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For the past thirty years, Indonesia has been trying to develop nuclear power meant to sustain energy security. The urgency to go nuclear is currently becoming stronger particularly due to ongoing energy crisis caused by rapid depletion in Indonesia’s oil reserves. The Indonesian state nuclear agency proposes to have four nuclear power plants built in Jepara, Central Java. The first construction is planned to commence very soon to be operating commercially by 2016. The state’s desire for nuclear power, however, has been responded very critically by civil society groups that view the state’s nuclear energy planning malicious and hazardous. The apprehension comes from a conviction that the state has no adequate capacity to operate high-risk technology such as nuclear energy. An anti-nuclear alliance constituted by a number of grassroots groups concentrated in Jepara emerges to curb the construction of Indonsia’s first nuclear power plant. Delving into the engagement of civil society groups in highly technocratic issues of nuclear power organized by state technocrats, this seminar brings into spotlight the contestation between the state and civil society that characterize the state-society relation in Indonesia after the collapse of the New Order regime. The seminar highlights two issues. First, it examines the logic and rationality that drive the state’s ambition to go nuclear. While it touches mostly on domestic politics, international factors are briefly discussed. Second, it observes the rise of organized resistance coordinated by civil society groups and how these groups encounter the discourse of nuclear risks constructed by the state. The seminar concludes by discussing two fundamental changes in the contemporary state-society relation in Indonesia.

Dr. Sulfikar Amir is an assistant professor in the Division of Sociology at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He completed a PhD in Science and Technology Studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. His research interests cover technological nationalism, sociology of technology, sociology of risk, development, and Southeast Asian studies. His articles have published in journals such as Asian Survey, Indonesia, Technology in Society, and Bulletin of Science, Technology, and Society.