Abstract
The Asian-African Conference was held in Bandung, Indonesia. Scholars and intellectuals have often looked upon the Conference for Asian-African solidarity to fight colonialism, and symbolized “Bandung” as the solidarity of the “Third World”.
However, there remains a much needed contextualization of the Conference with reference to the urban-sociocultural history of Bandung, the capital of West Java Province. This article describes the hidden and under-accounted side of the Conference.
It is imperative that we begin to see Bandung not as a symbol of the Third World solidarity, but as a remnant of colonialism in Indonesia. Looking at the everyday consciousness and cultural practices among the young people living in the colonial city, and focusing on the modern art movement, the counterculture in popular music, and the Islamization within the underground scene, we will find that Bandung was historically orientated towards Western modernity and American culture, and what is a more important aspect of the city’s colonial legacy than what is a typical image of the anti-colonial city.
In that sense, we have to reframe the Conference as dependent upon the historical everyday youth cultural practices in the local context of Bandung. This article provides a new contribution to the understandings of Inter-Asia Cultural Studies on the Conference and Third World Cities.
