Abstract
Commentators have often cited a deepening of identity-based social fault lines across Indonesia’s vast sociopolitical landscape. Yet the country has experienced little of the kinds of communal conflict or electoral turmoil of near neighbours in recent years. Drawing on observations of electoral politics in Jakarta, this article argues that top-down electoral polarization bears little resemblance to how identity and difference are experienced and utilized as pragmatic resources in the urban politics of the everyday. This dynamic helps to explain why the parameters of electoral polarization have dissipated post-election and failed to translate into deeper forms of societal-level conflict.
