Summer School on Child Separation 2024

Memoryscapes of children’s education in faith-based institutions in Indonesia (1890-1980)

Workshop & Summer School
5 – 14 August 2024
7th Floor Soegondo Building, Faculty of Cultural Sciences, Universitas Gadjah Mada
Jalan Nusantara 1 Bulaksumur, Yogyakarta 55281 INDONESIA

 

Introduction

This workshop and summer school program examines the scope, spread and development of faith‐based child separation in (post-)colonial Indonesia (1890‐1980). It investigates policies and practices of institutional education of children separate from their parents, kin and community. Such policies and practices underpinned structural cultural and social assimilation of children into ‘governable subjects’. Their education is to be a considered a linch pin of colonial governance. This Summer School introduces the concept of child separation and aims to integrate voices and perspectives of separated children and their kin. Life stories of individual children integrate structural historical analysis and personal sources.

The concept of ‘child separation’ derives from a large body of literature on policies concerning children in (post-)colonial settler and extraction colonies (Sen 2005, 2007; Saada 2012; Firpo 2016; Firpo & Jacobs 2018). It involves the physical separation as well as the discursive distancing of children from the community and culture of (one of) their birth parents. Form, degree of coercion or cooperation, permanency, level of institutionalisation and their legal grounding differ widely: more or less forcible and permanent removal and appropriation; manumission from enslavement and subsequent fostering; discursive, legal and actual ‘orphaning’ or ‘de‐kinning’; forced or consensual stay at orphanages and boarding schools; consensual or coerced fostering or adoption (Mak, Monteiro & Wesseling 2020: 7).

Whereas child separation has been thoroughly investigated in countries such as Canada, Australia, and Vietnam, hardly anything concrete is known about the policies and practices of child separation in colonial and post-colonial Indonesia. Here too, interferences with children seem to have been at the heart of (post-)colonial governance from the start of the Dutch imperial administration in the Indonesian archipelago. Colonial administrators often ‘outsourced’ the upbringing of various groups of children to Islamic, Protestant and Catholic faith‐based organisations, which provided a broad range of out‐of‐home care and education.

 

Faith‐based organisations

The role of Christian and Islamic faith-based organisations in institutional upbringing of children has hardly been touched upon in Dutch and Indonesian (colonial) historiography (Raben 2013; Derksen 2021). Only a few case studies refer to Catholic orders, Protestant missionary organisations and Islamic charities which ran institutions ranging from orphanages, children’s homes and reformatories to (compulsory) boarding schools and pesantren (Dirks 2011; Van der Loo 2015; Rosen Jacobson 2018; Kamphuis 2019). Moreover, financial and other entanglements of these faith-based organizations with colonial and presumably post-colonial administrators have been generally overlooked (Mak, Monteiro & Wesseling 2020; Derksen 2021; compare Vallgårda 2015). These relations, however, clarify how faith‐based child separation underpinned governance by aiming at the structural, cultural and social assimilation of children.

Yogyakarta is an excellent location to examine Christian and Islamic faith-based education institutions, their entanglements with local and other authorities, as well as potential contacts they had amongst each other. The participants will focus on the history of three faith-based institutions in the greater Yogyakarta area: Panti Asuhan Santa Maria Ganjuran, Panti Asuhan Yatim (PAY) Muhammadiyah Ngampilan in Yogyakarta and Oranje Nassau Institute in Magelang. They will work with printed and unprinted sources, with visual and documentary sources from Dutch and Indonesian (archival) collections. Moreover, they will learn how to do oral history interviews in order to collect memories and stories connected to the institutions, their surroundings and neighbours.

 

Objectives

The objectives of this workshop and summer school program are:

  1. to exchange and produce knowledge on the policies and practices of children upbringing in faith-based institutions in colonial and post-colonial Indonesia.
  2. to enrich and deepen formal and institutional narratives about child separation with a variety of potential printed and unprinted, visual and documentary sources nd research methods
  3. to connect these sources and methods in memoryscapes: a location-based approach of three institutions which includes tracing pupils of and others involved in these institutions in order to document their experiences with child separation.
  4. to create a short (developed step-by-step) documentary video.

 

Programme and Courses

One-day public workshop:
Colonial childhoods: actors, practices, politics and histories

Eight-days long summer school:
Location-based investigation of faith-based institutions of children’s education

Courses include:

  1. Child separation: Conceptualizations of terms in connection to institutional education, geared towards historical research
  2. Memoryscapes: Location-based research in Indonesia as method for investigating and documenting sensitive, unofficial or uncharted histories
  3. Embodied knowledge: Exploring memories, experiences and narratives connected to locations: what (is this about)- who (can you ask or invite to participate) – how (in what way and under what conditions)
  4. Exploration of documentary and visual heritage related to Catholic, Protestant and Islamic: Panti Asuhan Santa Maria Ganjuran, Oranje Nassau Institute Magelang and Panti Asuhan Yatim (PAY) Muhammadiyah Ngampilan, Jogjakarta.
  5. Child care archives and documents in Catholic, Protestant and Islamic institutions in Panti Asuhan Santa Maria Ganjuran, Oranje Nassau Institute Magelang and Panti Asuhan Yatim (PAY) Muhammadiyah Ngampilan, Jogjakarta.
  6. Drawing up a plan of work for the location-based fieldwork, collaboration and division of tasks
  7. Group fieldworks: collection, analysis, reflection, and reporting.

 

Speakers

  1. Prof. dr. Marit Monteiro – Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands
  2. Prof. dr. Bambang Purwanto – Department of History, Gadjah Mada University, Indonesia
  3. Dr. Indria Laksmi Gamayanti – Faculty of Public Health and Medicine, Gadjah Mada University, Indonesia
  4. Dr. Chiara Candaele – ING-Huygens Institute, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
  5. Dr. Hayu Adi Darmarastri – Sebelas Maret University, Indonesia
  6. Prof. dr. Geertje Mak – ING-Huygens Institute Amsterdam, The Netherlands
  7. Radhiya Anasya Tsabitta, B.A. – Gadjah Mada University, Indonesia
  8. Eka Ningtyas, M.A. – State University of Yogyakarta, Indonesia / Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales (INACOS) Paris, France
  9. Dr. Agus Suwignyo – Gadjah Mada University, Indonesia
  10. Dr. Helene van Klinken – former UN Political Affairs officer, Australia; cofounder Istóriaku
  11. Galuh Wandita – Asian Justice and Rights (AJAR) Jakarta, Indonesia (to be confirmed)
  12. Dr. Maaike Derksen – Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands
  13. Hotmauli Sidabalok – Universitas Katolik Soegijapranata, Indonesia
  14. Prof. dr. Martijn Eickhoff – Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies (NIOD) / University of Groningen, The Netherlands
  15. Dr. Rhoma Dwi Aria Yuliantri – State University of Yogyakarta, Indonesia
  16. Prof. Amelia Fauzia, Ph.D. – State Islamic University of Jakarta, Indonesia
  17. Dr. Widya Fitria Ningsih – Gadjah Mada University, Indonesia
  18. Riza Afita Surya, M.A. – Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands
  19. Prof. dr. Susane Legêne – Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands

 

Eligibility

This Summer School programme is open for Bachelor, Master and PhD students, history teachers, and practitioners in historical studies including community historians who:

  1. show a strong interest in research about child education and upbringings in faith-based institutions in (post-)colonial Indonesia.
  2. have an ability to communicate in English both orally and in writing.
  3. are committed to join the entire workshop and summer school programmes.
  4. are able to cover their own transports to/from their places of origin to/from Yogyakarta.
  5. send in a maximum of 500-word long statement of motivation describing why you are interested to join the programme, relevant experiences (if any), and research plan related to this topic of this programme.

 

How to apply

Please supply all required information and documents by filling form in the link below.

Register

 

Important dates

Call for Applications: 15 May – 19 June 2024
Application deadline: 19 June (23.59 Western Indonesian Time/WIB)
Announcement of successful applications: 30 June 2024
Workshop and summer school: 5 – 14 August 2024

 

Contact

History Department, Faculty of Cultural Sciences, Gadjah Mada University
Jalan Nusantara 1 Bulaksumur, Yogyakarta 55281
Email: riza.surya@ru.nl

Organised by

  • Radboud University
  • NL-Lab of ING-Huygens
  • Department of History, Universitas Gadjah Mada
  • UNIKA Soegijapranata

Last updated: 16 June 2024
Cover Image: Kinderhuis van het Leger des Heils aan de Toentangscheweg te Salatiga (http://hdl.handle.net/1887.1/item:838469)