Christoph Antons (Newcastle, Australien): Peranakan Chinese in Indonesia: The Construction of a Community in Colonial Law and its Legacy

Abstract

When it comes to representations of communities in post-colonial societies, it is very important to distinguish between self-defined notions of ethnic identity and ethnic categorisations imposed by others. Colonial administrators in particular tended to classify populations in accordance with the economic and political goals of the colonising power. Different communities were split or lumped together under legal and administrative categories, which would define their access to law, economic opportunities and political office. The presentation will show these processes using the example of the highly acculturated minority population of the Peranakan Chinese in Indonesia, a population which traces its arrival in Southeast Asia back to the period of the Tang dynasty in China. Classified as “foreign Orientals” by the Dutch colonial government for the administration of law, the Peranakan Chinese were made permanently foreign. Because their legal status was defined in numerous laws, which survived the declaration of independence in 1945, the new nation state of Indonesia for a long time has shown an ambivalent attitude towards their inclusion in an emerging Indonesian national identity. Recent reform processes have abolished many discriminating laws, while at the same time anti-discrimination legislation has been put in place to eradicate discriminating attitudes towards Indonesian citizens of Chinese descent more broadly. The paper will show how competing visions of ethnic versus civic nationalism in Indonesia are visible in discussions about the integration of ethnic Chinese and their equality before the law. It will further show the ethnic Chinese as a very diverse community and discuss their reactions towards policies and classifications imposed upon them as well as their own understandings of their identity and position in Indonesian society.

(Prof. Dr. Christoph Antons)

Zoom Link: https://uni-bonn.zoom.us/j/91586441281?pwd=cHB4YjdPTlVPTFBEdnlCcHR4M0NCdz09
Meeting-ID: 915 8644 1281
Password: 325745

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Curriculum Vitae

Prof. Dr. Christoph Antons studied law, Southeast Asian studies, art history and anthropology at the universities of Munich, Bonn, Mainz and Passau. In 1995 he obtained his doctorate in law from the University of Amsterdam with a thesis on Intellectual Property Law in Indonesia. Since 2016, he is Professor at the Law School of the University of Newcastle, Australia. Previously he was Professor at Deakin University in Melbourne and the University of Wollongong, Associate Professor at Charles Darwin University in Darwin as well as Senior Lecturer or Lecturer at La Trobe University in Melbourne and Griffith University in Brisbane. In addition, Prof. Antons was Visiting Professor, Visiting Research Fellow and Senior Fellow at, among others, Stanford Law School, the International Institute for Asian Studies in Leiden, Netherlands, the Graduate School of International Development in Nagoya, Japan, the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Private Law in Hamburg, Singapore Management University and the University of Melbourne.

Currently, Prof. Dr. Christoph Antons is Visiting Professor at the University of Technology MARA, Shah Alam, Malaysia, Affiliated Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition in Munich, Senior Fellow at the Centre for Development Research at the University of Bonn and Senior Associate at the Centre for Indonesian Law, Islam and Society (CILIS) at the University of Melbourne.

Prof. Antons is author and editor of numerous publications on intellectual property and law and society in Asia. His research interests also include comparative law, human rights and environmental law as well as the history of law in the Asia-Pacific region. Prof. Antons was consultant to the EC-ASEAN Intellectual Property Cooperation Programme (ECAP) in Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand and Laos, QEII Fellow of the Australian Research Council (ARC), Director of the ARC Key Centre for Asia-Pacific Social Transformation Studies and the Centre for Comparative Law and Development Studies in Asia and the Pacific at the University of Wollongong, and Director of the IP in Asia project at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation, Australia.  

Since October 2020, Prof. Dr. Christoph Antons has been a Fellow at the Käte Hamburger Center „Law as Culture“ in Bonn.