Ronda: The Neighborhood Watch

This chapter analyzes the foundational institution of policing in Bandung, the neighborhood night watch. Using ethnographic fieldnotes and historical sources, it explores the history of the neighborhood watch, its technologies, its practices, and its cultural significance. The chapter argues that underlying the neighborhood watch is a particular mode of understanding, expressing, and institutionalizing urban security and order, namely, territoriality. Territoriality may be expressed in very mundane ways or in supernatural ways, but at base, it is a relationship established between an occupant and an occupied realm, and depends on demonstrations of continual care and upkeep. The chapter argues that territoriality is foundational to how neighborhood identity is constituted and to urban ordering more generally.