Making space, culture, and community: literacy cafés as urban public spaces in Indonesia

Abstract

This study investigates the transformation of cafés in urban Indonesia from consumption-oriented venues into literacy-based cultural infrastructures. Most existing scholarship has situated coffee shops in the context of lifestyle consumption, branding, and middle-class identity formation, with very little research on cafés as socially produced spaces, created by everyday practices to develop a literacy community. Employing the lens of critical spatial theory, and integrating perspectives on social capital and cultural economy, this article examines how two literacy cafés in Malang, Indonesia, establish space, develop culture and relationships, and make products to foster literacy community. Using an interpretive qualitative methodology based on observation, document analysis, and interview, this study claims that the sustainability of these cafés is constituted by four interconnected processes: space making, culture making, relationship making, and product making. The research reveals how literacy cafés act as hybrid public spaces where economic activities are subordinated to intellectual and cultural commitments, thus generating sustained networks, symbolic value, and a habitus of discussion and knowledge exchange. This study enhances the understanding of the public space and literacy culture study by revealing that literacy cafés serve not merely as sites of consumption but also as social spaces that actively produce literacy practices.