The political: A view from Jakarta’s kampungs

Abstract

This article is a response to Leitner and Sheppard’s recent publications on Jakarta. I argue that Jakarta’s kampungs and the eviction of their communities is a topic that needs to be situated in the realm of social reproduction. The multidimensional problems in kampungs fall within capitalism’s wider ‘crisis of care’. From this methodological position, we can access the political domain of the kampung, from which a new political agency emerges as collective bodies beyond merely the sum of individual survival tactics.