Search
Program Calendar
Browse By Day
Browse By Time
Browse By Person
Browse By Room
Browse By Area of Study
Browse By Session Type
Browse By Discipline
Search Tips
AAS 2017 Print Program (coming soon)
Personal Schedule
Sign In
At the start of the 20th century, emerging middle classes in colonial Indonesia adopted a new mass culture. The visuality of this new mass culture is reflected in advertisements which helped to shape new lifestyles. These middle classes were for a long time excluded from the historical record because their existence was on the one hand marginalized by dominant colonial categories like “peasants”, “aristocrats”, “Chinese”, and on the other by an exclusive focus on the role of nationalists who monopolized the historiography of the new nation state. As a result one failed to see the crucial role of these middle classes within the colonial system. They were the children of the colonial state and for that matter the ancestors of a future Indonesia.