Cap Tikus, Contested Modernities, and Youth Resistance in Manado, North Sulawesi.
Nastasja Ilonka Roels is a Dutch/Indonesian ethnographic researcher. This website is a visual and auditory exploration of her PhD research and is complementary to her doctoral thesis, which will be available via the University of Amsterdam Digital Academic Repository when published.
Roels's PhD research centers on the popular local alcoholic drink Cap Tikus in Manado, North Sulawesi, Indonesia. Following the drink from its birthplace in the mountains into young people’s drinking circles in the city, she playfully draws together the richness of individual experiences, collective harmonization of alcohol effects and affects, and the flows and frictions of the drink’s provisioning pathways. Against the backdrop of both a national and regional problematization of alcohol and a drive towards modernity, this study explores the different meanings, practices, and socialities afforded by Cap Tikus and its drinking circles, demonstrating the power of these sociopolitical movements for change and the youth resistance against them.
“What is Cap Tikus?” was first on a list of five questions I asked different people on the streets of Manado. Bintan Siregar captured and edited these street interviews into this short video.
The core of this research was carried out with financial support from the ERC-funded project ChemicalYouth based at the University of Amsterdam. For more about this project: www.chemicalyouth.org
This PhD project was supervised by Prof. Anita Hardon and Dr. Mariana Rios Sandoval.