Anthropology Seminar Series:

Entanglement with Leftovers: Papuan Endurance in the Margins of Urban Colonization

Speaker: Hatib Abdul Kadir (Universitas Brawijaya)

Host: Dr Sophie Chao

Join via Zoom

3:00–5:00 PM (Sydney time, GMT+10)

This paper deploys the concepts of “leftover engagements” (Jaramillo, 2020) and “endurance” (Povinelli, 2011) to explore how Papuans in Sorong town engage with leftover non-human entities as a practice of resilience, sustained in the face of the imminent annihilation of their ways of life. My presentation will focus primarily on the experiences of Papuans who pick up leftover sands in rivers affected by large-scale sand mining in the hill lands. These communities inhabit swampy areas, where they cut mangrove trunks, dig dead coral rocks, and sell them to obtain housing material supplies. Alternative employment options in the area are scarce, and Papuans often face racial discrimination from Indonesians who settle and dominate in urban spaces in Sorong (Munro, 2019). In this presentation, I reflect on Papuan liveability on the margins of capitalism and on how Papuans manage to persist despite ongoing suffering and discrimination. By attending to remnants, I examine human and nonhumans’ capacity to stay alive despite ecological degradation, economic marginalization, racial discrimination, and uncertain futures.

Hatib A. Kadir is a lecturer in the Department of Anthropology at Universitas Brawijaya, Indonesia.