Semarang (2/9) – Guest Lecturer of Public Administration, Faculty of Social Science and Political Science, Universitas Diponegoro brought the theme “Insfrastructuring Knowledge: Meetings, Documents, and Public Ethnography of Policy Makings”. This lecture was held hybrid in the Meeting Room of the Undip FISIP Postgraduate Program and online via the Zoom application. It presented a researcher from Humboldt University, Berlin-Germany, Dr des Indrawan Prabaharyaka, M.Phil. This activity was moderated by Dr. Budi Puspo Priyadi, M.Hum and started at 13.30 GMT+7.

In his material, Indrawan said that knowledge infrastructure was needed to create a public-oriented policy. In modern society, meetings and documents became objects of knowledge infrastructure. Documents could be both a method and the output of an organized ‘hangout’ (meeting). In contrast to the old anthropology which studied people with low reading culture, modern anthropology made modern society, objects, concepts, and modern problems as its subjects.

In addition, Indrawan also shared his experience of doing anthropological research in Germany. In his research, he found that meetings and documents were interesting ethnographic objects because from them we could see the rituals/routines of a certain group. In addition, he also realized that the linguistic skills of an ethnographer could affect ethnographic objects.