This is is a remarkable study of urban society in one of Indonesia's main port cities. It views Surabaya from the experiences of the people who occupy its alleyways, riverbanks and muddy roadsides, a group that has had little say in the making of policy or the writing of Indonesia's history. The setting is a crowded low-income neighbourhood (kampung) that lies between the Surabaya River and the city's main southern boulevard. For those who live along this kampung's narrow alleyways, the city can be a violent landscape of exclusion and social asymmetry. From this perspective, Indonesia's...