Nostalgia Made Material: The Social Life of Retro Crafts in Postcolonial Java

Abstract

This study explores how retro craft objects in postcolonial Java materialize collective nostalgia through their social life across domestic and public spaces, with Surakarta and Yogyakarta serving as key ethnographic sites. Through material culture analysis and ethnographic fieldwork, we reveal how these once-neglected artifacts gain renewed cultural legitimacy through two interconnected processes: first, as vehicles for personal and communal nostalgia that aesthetically transform living spaces through references to Java’s craft heritage; second, through institutional “retrotification” where art establishments consecrate these objects as valuable cultural capital. The research demonstrates how these retro crafts operate as tangible mediators of memory, bridging colonial-era craftsmanship with contemporary identity formation while reflecting postcolonial society’s negotiation of modernity through material culture. Their circulation between private homes (as markers of individual taste) and public venues (as statements of collective heritage) underscores their dual role in Java’s nostalgia economy, with local art institutions acting as crucial legitimizing agents that transform obsolete items into aesthetic commodities. This work contributes to material culture studies by theorizing retrotification as an institutional practice, to postcolonial urbanism through its spatial analysis of nostalgia economies, and to heritage studies by documenting vernacular preservation outside formal state frameworks.