(Non)governing machine: Seized activism and NGOization as forms of governance in Indonesia

Abstract

NGOization is argued as a key process to the expansion of neoliberalized development, feminist movement, and authentic democratization. Anthropologists have challenged neoliberal assumptions behind NGOization. This article extends the debate by investigating how a nongovernmental organization (NGO) project that initially claimed to buttress egalitarian grassroots activism has undergone NGOization with its public discourse and practice integrated into state work, encapsulating what I theorize as “(non)governing machine”—the apparent nongovernment entity that possesses a systematic power and authority to regulate knowledge and population. Drawing from an ethnographic study of an NGO and local politics in Mollo, Indonesia, my argument is threefold. First, I argue that NGOization enables a specific form of governmentality that has allowed the state to increase its surveillance of, and power over, the population. Second, this article proposes that local politics can be a strong impetus to the establishment of NGOization. Finally, by coining the (non)governing machine, I theorize NGOization as a form of governance, pointing at the productivity and vulnerability of NGO form as a “hybrid formation” that grapples between local politics and transnational networks of power and capital.