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Urban Security Governance in Contemporary Jakarta
Book chapter   Peer reviewed

Urban Security Governance in Contemporary Jakarta

Ian Douglas Wilson
Governing Urban Indonesia
ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute, Singapore
2024
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Abstract

urban security indonesia Jakarta private security security governance urban inequality Urban sociology and community studies
Security is a significant structuring force in Indonesian cities, with public and private security practices having multiple and overlapping implications for the daily lives of residents. These range from the patchworks of social segregation produced by privately securitised spaces of middle and upper-class residential enclaves, through to the daily existential challenges of securing access to essential resources such as housing, space and livelihood faced by the urban poor. Many sources of insecurity for residents, from the ubiquitous to public order regimes and the police, are also at the same time frequently guarantors of security. As such security, and its governance, acts as a reflection of and a catalyst for social, economic, and political divisions and interests. The paper explores the dynamics of political contestation over urban security governance in Jakarta, Indonesia’s largest urban centre, emphasising the blurred lines between private and public security regimes.  It does so via an analysis of the relational dynamics between militias and kampung neighbourhoods in Jakarta, highlighting tensions between ormas as hired enforcers of powerful clients, but also as highly dependent upon community approval. It also considers the growth in popularity of private security providers among the cities upper middle-classes, and the anti-democratic reconfiguration of urban public-private space.

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