Peter J.M. Nas
"Cities are places full of symbols. In the past decades, Indonesian cities have
become the cradle of urban symbolism studies. In this article, the author
presents the results of these studies. The cities researched differ tremendously,
ranging from the national capital to provincial capitals and small towns; some
of them, such as Jakarta, are purely colonial in origin, while others are more or
less traditional in character. Some of them have a top-down symbolic structure,
largely the product of government activities, while others have symbolic
configurations which have a more grassroots character and are based in the
religious domain. The methodological aspect of urban symbolism fieldwork is
explored by the introduction of the concept of flâneur."
