The Islamic Fundamentalist's Politics of Dissents and the Emergence of Urban Citizenship in Yogyakarta

Abstract

This study seeks to add to the ongoing debate regarding the state of multiculturalism within Indonesia political landscape. Using Yogyakarta as an exemplary case, this study suggests that the so called radical groups’ political practices should be situated within the spatial formation of urban politics. This will shed new horizon on the political myth which has been redressing violence as values or belief-driven reproduced by certain groups and gradually expanding it as mode of political engagement. Representing space as a political register which is discursively constituted by three dominant discourses; local identities, multiculturalism, and lastly global terrorism. This study argues that Yogyakarta citizens are subjected to the interplay between these three forces which composed the urban space of Yogyakarta as a local, national and global entity. Within this context, the expression of radical groups should be viewed as politics of dissent which target to alter and appropriate the three spatial conjunctures which characterized Yogyakarta. This shows that the articulation of dissent and discontent are effective political forms to engage with the notion of urban citizenship.