Passage Territories: Reconstructing the Domestic Spatiality of an Indonesian Urban Kampung

This chapter argues that there is a need to rethink the understanding and formation of the domestic territory of the urban kampung, a form of densely populated, low-income neighbourhood often plagued with instability from the risk of displacement and declining environmental conditions. The chapter develops the notion of passage territories, first coined by Richard Sennett, to reconstruct the ‘traditional’ view on domestic territory by creating a shift from understanding the territory as emerging from bounded space, to being constructed by the dispersed and layered connections between spaces. The chapter explores how domestic territory driven by passages takes place in the context of Kampung Pulo, Jakarta, Indonesia. This and similar neighbourhoods are often viewed upon quite one-dimensionally by regional and local authorities, leading to a limited set of repetitive approaches to ‘deal’ with issues such as, for example, population density, including relocating or displacing inhabitants. Based on a field study of Kampung Pulo dwellers’ living practices, this text identifies and discusses the different spatial patterns that construct those dwellers’ passage-driven domestic territories, highlighting their dispersed, performative, transgressive, and contingent characteristics. By drawing on the different patterns of passages and the entanglements between them, the text aims to contribute towards a better understanding of the complex domestic spatialities within such a context and, accordingly, inform future developments.