Welcome to Pusat Dokumentasi Arsitektur Library

Buku Detail

Engineers Of Happy Land : Technology And Nationalism In A Colony

Format : Buku

Call Number
DDC: 959.803

ISBN/ISSN
0691091617

Impresum
Rudolf Mrazek - New Jersey [us] : Princeton University Press, 2002

Deskripsi
xvii, 311 hlm.: ilus.; 23 cm.
Engineers Of Happy Land : Technology And Nationalism In A Colony
Rudolf Mrazek

ISBN 0-691-09161-7 (soft); 0-691-09162-5 (hard)

Summary:
In Engineers of Happy Land Rudolph Mrazek takes his readers on a journey through time, from the 1890s to the 1990s, and leads them to various places in the Indonesian archipelago. It is based on a close reading of a rich variety of primary and secondary sources in Dutch and Malay/Indonesian, and examines technology and early colonial modernity.;Based on close reading of historical documents--poetry as much as statistics--and focused on the conceptualization of technology, this book is an unconventional evocation of late colonial Netherlands East Indies (today Indonesia). In considering technology and the ways that people use and think about things, Rudolf Mrázek invents an original way to talk about freedom, colonialism, nationalism, literature, revolution, and human nature.;The central chapters comprise vignettes and take up, in turn, transportation (from shoes to road-building to motorcycle clubs), architecture (from prison construction to home air-conditioning), optical technologies (from photography to fingerprinting), clothing and fashion, and the introduction of radio and radio stations. The text clusters around a group of fascinating recurring characters representing colonialism, nationalism, and the awkward, inevitable presence of the European cultural, intellectual, and political avant-garde: Tillema, the pharmacist-author of Kromoblanda; the explorer/engineer IJzerman; the Javanese princess Kartina; the Indonesia nationalist journalist Mas Marco; the Dutch novelist Couperus; the Indonesian novelist Pramoedya Ananta Toer; and Dutch left-wing liberal Wim Wertheim and his wife.;In colonial Indies, as elsewhere, people employed what Proust called remembering and what Heidegger called thinging to sense and make sense of the world. In using this observation to approach Indonesian society, Mrázek captures that society off balance, allowing us to see it in unfamiliar positions. The result is a singular work with surprises for readers throughout the social sciences, not least those interested in Southeast Asia or colonialism more broadly.

1. Language as Asphalt -- Bare Feet -- Hard and Clean Roads -- Struggle for the Roads -- Language-game -- Bahasa Indonesia, "Indonesian Language"
2. Towers -- Homes on Wheels and Floating Homes -- The Cities -- The Camps -- The Towers
3. From Darkness to Light -- The City of Light -- Dactyloscopy -- The Floodlight -- The Sublime -- The Mirror
4. Indonesian Dandy -- The Dolls -- The Modern Times -- Nationalism and the Birth of the Dandy -- The Death of the Dandy -- The Parade
5. Let Us Become Radio Mechanics -- The Metaphor -- The Thing -- The Voice -- The Closed Circuits -- The Mechanics
Epilogue: Only the Deaf Can Hear Well -- Sjahrir Recalled -- Memories of Holland -- Time in Three Dimensions -- Bacteria -- The Splendid Radio -- The Mouth of Karundeng -- Sportsmen-Dandies-Jokers-Engineers -- Ear Culture -- The Happy End.

Copyrights © 2016 Pusat Dokumentasi Arsitektur. All rights reserved