Gatty Lecture Series

Join us for a talk by Doreen Lee, Professor of Anthropology, Director of Global Asian Studies, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Northeastern University.

This Gatty Lecture will take place at the Kahin Center, 640 Stewart Ave. Lunch will be served. For questions, contact seap@cornell.edu.

Abstract

This talk distills the flows and values of life in Jakarta, Indonesia’s largest city and financial core, into a central idea: The Urban Grotesque. The urban grotesque is a name and framework for situating the dynamic, generous, predatory, and unpredictable textures of Jakarta’s financial lives. The talk presents the vantage points of individuals who experience the high social costs of living in the city, tracking their commonplace gestures of giving and taking to build a systematic analysis of how redistribution, circulation, and compliance dominate urban life. This talk will focus on the predatory aspects of debt and redistribution in the city. Combining ethnography and memoir, and playing with genre, the talk showcases the challenges of capturing the financial edge of urban life without romanticizing the fast-paced economic developments and collective forms of resilience that characterize this Global South city.

About the Speaker

Doreen Lee is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Northeastern University. She received her PhD in Sociocultural Anthropology from Cornell University with a concentration in Southeast Asian Studies and History. She directs the Global Asian Studies program at Northeastern University and serves as a councilor for the American Ethnological Society. Her first book Activist Archives: Youth Culture and the Political Past in Indonesia was published by Duke University Press in 2016 and won the Harry J. Benda Prize from the Association of Asian Studies in 2019. Her forthcoming book, The Urban Grotesque: Life and Debt in Jakarta (Duke University Press, 2026), depicts the urban conditions of debt and obligation in Jakarta.