Archipelagic Nationalism and Chinese Food Culture in New Order Indonesia: Making Indonesian Food, Erasing Chinese Food

This paper examines the history of Indonesian nationalism in terms of relationships with Chinese food culture. The paper explores how colonial inheritances, assimilationist ideology and the emergence of an archipelagic nationalism included and excluded Chinese foodways in New Order era embargoes on and erasures of Chinese cultural expression. By looking at the way food was and was not included in the bans on public performances of Chinese culture, I explore how Chinese-Indonesian culture was constructed, produced, and framed in the New Order era in light of the culture bans. I do this by first looking for the historical roots of New Order nationalism and assimilation and seeking to understand how these relations of power informed what was considered Indonesian and what was considered Chinese. I then look at how the Chinese origin of Indonesian food culture was erased from collective memory by these processes. I propose that an archipelagic nationalism was produced in Indonesia through a claim to “unity in diversity” which relied on the exclusion of groups within Indonesia’s boundaries from that unification.Keywords:Southeast Asian Studies, Chinese Studies, Anthropology of Food, Nationalism, Malaysia, Communism, Indonesia, China, EmpirePlease cite as:Oman-Reagan, Michael P. 2013. “Archipelagic Nationalism and Chinese Food Culture in New Order Indonesia: Making Indonesian Food, Erasing Chinese Food.” SocArXiv, Open Science Framework. Manuscript, submitted January 23, 2017. osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/cm7eu