Issues
v15n2, 2026
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Femininizing ‘outer’ islands of Indonesia: gendered aestheticization and exoticization in Wonderful Indonesia’s tourism promotional videos PDF 10.21463/jmic.2026.15.2.01AbstractKeywords
With their natural beauty, Indonesian islands have been developed into tourist attractions and intensively promoted by the state. This study examines tourism narratives of Indonesian islands in promotional videos produced by the Indonesian Ministry of Tourism and Creative Economy and published on its official YouTube channel, Wonderful Indonesia. Focusing on videos featuring Likupang (2022), Bangka-Belitung (2022), and Sumba (2020), the study analyses how these islands are discursively constituted and rendered as desirable destinations. The findings reveal how state-driven tourism promotion reproduces political and cultural imaginaries of the “Outer” islands as spaces distant from Java, the center of the country’s political and economic life. The videos also reproduce a colonial gaze through the feminine aestheticization and exoticization of the islands, framed through tropes of untouched beauty, mystery, and discovery. Women are positioned ambivalently as both subjects and objects of the tourist gaze, with their bodies mobilized to embody the islands’ beauty and mystique while signifying promises of pleasure and exotic experience. Local women, in particular, are foregrounded to symbolize natural beauty and cultural authenticity, celebrating difference while simultaneously domesticating and commodifying the ‘Outer’ islands for tourism consumption by global audiences, as part of Indonesia’s broader project of nation branding and tourism-driven economic development.
outer island, aestheticization, tourist gaze, femininization, exotic
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The Boat That Rocked the Ocean: Maritime Heritage and Indigenous Perspectives at the Evergreen Maritime Museum, Taipei PDF 10.21463/jmic.2026.15.2.02AbstractKeywords
This article offers critical reflections on the Evergreen Maritime Museum in Taipei, Taiwan. It examines six key artifacts from the permanent collection as windows into the museum's curatorial priorities and the tensions between its corporate identity and its Taiwan-specific maritime heritage. The six objects are the bamboo sailing raft of Kaohsiung, the Wang Ye ceremonial boat and koi pennant, the stellar board (qianxingban) replica, the painting ‘HMB Endeavour Breached for Repairs’ by J. Steven Dews, the Evergreen container ship models, and the Tao boat of Orchid Island. These are situated within the relevant scholarly literatures in maritime anthropology, museum studies, and folklore studies. The article argues that while the museum presents a rich and accessible collection, its dominant narrative of global commercial maritime modernity and technological progress overshadows a more distinctive yet less-known story rooted in Indigenous seafaring cultures, folk religion, and the Austronesian connections that link Taiwan to Pacific Island cultures. A comparative analysis with other small-scale maritime museums in Southeast Asia, through the lens of Indigenous inclusion and living maritime heritage technologies, is proposed for future work.
"maritime museum, Taiwan, Indigenous seafaring, Tao people, Austronesian, museum studies, corporate heritage
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Youths in Search of Place: Lessons from Spain’s Generation of ’98 for Busan and Jeju PDF 10.21463/jmic.2026.15.2.03AbstractKeywords
This study examines the public sphere formation associated with Spain’s Generation of ’98 and employs it as a comparative framework for understanding contemporary youth crises in Busan and Jeju, South Korea. We analyze three aspects of public sphere vitality—openness, rational-critical discourse, and institutional impact—using Habermas’s theory of the public sphere. As the analysis demonstrates, the youth crisis in Busan is not only an outcome of economic contraction, demographic decline, and out-migration in a post-industrial society but also the result of the loss of independent cultural spaces and inadequate structural conditions for youth discourse to affect policy. In contrast, Jeju is experiencing a youth crisis stemming from tourism-centric development, increases in living pressures, and the disappearance of local and traditional cultural spaces. In both contexts, the difficulties faced by young people are both socioeconomic in nature and a consequence of the contraction of communicative spaces where young people can interpret regional change, voice shared concerns, and forge collective futures. The Generation of ’98 is a case in point of how intellectual/cultural agents can create a movement that turns crisis into public reflection, albeit within a bounded and socially limited arena. Drawing on this comparison, we propose a youth-led regional cultural commons as a tool for enhancing the agency, deliberative participation, and regionally-based democratic renewal of young people.
Busan City–Jeju Island, Generation of ’98, Public Sphere, Youth Crisis, Regional Decline
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Visual Politics of the Japanese Empire and the Dehistoricization of the South Seas Mandate: Representing Tropical Space in Postcard Images PDF 10.21463/jmic.2026.15.2.04AbstractKeywords
This study examines how the South Seas Mandate (Nan’yō) was visually constructed through postcards produced under the Japanese Empire. While the South Seas Mandate functioned as a key site of Japan’s southward expansion, it was not simply incorporated into the imperial domain as a pre-given space; rather, it required cultural and visual mediation in order to be recognized within Japanese society as a “new southern region.” In this process, postcards played a central role in shaping how the region was perceived and imagined.
Focusing on approximately twelve postcard images, this study argues that the South Seas Mandate was represented as a dehistoricized tropical space through a systematic visual regime. These postcards repeatedly depict tropical landscapes and indigenous life while largely excluding historical traces and social conditions. Through this selective visual composition, the region is presented not as a historically layered place but as a stable and timeless environment. At the same time, images of modern infrastructure and administrative space depict the South Seas Mandate as an ordered and governed environment, while omitting the violence and labor underlying colonial development.
Building on Edward W. Said’s insight into the ahistorical logic of imperial representation, and extending the critique articulated by Naoto Horikiri regarding the surface-oriented and depoliticized nature of Japan’s southern imagination, this study demonstrates that visual images did not merely reflect colonial space but actively produced it. In particular, it shows how these representations contributed to the production of topophilia, understood as an affective attachment to place mediated through visual images.
By analyzing these visual strategies, this study argues that the South Seas Mandate was not simply represented but actively constructed as a “tropical paradise” through imperial visual politics. In doing so, it highlights how colonial space was produced not only through physical control, but also through the organization of perception and affect.
South Seas Mandate, Nan’yō, visual politics, dehistoricization, topophilia, colonial visual culture, postcards
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Islandness, Sub-State Agency, and the Resilience of Sasak MSMEs in the Mandalika Economic Zone PDF 10.21463/jmic.2026.15.2.05AbstractKeywords
This article examines how the Sasak people of Lombok, Indonesia, navigate identity, cultural preservation, and economic survival amid an externally imposed Mandalika Economic Zone development project. Drawing on original fieldwork comprising ten in-depth semi-structured interviews with MSME actors including weavers, homestay operators, local traders, youth leaders, and a civil society representative, this article argues that islandness can be understood not merely as geographic insularity but as a condition of cultural boundedness and adaptive subjectivity. Such boundedness, as this article argues, constitutes a distinct form of resilience for Sasak communities. Rather than passivity in the face of large-scale commodification, Sasak MSMEs exhibit a form of sub-state agency: asserting cultural identity, negotiating market access, and contesting developmental narratives without formal political authority. Utilising Baldacchino’s theorisation of islandness as resource, Grydehøj’s framework of island identity politics, and some International Relations ideas on constructivist concepts of identity and norm contestation, this paper argues that the Sasak case shows how island communities mobilise cultural boundedness as a strategic asset in the global tourism economy.
islandness, Lombok, Mandalika, Sasak, MSME, constructivism, cultural resilience, sub-state agency, tourism commodification
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The Hierarchical Reciprocal Order in the Premodern East Asian Maritime Realm: Focused on the Repatriation System of Jeju Castaways PDF 10.21463/jmic.2026.15.2.06AbstractKeywords
The premodern East Asian maritime region was a space in which various political entities and seafaring populations interacted to forge a distinct international order. By analyzing historical incidents of Jeju islanders’ drift to foreign lands and their return, this study demonstrates that the regional framework extended far beyond a mere vertical system of domination. Rather, it functioned as a ‘hierarchical reciprocal order’ in which mutual protection and responsibility operated even within a symbolic hierarchy. During this period, the Hua-Yi order (a Sinocentric center-periphery framework) and the Confucian ideology of yechi (禮治, ritual governance) in East Asia viewed castaways as subjects to be protected within the civilized world. This perception was institutionally embodied through the political principles of sadae-jaso (事大字小, serving the great and cherishing the small) and yuwon-mui (柔遠撫邇, placating those from afar and soothing those near). Driven by these principles, a series of repatriation procedures for foreign castaways became established as an official interstate administrative framework within the investiture-tribute system. In particular, from the eighteenth century onward, bolstered by the expansion of the Qing dynasty’s maritime dominion and the stabilization of diplomatic and trade networks among East Asian states, the castaway repatriation system became increasingly systematic. In sum, this paper comparatively analyzes the historical cases of Jeju islanders who drifted to China, Japan, Ryukyu, Taiwan, and Annam (Vietnam), examining the repatriation mechanisms enacted by each country of landfall. The findings confirm that the premodern East Asian repatriation system for castaways was not limited to benevolent rescue activities. Rather, it functioned as a ‘peacekeeping mechanism’ inherent to the maritime order, effectively combining a civilized hierarchical structure with practical cooperation.
Premodern East Asian maritime region, Jeju castaways, Repatriation of castaways, Hierarchical reciprocal order, Confucian ritual order, Investiture-tribute system
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Tuang Sampeu against Gastro-colonialism: Reshaping Food Resilience through Tradition among the Cireundeu Indigenous People of Java Island, Indonesia PDF 10.21463/jmic.2026.15.2.07AbstractKeywords
Amid the systemic pressures of global capitalism and the historical legacy of gastro-colonialism, the Cireundeu indigenous people of West Java, Indonesia, have demonstrated a profound form of food sovereignty spanning over a century. This study employs a decolonial framework and Foucaultian genealogy to analyze the Cireundeu community’s resistance to the homogenization of rice-based diets imposed during the Dutch colonial era. By prioritizing cassava (tuang sampeu) as a primary staple, the community has effectively enacted epistemic de-linking, transforming a biological necessity into an embodied praxis of cultural and economic independence. The findings reveal that while modern pressures, such as formal education and market commodification, threaten to dilute indigenous knowledge, the Cireundeu people maintain their heritage through internal organizational structures and a philosophy of adaptability (Ngindung ka Waktu, Mibapa ka Jaman). This paper argues that the Cireundeu model offers a vital alternative to the resource curse and provides a resilient framework for sustainable food systems in peripheral regions. Ultimately, their struggle underscores the importance of diversifying food systems as a prerequisite for true national and regional sovereignty in the Global South.
Cireundeu indigenous people, decoloniality, food resilience, gastro-colonialism, indigenous island cultures, Tuang Sampeu
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Rapid Vulnerability Assessment of Coastal Insular Ecosystems: Application to Algerian Islands PDF 10.21463/jmic.2026.15.2.08AbstractKeywords
Assessing the vulnerability of insular environments has become a major challenge in the context of increasing anthropogenic pressures and climate-change impacts. This study proposes a rapid environmental vulnerability assessment methodology, here applied to the best of the authors' knowledge in the international peer-reviewed literature to all Algerian coastal islands. The framework is based on a Global Vulnerability Index (GVI) integrating 21 ecological, socio-economic and environmental criteria, weighted using a hierarchical Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) with two levels (cluster and sub-criterion) to ensure that all pairwise comparison matrices satisfy Saaty's consistency threshold (CR < 0.10). This approach enables the prioritization of pressure levels affecting insular ecosystems using accessible data, while ensuring methodological robustness and reproducibility. A total of 36 representative insular sites were selected from 611 identified along the Algerian coastline and analyzed under five thematic scenarios: a balanced Normal scenario, plus Fishing, Tourism, Urbanization and Ecological-Sensitivity scenarios. The results were integrated into a Geographic Information System (GIS) to produce vulnerability maps. Spatial analysis highlights clear regional contrasts: marked heterogeneity in the western sector (GVI 0.21 – 0.80), more uniform vulnerability in the central sector driven by diffuse urbanization (GVI 0.40 – 0.51), and dominant fishing pressures in the eastern sector (GVI 0.36 – 0.56). A Monte-Carlo sensitivity analysis (±10 % and ±20 % perturbations of the AHP weights, 1 000 iterations) confirmed the robustness of the rankings (mean Spearman ρ > 0.98). A Chi-square goodness-of-fit test against a uniform distribution further confirmed that the GVI discriminates significantly between sites (χ² = 92.6, df = 4, p < 0.001). The methodology provides an operational decision-support tool for coastal management.
Vulnerability, Anthropogenic pressure, Insular ecosystems, Modelling, Algeria
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Beyond the S-Curve: Integrating Tourism Area Life Cycle and Systems Thinking to Navigate Tourism Complexity on Con Dao Islands PDF 10.21463/jmic.2026.15.2.10AbstractKeywords
Tourism drives the economy of small islands but frequently exceeds ecological and social carrying capacities, undermining long-term sustainability. While Butler’s Tourism Area Life Cycle (TALC) model is widely used to assess destination maturity, it offers a linear, deterministic view that often fails to capture the complex, non-linear interactions driving destination evolution. Addressing this limitation, this study integrates TALC with a qualitative Systems Thinking approach to map the causal mechanisms among sustainability challenges in the case of Con Dao Islands, Vietnam. Results position the island in the transition to the “Consolidation” stage; however, the systems analysis reveals critical structural vulnerabilities hidden by standard growth metrics. Crucially, the analysis highlights the absence of a proactive regulatory feedback loop, suggesting the current system is designed to self-correct only through environmental decline. This study offers a holistic dynamic hypothesis to guide policymakers from reactive planning toward resilient, systemic management.
TALC, Systems Thinking, Causal Loop Diagram, Sustainable Tourism, Con Dao
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The Bajau community regards the sea as the primary spatial domain of its existence. This research explores Bajau habitat patterns from ecological and geospatial perspectives while contributing to sustainable preservation of cultural heritage and the marine environment. The study aims to: (1) Identify the spatial distribution of Bajau habitats; (2) Examine the synergy between Bajau community and coral reef ecosystems; and (3) Elucidate the conceptual framework linking Bajau habitats with coral reefs. Research findings show that Bajau habitats form a patterned, linear configuration extending from coral reef zones and shallow waters to stilt habitats above the sea, coastal fringes, and terrestrial. Synergy between Bajau community and coral reefs operates adaptively through proximity, coastal space use, and everyday practices sustaining a functional relationship with the sea. This relationship is maintained directly in marine-based habitats through transitional shoreline spaces, and indirectly within land-based Bajau habitats mediated by mobility and infrastructure. The Bajau people conceptualize habitat as a relational socio-ecological-spatial system, where coral reefs, land, and cultural practices are understood as interrelated components that collectively sustain ecological, material, social, and spiritual sustainability.
Habitat, coral reef, maritime environment, maritime space, Bajau
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Cultural Activism for Sustainable Land and Marine through Two Indonesian Performing Arts PDF 10.21463/jmic.2026.15.2.12AbstractKeywords
This paper aims to discuss cultural activism for a sustainable land and marine environment through two performing arts in a bamboo garden and on a beach in Jember Regency, East Java Province, Indonesia. To analyze the two performing arts and their discourses conveyed to the public, we applied postcolonial ecocriticism, which emphasizes academic efforts to reveal the interests of advocacy and activism in response to environmental problems through cultural works. This perspective also criticizes environmental policies which continue the similar exploitative practices conducted by the European colonizers. The results of this study show that the two performing arts convey ecological messages that remind the public of the importance of caring for the ecosystems in which they and other living creatures live. The two performances also campaign for public and government environmental awareness, especially regarding the commitment to preserving the land and marine environments. In addition, they become cultural criticisms of government environmental policies, because many green areas are still exploited for profit.
performing arts, postcolonial ecocriticism, environmental problems, marine, bamboo
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Maritime Cultural Logic in the Entrepreneurial Practices of Fishpond Farmers on the North Coast of West Java PDF 10.21463/jmic.2026.15.2.13AbstractKeywords
The coastal communities of Cirebon inhabit a dynamic socio-ecological environment characterized by seasonal fluctuations, tidal flooding, declining marine yields, and limited access to markets and capital. While previous studies have emphasized economic and technical aspects of coastal entrepreneurship, limited attention has been given to the cultural logic underlying entrepreneurial practices. This study examines how maritime cultural logic shapes fishpond entrepreneurship through ecological adaptation, family organization, and local cultural values. Using an ethnographic approach, data were collected through participant observation, in-depth interviews, and field observations. The findings show that livelihood diversification across fishing, aquaculture, and agriculture enables households to manage environmental uncertainty and stabilize income. The family serves as a production unit and a source of social capital through labor sharing, trust-based networks, and risk-sharing mechanisms. Gendered divisions of labor strengthen household resilience, while local values such as tabah (perseverance) and nerimo (acceptance of uncertainty) provide moral resources for entrepreneurial decision-making. The study demonstrates that coastal entrepreneurship is a culturally embedded practice shaped by maritime habitus, family social capital, and local values thereby contributing to a deeper understanding of adaptive and sustainable entrepreneurship in coastal communities.
maritime culture, entrepreneurship, fishpond farmers, social capital, gender