply disturbing since they feel strong loyalty to the nation. Some turn inward, focusing on Catholic orthopraxy and service to the diocese. Others direct their energies to interfaith dialogue and alliance, seeking political influence through solidarity with moderate Muslims. A lived religion approach based on the work of Ammerman (2014) and Laksana and Wood (2019) allows us to understand the imbrication of Catholic and nationalist identities through the analysis of interview data.

This paper reports data from a study of young Catholic activists. They were concerned about the expansion of Islamist populism in democratic Muslim-majority Indonesia. They actively built inter-faith coalitions with local liberal Muslim youth groups and with pan-national Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), the largest independent Islamic organisation in the world. Islamist populism prioritises religious identity over the national identity of citizenship. In framing their citizenship activism against the current tide of Islamist populism, the informants in our study selectively engaged aspects of Catholic theology. They articulated their religious identity as coterminous with a nationalist identity centred on multi-faith tolerance and harmony. That discourse in itself refutes a key principle of Islamist populism in Indonesia, which argues for primordial entitlement.

This paper traces the ontogenesis of a specific environmental campaign in Indonesia. A highly effective struggle to save the local city forest was instigated by young activists in Bandung who had previously been involved with Greenpeace Indonesia. The data comes from interviews, a focus group and ethnographic fieldwork. The paper illustrates the point that when youth get involved in a highly structured environmental protest movement like Greenpeace, the skills, network resources and confidence they gain there can later be deployed to great advantage in a local conservation campaign. That phenomenon can be understood using the notion of radical habitus derived from the theoretical work of Pierre Bourdieu. Its creation was reinforced by the dispositions developed through the young activists' previous involvement in Greenpeace training and activism. In the end, the development of the radical ecological habitus of young activists is formative for shaping a radical disposition, which can be deployed in the domain of protest.

This article reports on a study that aimed to investigate how young Indonesians might become environmentalists, and what happens when they do. It uses a Bourdieusian framework to analyse interviews with six Indonesian environmental engineering students who took an active role in environmental conservation campaigns while studying at the prestigious University of Technology Bandung (ITB) in Indonesia. In 2014, they were pondering the challenge of negotiating an environmentally defensible career after graduation from their degree. Four years later, in 2018 follow-up contact, it was evident that while they still operated a moral responsibility of conservation and care for the natural world, not all of them had found the dream jobs they imagined as earnest undergraduates keen to protect the natural environment. Yet most had maintained their 'ecological habitus' even as they sought to make good on the institutionalised cultural capital invested in their undergraduate degree in environmental engineering. This article examines that journey.

This article reports on the development of a new culturally sensitive approach to collecting group discussion data in the Pacific: veivosaki-yaga. The new approach was developed during a project on Technical and Vocational Education (TVET) in multicultural Fiji. One challenge was to gain understanding from villages of parental attitudes towards TVET. While focus groups proved to answer the purpose for Indian Fijian parents, they were deemed culturally inappropriate for Indigenous Fijian parents. As a 'de-colonising' Pacific methodology, veivosaki-yaga was judged to offer a culturally appropriate framework. Arising from strategic communication conventions in Indigenous Fijian culture, veivosaki-yaga means 'worthwhile discussion'¿of serious topics. It differs from the now well-known Pacific methodology approach of talanoa, which is based on much more informal and free-flowing discussion. This paper does not engage the findings of the original project as such, but seeks to convey the value of a culturally appropriate methodological approach devised therein. It contributes to the currently evolving literature on Pacific methodologies in the field of qualitative educational research.

In 2007, Babakan Siliwangi city forest in Bandung came under threat of privatisation from a local corporation, PT EGI, which proposed hotel and commercial development. In the period 2012¿2013, the anti-corporatist, environmentalist group Backsilmove emerged to fight a successful campaign to save the forest for public use. Employing the 'cognitive praxis' approach pioneered by [Eyerman and Jamison (1991. Social movements: a cognitive approach. University Park, PA: Penn State University Press)] to understand the work of social movements, this article explores the tactics and ideology used by young city forest activists in Bandung as they sought to educate and mobilise local residents. Through in-depth interviews and fieldwork from 2014 to 2015 with young activists from Backsilmove it became evident that, as a manifestation of cognitive praxis, certain repertoires of protest were mobilised to inculcate environmental values in the public about protecting the forest from commercialisation. Repertoires included: (a) a 'long march' to attract public interest; (b) an enacted pantomime to draw attention to the profit-seeking capitalist alliance between the city government and the private sector; (c) production and free distribution of a scientific research publication outlining the impact of destructive development of the city forest. These protest repertoires had been acquired by the activists through previous structured training and actions with Greenpeace.

This article considers the concept of ecological habitus in relation to pro-environmental discourses of Indonesian student activists. Further Bourdieusian concepts, cultural capital, illusio, doxa and hysteresis, throw interpretive light on how well-educated young Indonesians struggle in the field of environmental activism. It first outlines the concept of ecological habitus in relation to pro-environmental activism and then provides a discussion of environmental activism in Indonesia, before moving to consider environmental awareness in Indonesian universities. The methodology is briefly described before findings are presented under three key headings of expressed concern: global warming, forest loss and garbage.

This article investigates the 'becoming' of queer female punx in the contemporary hardcore scene in a regional Australian city. Twelve young women aged 20¿30 years were interviewed about their experiences of queer identity. They emphasized their involvement in the music scene as a key catalyst for the development of a queer punk identity even though the local hardcore scene is male-dominated and homosocial. We find that these young female queer punx assert their identity through collectively summoning and synthesizing the counternormative resources of both queer and punk Do It Yourself (DIY) to configure the space of hardcore differently. Our findings confirm the durability of a playful, subversive punk ethos in constituting challenges to the normative.

This article looks at how five environmental leaders in Jogjakarta became environmentally active, and at the groups and interventions they formed. Interview data are drawn from a broader project that aimed to find out what might turn an Indonesian person into someone who cares for the environment. It examines the journey in leadership as "becoming" in the terms of Deleuze and Guattari (1987); a journey constituted in the desire to make something different. Against a backdrop of day-today practices in Central Java that do not favour environmental conservation and sustainability, the five informants seized upon an idea, a praxis, and explored it in the company of like-minded others, to join or make an organisation or action dedicated to redressing environmental crisis or neglect.

This article compares two youth-oriented ENGOs (Environmental Non-Government Organisations) in Indonesia. Comparative analysis focuses on how the two organisations provide discourses that configure differently the pedagogic space of experiential learning for children and young people. Despite an apparent low level of environmental awareness generally among the Indonesian population there does seem to be some enthusiasm for environmental activities among certain groups of young people. However, it seems different kinds of young people are drawn to different kinds of environmental activities. Conceptually, if we accept that there is an imagined space of the nation (Anderson, 1991) we can logically propose an imagined national space of the physical environment. Thus different agents of change will imagine and configure this space differently so that certain kinds of engagement and learning follow. Escobar (1999) points out that what we perceive in the environment as "natural" is always also cultural and social. So for example, transnational logging companies understand the Indonesian forests as a natural resource to be exploited, while student nature-lover groups ¿ Mahasiswa Pencinta Alam ¿ constitute forests as recreational places to camp and walk in nature. This paper examines two ENGOs designed to appeal to young Indonesians: Sahabat Alam ¿ Friends of Nature - founded in 2008 by a 12 year old schoolgirl after Jakarta flooding, and Tanam Untuk Kehidupan ¿ Planting for Life ¿ an arts collective which aims for learning about the environment through creative practices and festivals in Salatiga.

This article studies the motivations and the formal and informal learning contexts for well-educated, young Balinese from poorer areas who enroll in cruise ship training colleges. The major motivations were obtaining a high income and helping the family. While basic hospitality and tourism skills are acquired, trainees also named other capacities such as politeness, confidence and tricks, such as juggling, as advantageous. The work on board was acknowledged to be arduous and demanding. Physical and mental preparation was needed. On retirement from a cruise ship career, savings enable them to start a small business in Bali. However, many such small enterprises fail. We identify the need for further short course training and other support in post-cruise ship work business planning and management.

This article explores male perceptions and attitudes toward violence against women in Indonesia. It analyzes interview data from Indonesian men collected as part of a large multimethod Australian government-funded project on masculinities and violence in two Asian countries. Reluctance to talk about violence against women was evident, and the accounts of those men who did respond referred to three justificatory discourses: denial, blaming the victim, and exonerating the male perpetrator. The findings support continuation of government and nongovernmental organization (NGO) projects aimed at both empowering women and reeducating men. © The Author(s) 2014.

This paper reports on data from a 2009-2010 project on masculinity and violence, part of which was conducted in Indonesia. The data here come from semi-structured interviews with 86 men in five cities, with minor reference to survey findings. Using a Foucauldian interpretive framework, we focus primarily on how these Indonesian men view police intervention in comparison to resolving the problem of violence within their community through mediation. The issue here is that while community mediation approaches are regarded positively, at present, it only seems to be religious leaders who are trusted to resolve conflicts effectively through this approach. Suspicion of mediation interventions and other measures that are tied to the authority of the state means that the promise of service-oriented policing reforms may not be effectively implemented. © 2014 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht.

The experience of job market disadvantage is not a novel phenomenon for some in contemporary Australia, even in the face of embedded equal employment opportunity (EEO) ideals. This article addresses the phenomenon of persistent job market disadvantage for some minority groups by presenting new data from a major multi-method study on labor market obstacles for Muslims seeking jobs in Australia. Responses from jobseekers and employment service providers are analyzed together to consider how EEO principles are experienced by Muslims who engage with employment services and move in and out of the labor force. The article proposes that key EEO tenets-freedom from discrimination and support to overcome disadvantage-are not represented at present in many Muslim jobseeker experiences. Furthermore, these same EEO principles appear to be somewhat compromised in employment service provision to Muslim jobseekers and, by extension, to other disadvantaged minority jobseekers. We offer some suggestions as to how the spirit of EEO legislation might be better reflected in support of Muslim jobseekers. It is concluded that an all government approach may be needed to counter the deep mistrust of Muslims in Australian society. © 2013 Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs.

This article takes two examples of trying to collect fieldwork data in dangerous or difficult circumstances in Bali and uses them to explore some issues central to qualitative research. These issues include shifting researcher subject positions in qualitative sociology approaches, and the coherence and usefulness of data collected in chaotic or risky circumstances. Methodological practices such as reflexivity are considered, as well as the task of writing research accounts up from messy and chaotic data sets. It is concluded that data collected at moments of fieldwork crisis may not be particularly useful, except as a cultural reminder of the insider/outsider status of the researcher, and to inform more productive factual data collected after the event. © 2002, Sage Publications. All rights reserved.