About this episode

Chiara Formichi discusses her book on the role of Muslim women in Indonesia's health and nationalism from the late 1910s to the 1950s.

In her most recent publication, Domestic Nationalism: Muslim Women, Health, and Modernity in Indonesia (Stanford UP, 2025), Chiara Formichi argues that Muslim women in Java and Sumatra, from the late 1910s to the 1950s, were central to Indonesia's progress as guardians and promoters of health and piety through gendered activities of care work. While sidelined in the Dutch colonial project of hygienic modernity, women's labor of social reproduction became increasingly visible during the Japanese Occupation and early years of independence. Women from all walks of life were called upon to fulfill domestic and motherly roles for the production and socialization of laborers, soldiers, and citizens. The medicalization of cleanliness, intersecting with multiple patriarchal orders, marginalized women's traditional influence and knowledge. However, leveraging the critical importance of infant care, cleanliness, and nutrition, women pushed against the boundaries imposed on them by the colonial and postcolonial state. Largely absent from government archives, their words and acts are evident in vernacular magazines and visual sources drawn from official outreach, news and lifestyle media…

People in this episode

Guest: Chiara Formichi

Topics covered

• Muslim women
• health
• modernity
• Indonesia
• gendered care work
• nationalism

Keywords

• domestic nationalism
• health
• Muslim women
• Indonesia
• gender roles
• colonialism
• modernity

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Stanford UP

Places: Indonesia, Java, Sumatra

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