Introduction

Abstract

This chapter introduces territoriality and surveillance as key concepts for understanding fear, policing, and state power in urban Indonesia. It situates these concepts within recent anthropological scholarship on informal sovereignties globally as well as within area studies scholarship on Indonesian state power. The chapter then provides a historical overview of the research setting, Bandung, and describes how the book is organized. The chapter ends with a discussion of how research for the book was conducted, highlighting some of the ethical challenges facing ethnographers who study policing.