Culture, Power, Difference: Managing Ambivalence and Producing Identity in the Transnational Corporate Offices of Jakarta, Indonesia

This dissertation consists of a multi-sited ethnographic examination of Western-owned and managed transnational office spaces in Jakarta, Indonesia and Singapore. I describe the kinds of social spaces that are becoming increasingly prevalent in our lives due to global economic processes. I historicize these spaces through an investigation into the organizational structures and administrative practices surrounding foreign capital in the islands of Indonesia since Dutch colonialism. I demonstrate a continued reliance on colonial practices in the exercise of power on the global stage (as well as a continued reliance on the ideologies that supported these colonial practices) despite claims by the agents of foreign capital to a more culturally and politically sensitive organization form. I focus on management training as a space where the modernist ideologies of progress and technological development confront the reifying messages of cultural difference and inferiority. Central to my research is an examination into the use of culture in the exercise of power. I examine the way cultural differences are constructed and deployed in the maintenance of an organizational hierarchy structured along lines of nationality. In this regard I focus on the twinned discourses of corporate culture and multiculturalism through which cultural identities are constituted within transnational corporate (TNC) offices. I explore how these contradictory messages are perceived and negotiated by the national (Indonesian) employees of the TNCs. Finally, I explain how the transnational office space is a space of desire for Indonesian employees due to its perceived connections to a global network of people, information and ideas. How the Indonesian employees of foreign-owned TNCs negotiate the tensions of this global space is central to my research. This dissertation contributes to a large and important body of literature on the relationship between capital and the state by demonstrating how foreign-owned transnational corporations can serve as agents for the nation-state; in particular by disseminating and legitimizing a coherent and homogenous national character or national identity.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Anthropology

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2015

Author dc:creator

• Leggett, William Harris

Contributors dc:contributor

• William Kelleher, Jr

• Sociology, Social Structure and Development

Language dc:language

eng

Identifier

(MiAaPQ)AAI3101895

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/85255