{"product_id":"merdeka-and-the-morning-star-civil-resistance-in-west-papua-by-jason-macleod","title":"'Merdeka and the Morning Star: Civil Resistance in West Papua' by Jason Macleod","description":"\u003ch4 data-start=\"39\" data-end=\"595\"\u003eA very devastating study on West Papuan resistance movements, written by Australian researcher and activist Jason MacLeod.\u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"39\" data-end=\"595\"\u003eRather than focusing purely on armed struggle or geopolitical abstraction, \u003cem data-start=\"253\" data-end=\"283\"\u003eMerdeka and the Morning Star\u003c\/em\u003e traces the long history of civil resistance in West Papua: student networks, underground organising, Indigenous governance structures, cultural survival, churches, women’s groups, political prisoners, symbolic protest, and the difficult, often invisible work of maintaining collective identity under occupation.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"597\" data-end=\"1331\"\u003eMacLeod conducted extensive interviews across West Papua and Indonesia, many reproduced directly in the text, creating a work that moves between political theory, oral history, testimony, and structural analysis. The book is deeply attentive to the language of colonial administration, developmental violence, military occupation, and state denial. It examines not only overt brutality but the quieter mechanics of demographic engineering, resource extraction, displacement, bureaucratic containment, and informational suppression. In an Australian context especially, the book sits in uncomfortable proximity to broader Pacific histories of colonial management and strategic silence.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"1333\" data-end=\"1925\"\u003eThe interview sections are often harrowing. Testimonies of torture, sexual violence, disappearance, and intimidation are presented with very little sensationalism, which makes them hit harder. But the book is equally concerned with resistance as social infrastructure: how people continue organising culture, education, care, ceremony, political memory, and communication under sustained pressure. In that sense it feels less like a distant academic study and more like a forensic anatomy of how power attempts to dissolve a people over time — and how communities refuse disappearance anyway.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"1927\" data-end=\"2138\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ePublished by University of Queensland Press in 2015 as part of the \u003cem data-start=\"1994\" data-end=\"2032\"\u003eNew Approaches to Peace and Conflict\u003c\/em\u003e series. Paperback edition in very good condition with minor shelf wear. Clean interior and tight binding.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"bower studio","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44577466122323,"sku":null,"price":16.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/0268\/2707\/files\/Yourparagraphtext-2026-05-08T151155.495.png?v=1778217270","url":"https:\/\/bowerbooks.com\/products\/merdeka-and-the-morning-star-civil-resistance-in-west-papua-by-jason-macleod","provider":"bower books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}