Genre publics: Aktuil magazine and middle class youth in 1970s Indonesia

摘要

This article is a study, with revisionist intent, of a point in Indonesia’s history that some analysts have referred to as its “capitalist revolution”. In it, I revisit the question of how this “revolution” gave birth to Indonesia’s middle class, and the capacity of this middle class to serve as agents of democratic change. A common presumption about Indonesia’s middle class is that its growth was enabled by the counter-revolutionary ideology and Development program of the New Order state (1966-98), and the article calls for a reconceptualization of their origins by drawing attention to the important role of the press, and of popular music, both of which were radically reorganized on the advent of the New Order, in constituting them.