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Scholars have long been preoccupied with the role that capital plays in Indonesia's democratic institutions. Observers emphasize a tight overlap between the worlds of politics and business, with many describing murky connections and corrupt alliances among state officials, oligarchs, and local bosses. While such relations remain fundamental to Indonesian politics, this paper draws attention to a parallel but under-analyzed transformation of both the social and political status of business actors in contemporary Indonesia. From tech entrepreneurs to mining giants, people with established business careers are increasingly taking up the reins of government. Once considered the inferior political and policy actor during Suharto's New Order, businesspersons now exercise direct political power and entrepreneurial success is valued, even revered, within political and policymaking circles. While evidence of such changes can be identified at different moments in Indonesia's recent history, during the presidency of businessperson politician, Joko Widodo, there has been a marked intensification of these trends. Today there is a far broader acceptance of business elites as stewards of state institutions. The result is a fusing of private power and public office in a form, and to a degree, that is unprecedented in Indonesia's political history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes how native strangeness is produced alongside native-settler, insider-outsider frictions in Indonesia. While peculiar cultural stereotypes of Indigenous others cannot be separated from Orientalism, which follows the unequal power relations established by colonialism, another dynamic that brings about these stereotypes are the messy encounters between Indigenous people and migrants. The constantly expanding circuit of extractive capital brings disciplined bodies to resource frontiers, which intermingle with local peoples in circumstances that do not allow for proper understanding of each other. However, the strange and dangerous images of Indigenous people do not only circulate among settlers, but are also employed by Indigenous communities to negotiate, vent their grievances, or assert their autonomy, especially in the years since decentralization and the massive wave of local-migrant conflicts in 1999. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]