Mussels and Megaprojects: Landscape Structure and Structural Inequality at Jakarta’s Coast

Abstract

Structural inequality is typically analysed as a human issue. In contrast, this article explores how multispecies approaches can illuminate how structural inequality is (re)produced through more-than-human landscapes. It focuses on Jakarta, Indonesia, where anthropogenic subsidence is pulling the coastline into the sea. Coastal kampung settlements, already marginalised, face increased flooding and displacement by seawall infrastructures. By combining colonial histories of delta infrastructures with ethnographic attention to kampung Maura Turun and the Asian green mussels that its residents cultivate, the article examines how subsidence is produced and how inequalities are made through landscapes of water and waste. Mussels are engaged as a tracing device, an entry point into the overlapping, situated crises entangled with subsidence that kampung dwellers experience. Overall, the article proposes that paying attention to more-than-human relations, in this case with mussels, can illuminate an ecological dimension of structural inequality.