This seminar has been cancelled.
Title
The May 1998 Riots: Women Psychologists and the Entry of Trauma in Indonesian Popular Discourse
Speaker
Hans Pols (Professor, University of Sydney)
Abstract
The 3rd edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association introduced Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) to diagnose the emotional and psychological after-effects of traumatic events. In this presentation I focus on how traumatic events have been interpreted and how “trauma” and PTSD have become part of Indonesian popular discourse. Ideas around trauma and PTSD were not introduced by psychiatrists and psychologists, but by human rights activists and feminists shortly after the May riots in 1998, shortly before the resignation of Suharto. These activists supported Chinese Indonesian women who suffered sexual violence during these riots. Mental health professionals—psychiatrists and psychologists—followed years later, after the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami. I do not view Indonesians as passive recipients reproducing Western ideas on trauma; instead, I view them as actively adopting ideas on trauma and using them for their own tactical and strategic purposes.
Bio
Hans Pols, PhD, is Professor at the School of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Sydney. He is interested in the history of colonial medicine and the transformation of medical research and practice underwent during the process of decolonization. His research has focused on the Dutch East Indies and Indonesia, and on psychiatry and mental health. His book Nurturing Indonesia: Medicine and Decolonisation in the Dutch East Indies was published by Cambridge University Press in 2018. He has also published an edited volume on reactions to highly traumatizing events in Asia: Mark Micale and Hans Pols, eds. Traumatic Pasts in Asia: History, Psychiatry, and Trauma, 1930 to the Present (New York: Berghahn, 2021).