An Introduction to the Special Editions on Indonesian Knowledge Decolonization

Abstract

Indonesian Knowledge CulturesKnowledge is a new topic in the historiography of Indonesia. This is a salutary development, because "knowledge" pervades every corner of society. Whether we are concerned with food production, health care, governance, industry or education, forms of knowledge are involved. Knowledge(s) and society are deeply connected. The ways in which particular bodies of knowledge are construed, produced, and validated are often informed by cultural, political, and socio-economic processes, which in turn are themselves the products of procedures that in one way or another involved knowledge.The intertwinement of knowledge and society makes the decades before and after Indonesian independence a fascinating period in the history of knowledge. In February 2020, some 25 scholars from Indonesia, Japan, Australia, and the Netherlands gathered at Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta to discuss issues concerning the production, dissemination, uses and validations of knowledge in these crucial years. The period gains its importance from the fact that Indonesians faced the task of defining the parameters of the new nation, to address the legacies of the colonial past, and to adjust these to the needs and uses of the independent country. They had to deal with many questions: what kinds of knowledge production and dissemination should have priority, what kind of institutions were needed, and what should be kept from colonial times and what could be discarded? Did Indonesia really need modern knowledge or was there an alternative? These questions were not just about a new infrastructure to promote knowledge, but were manifestations of a deeply political and ideological search project for the fundaments of Indonesian society.The articles in this and the next issue of Lembaran Sejarah are the outcome of this conference and explore the abovementioned questions about the production, institutionalization, dissemination, discourses and uses of knowledge in early-independent Indonesia, with some excursions to late-colonial times. The present edition contains the articles written by Ahmad Nashih Luthfi, Wahyu Suriyani, Sebastiaan Broere, Nur Janti and Didi Kwartanada and explore the decolonization of knowledge cultures on the fields of health, land tenure, racial classification and agricultural programs. The next issue of the