Pop Culture as Argument and Aspiration

Abstract

The scholarship on post-authoritarian Indonesia has taken a relatively passive attitude to theorizing popular culture-either presupposing the category absolutely, or invoking prior theorists as authorities without querying the coherence or applicability of their accounts and terminology. As the contributions to this special issue mean to suggest, the question of popular culture may require more careful consideration-not least given its alleged importance for our understanding of recent developments in politics, religion and the economy. This introductory essay provides a brief synopsis of the articles and a survey of the key issues addressed.